Chapter Seventeen
Stacy kept one hand on her father’s arm, afraid he was going to fall over. “How badly are you hurt?” she asked as he staggered alongside her in the darkness.
“I’m not dying, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I just bruised a few ribs.” He sucked in his breath. “Maybe broke a couple, but I’ve been through worse. Did I tell you about the time in Arkansas where I walked ten miles down a mountain with a broken ankle?”
“Yes. And you were thirty then. You’re a lot older now.”
“I don’t need you to remind me.” He halted, breathing hard. “I should have anticipated that kick. I expected him to give up as soon as I stabbed him.”
A guard had arrived with dinner and surprised her father trying to saw through the side of the chicken house with the multi-tool.
Dad had slashed him with the saw blade, and the man had delivered a hard kick to George’s ribs.
Stacy had jumped the man and choked him with her scarf until he went limp.
She and her father had tied his hands and feet, gagged him and left him locked in the chicken house.
“Where to now?” Her father looked around. “Everything is lit up like Christmas.” Music blared from speakers in the trees, overlaid by shouts and laughter. “Sounds like they’re having a party.”
“Our phones are bound to be in Shane’s house,” Stacy said. “If I get the phone, I can call for help. And transportation back to town.”
“I have a better idea,” her father said. “Let’s steal one of these cars and drive ourselves.” He gestured to the vehicles lined up along the drive.
“We can’t just drive off in someone’s car,” she said. “They’ll see us and chase after us.”
“I can drive faster than they can run.”
“You’re barely able to stand up.”
“Headlights,” her father said. “Headed this way.”
They ducked to the side of the drive, into the deep shadow of the woods. A white truck rumbled toward them, Shane at the wheel, Bruce and Nate with him. “Where are they going this time of night?” Stacy asked.
“Maybe they’re going to dinner,” George said. “It doesn’t matter. With them out of the way, it’s our best chance to get to the house and retrieve our phones and weapons.”
They made their way to the house, moving as fast as George’s injuries would permit. Every light in the house was on, but no one moved behind the windows. Stacy tried the back door and found it unlocked.
“Maybe the door isn’t locked because someone is inside,” George said.
“If anyone stops us, we’ll pretend to be drunk partiers,” she said. “We know Shane, Bruce and Nate are gone. No one else is likely to recognize us.”
They made their way unmolested to the front room and the dresser by the door. The phones were there in the top drawer, along with her Glock, resting on top of a pile of winter gloves and hats.
“Careless, leaving a weapon like that where anyone could find it,” George said as Stacy slipped the gun into her coat pocket. He took her arm. “Let’s get out of here. You can call from the road.”
“Just a minute,” she said. She turned toward the stairs.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to take a picture of that map with the targets marked. I should have done it before. If Shane decides to destroy it, we’ll still have the photo. Wait down here. Whistle if anyone else shows up.”
Not waiting for an answer, she took the stairs two at a time. The door to the office was open, the desk cleared of papers and books. She opened the drawer where the plans had been. Nothing. She rifled the rest of the drawers. The plans were gone. Had he already destroyed them?
A sick heaviness settled in her stomach. Or maybe he had taken the plans with him. Maybe that had been the scheme all along—to sneak onto the resort and plant the bombs, with some kind of timer to go off tomorrow, when the crowds were their heaviest.
She started down the stairs but stopped when she heard voices. Her father was talking, his words loud and insistent. “I just came here to see if I could get a drink. The boss man must have booze somewhere.”
“There’s no booze here, old man,” a woman’s voice said. “You need to go back to your tent and sleep it off.”
“Back to my tent. Good idea.” He turned toward the stairs.
“Not that way,” the woman said. “Come here. I’ll show you out the front door.”
The rustle of shuffling feet. The door opening and closing. Stacy hurried down the stairs, past the open front door, into the kitchen and out the back. Her father met her on the side of the house.
“You were lucky to run into such a helpful woman,” Stacy said.
“Helpful my foot. She tried to pick my pocket. Probably disappointed when she didn’t find a wallet. And drunk as I might have appeared, I had a death grip on my phone.”
She took his arm. “Come on, Dad. We need to get out of here.”
They set off, skirting crowds of revelers. George detoured to a campfire and helped himself to a beer from an open cooler.
“Dad!”
