“Hold still,” the second man said. “Unless you want your face sliced open.”
“Wh-what are you doing?”
“Just making a point.” He chuckled. “Just remember what we talked about. A word of this to anyone, and your life will get really difficult. What’s left of it.” He withdrew the blade. “Now get us out of here.”
“Why did Iever in my life think this would be a good idea?” Connor Donaldson groused to no one as he trudged from his truck to the munitions magazine on the far edge of SkyCrest Resort. He pulled a sled behind him, the kind used to transport supplies around the ski resort, cutting a path across the expanse of empty parking lot. The small, square concrete building sat by itself at the far edge of the lot.
“This is no way to start a new year,” Connor said out loud to no one but himself. He had made it to bed about 1:00 a.m., after the New Year’s Eve fireworks and torchlight parade, and he was feeling every bit of that lost sleep, not to mention the several beers he had enjoyed with friends.
At 5:30 in the morning, New Year’s Day, the resort was dark and silent, only the amber glow of the security lights rimming the parking lot illuminating his path. Holiday decorations—crossed wooden skis trimmed with red velvet bows and greenery—decorated each light pole, but Connor noticed someone haddraped a homemade banner over one of the poles.Save Blaine Mountain!was lettered in blue paint across the banner.
Security would have that down before the resort opened in a couple of hours—not that there weren’t plenty of similar banners and posters all around town. While many people were excited about SkyCrest’s proposed expansion into new terrain, the opposition was doing a good job of making themselves heard.
Connor had mixed feelings about the plans for new lifts, runs and condos, but it wasn’t his decision to make. He only hoped the addition of new terrain would mean hiring more patrollers to help with the increased workload.
A bark from the darkness to his right distracted Connor from his personal pity party. “Farley!” he shouted and switched on a flashlight, sweeping the beam across the snow until he spotted the dog.
The goldendoodle in the red ski patrol vest had his front paws on a low wall that separated the parking lot from the street, his attention focused on movement by the dumpster. Connor took a few steps toward his dog. A furry face with triangular ears and a pointed snout peered over the top of the half-open dumpster, then the fox bounded away.
“Farley!” Connor called again. “Come!”
The dog whirled around and raced across the parking lot to join Connor, puffs of snow flying up around his paws.
“Quit messing around,” Connor said. “We’ve got work to do.”
He trudged the rest of the way to the munitions storage, Farley scampering in front of him, unfazed by the man’s grumpiness. Connor took out his keys and unlocked the double locks, then shoved open the heavy steel door. He flicked on the overhead light, then moved directly to the boxes of explosives stacked along the wall to his left. Each box contained two dozen cast boosters—two-pound cylinders loaded with Pentex explosive that had the destructive capacity of several sticks of dynamite.
Connor took his time loading the sled, handling each box carefully. Even sleep-deprived and slightly hungover, the training that had been drilled into him in the United States Army didn’t desert him.
He added boxes of detonator assemblies, then logged what he had taken from stock on a clipboard by the door. Every log entry for the past three seasons was accompanied by his initials. He was the munitions man at SkyCrest Resort, though the job carried no particular cachet. He was merely the man most likely to be blown to pieces if there was ever an accident. Not that there would be. But the possibility was there, adding spice to the morning.
He snapped a fitted tarp over the load, then turned to look for his dog. “Farley?”
A bark emanated from somewhere behind a stack of boxes, deep in the interior of the storage building.
“What are you doing back there?” Connor called, annoyed. “Come!”
The dog stuck his head around the tower of boxes and whined.
“Come!” Connor ordered, with more force.
The dog came, head down. He nudged at Connor’s leg and whined again, plaintive and urgent.
“We don’t have time for games,” Connor said. He moved toward the door.
But Farley had stopped again and was staring toward the back of the building.
Connor wanted to leave, but his conscience wouldn’t let him. What if some animal was trapped back there? Or worse, what if a rat had gotten in? The last thing they needed was a rodent chewing on explosives. He sighed. “All right, Farley,” he said. “Show me what’s got you so agitated.”
Connor had to squeeze through a narrow passage between boxes to follow the dog, who led him to a void between the lastrow of boxes and the wall. Odd that whoever had loaded this section hadn’t pushed the boxes flush against the wall but no big deal. Connor shone the beam of his flashlight over the space. At first, he didn’t see anything.
Then Farley pawed at the wall. Except it wasn’t wall. The dog’s claws ripped right through the surface.
Connor bent and pulled at the torn material. It was paper. Paper painted the same color as the stucco outside the building. Heart hammering, he swept the light over the wall more slowly, revealing a cutout two feet wide and three feet high. Wide enough for a man to crawl through.
Wide enough for explosives to be taken out. The explosives that had probably been sitting in this empty space.
He fumbled for the radio clipped to his ski patrol vest, then thought better of broadcasting the news to anyone who might be tuned in, and pulled out his phone. He had to move out of the building to acquire a signal. He found the number he wanted and waited while it rang. And rang. After five rings, the call went to voicemail. Connor hung up and immediately hit Redial.
