Page 23 of Cowboy Mountain Man

She opens a photograph of the dining room. “Mrs. Bell’s daughter sent me pictures from the Christmas before she passed. I was comparing them to what I took today.”

“Something missing?”

“Something added.”

She swipes to another image. The study. Bookshelves. Desk. Window. “I didn’t notice this at the house.”

She enlarges the lower corner. A wooden crate sits beside the shelves, partly hidden by the desk. Stenciled letters run along its side.

I lean closer. “This isn’t an antique packing crate,” she says. “It’s new. And look.”

She swipes again. Another angle. Same room. This time, the crate’s lid is visible. A shipping label is fixed to one corner, and beneath it is a printed logo—a white mountain inside a black circle. I know that logo. Northstar Outdoor Supply.

They had a warehouse hit last week. Generators. Thermal optics. Radios. Enough equipment to fill two trucks. Ellis mentioned it when I stopped at the sheriff’s office on Friday.

“Hope.”

She looks up. “What?”

“Show me everything around that crate.”

She draws her chair closer and starts moving through the photographs. A second crate in the hall. Two sealed cartons beneath a dust sheet in the dining room.

At first glance, they could belong to somebody preparing an estate for sale. Except nobody’s supposed to be preparing this one, the logo matches the warehouse, and someone threatened her after she photographed it.

I pull out my phone.

“Is that bad?” she asks.

“Could be.”

“You know the company?”

“They were robbed.”

Her face goes still. “Oh.”

I photograph the tablet screen, then send the image to Ellis with a request to call.

Hope keeps swiping. “There’s more.” She opens a picture taken through the kitchen window. The barn stands beyond the fence. Along its side, a strip of muddy ground disappears into the trees. She zooms in. A cart sits beneath the open lean-to. Heavy tires. Steel frame. Fresh mud. On it are two long black cases. “That’s where the tracks go,” she says.

I study the ground beyond the cart. The trail is overgrown near the house, but it widens past the barn. I know where it leads. “The old mine road.”

“There’s a mine?”

“Closed decades ago. The access road connects to a logging spur on the north slope.”

“So they can get in without passing through town.”

“Yes.”

She looks back at the photograph. “And the tree blocking the road down here doesn’t keep them from leaving.”

“No.”

My phone rings.

Ellis.