“I’m thirsty.” He twisted the cap off the bottle and took a long swig, then offered the bottle to her. “Would you like some?”
“No, thank you. Though I wish I had some water.”
“I knew you’d say that, so I snagged a bottle for you.” He pulled a bottle of water from beneath his jacket and offered it to her.
She cracked it open and took a long drink. “Ahhh.” She sighed. “I might actually make it to civilization.”
They made it to the end of the driveway. She pulled out her phone to call Connor. The phone rang and rang, then went to voicemail. Instead of leaving a message, she texted. I’m at Shane’s ranch with Dad. Meet me at the highway intersection.
She tried calling Doug but got no answer.
She could call 911, but the thought of trying to explain the situation, and the response that might be offered by a sheriff’s department with at most two deputies on duty this time of night, seemed a waste of time.
Best to get to the resort, find Agent Anthony and get more help from there.
She didn’t even know for certain if Shane and the others had been headed for SkyCrest. They might truly have merely been going out to dinner.
“What’s the plan?” her dad asked as she tucked away her phone.
“I texted Connor to meet us at the highway intersection.”
“So he’s on his way?”
“I have no idea. If he gets my message, I’m sure he’ll show up.” As soon as she said the words, some of the tension went out of her. Why was she so sure this man she had known such a short time would be there for her? Yet she believed he would not let her down.
They skirted around a bonfire, where men and women were talking and laughing, some of them passing a bottle around. “At this rate, all the protestors are going to be too hungover to show up at the resort tomorrow,” she said.
“Maybe that’s what Shane wants,” George said. “When I helped myself to the beer, a guy standing nearby told me to take all I wanted, that Shane had paid for it, and there was plenty more where that came from.”
Her stomach knotted at the words. “If he wants everyone out of the way, it could be because he has an alternative plan for tomorrow,” she said.
“No organized protests, just a lot of bombs going off.” George increased his pace. “We need to get out of here.”
They only had another few hundred yards to go before they reached the county road, where she hoped Connor would be waiting.
At first she thought the shouting was another drunken reveler. Then footsteps pounded behind her, two figures running out of the darkness toward her.
She froze and drew her Glock.
“Agent Macrae! Don’t shoot!”
“Stacy, it’s me, Connor.”
Shaking with relief, she returned the gun to the pocket of her coat. Connor and the man with him slowed and walked to meet them, while Farley raced toward them. She bent to greet the excited dog.
Then Connor’s arms were around her, and she was trying very hard to hold back tears.
Connor could have stood and held Stacy for the rest of the night.
His legs were still shaking with the relief of finding her, of knowing she was okay.
He had been tortured by the need to protect her from harm but was now filled with pride at her ability to protect herself.
“Come on.” He forced himself to pull away from her but still kept one hand on her arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
He led the way to his truck, putting Stacy and George in the front seat, leaving Agent Anthony to crowd into the narrow back seat with Farley.
Stacy fended off Farley’s attempts to wash her face and turned to look at Anthony. “Hello, Damien,” she said.
“Hello, Stacy. I assume your father told you I’m here to take over this investigation.”
“That’s beside the point at the moment,” she said. Anthony made a noise as if to protest, and she rushed to fill the void before he could speak. “We have to stop Shane Greer from blowing up SkyCrest resort.”
“Connor has given me a disjointed story of a plot to bomb the resort with explosives stolen from ski patrol,” Anthony said. “I’m not sure how much I believe. So far we’ve spent the evening running around with a lot of drunken revelers and finding a very angry man tied up in a chicken house.”
“We were locked up in that chicken house for hours,” George said.
“How did you get out?” Connor asked.
“I overpowered that man you found when he came to bring our supper,” George said.
“And only broke a few ribs in the process,” Stacy said. “We need to get you to a doctor, Dad.”
“Later. We have to stop Shane first.”
“We saw Shane and two others leaving the ranch in a truck forty minutes ago,” Connor said.
“I think they’re headed to the resort,” Stacy said.
She turned toward Anthony. “Shane has the cast boosters stolen from SkyCrest. Dad and I saw him and some others—including the two men who were in the truck this evening with Shane—practicing with them at an old quarry on the ranch. I also found a plan of the resort in Shane’s office that showed a number of target sites.
I think he planned to set the bombs tonight and detonate them tomorrow, during one of the busiest ski days of the season. ”