Monday evening, she'd come by the lodge after her shift. Theo had appeared from somewhere with a plate of Mae's cinnamon rolls and set them on the table in the small sitting room off the lobby without comment, which was the most approval I was going to get from him. I understood that and appreciated it.
Tuesday, she'd worked a double, and I'd guided a half-day wade and we'd met at the Timberline for dinner, a corner booth, her still in her café clothes. I'd watched her eat half my frieswithout asking and felt something that I wasn't thinking too hard on yet. But I was done pretending it wasn't there.
Wednesday morning, I was on the river alone—the lower bend, early enough that the light was still gray and the current had the sound it had before the world woke up. I'd been there forty minutes when I heard boots on the bank behind me.
I knew who it was before I turned.
Sheriff Cal Granger was a big man, square through the shoulders, with the kind of face that had been weathered into steadiness over a long time. He was in uniform but he'd left the cruiser on the road above, which meant he'd walked down the bank deliberately, which meant he'd wanted the walk—the time to decide how to do this. I kept my hands visible and loose, which was habit, and waited.
He stopped at the edge of the gravel bar and looked at me the way I imagined he looked at most things—level, without hurry, reading whatever was there.
"Mr. Nichols," he said.
"Sheriff."
He looked at the water for a moment. "You know why I'm here."
"I can guess."
"Then let's skip the part where we pretend otherwise." He put his hands in his jacket pockets, unhurried. "I ran your name."
"I know."
"Nothing came up."
"No," I said. "It wouldn't."
"That's the problem." He looked back at me. "I know how to read a clean record, and I know how to read a record that's clean because someone made sure it was clean. Yours reads like the second one."
I nodded. That was accurate. He'd earned the acknowledgment.
"I have a daughter," he said. "She's twenty-three years old and she's never once given me a reason to worry about her judgment." He paused. "I'm not saying she has now. I'm saying I'd like to understand what I'm looking at before I decide."
"That's fair," I said.
"Then talk to me."
I pulled my line in and waded to the bank. We stood there, and I told him. The same way I'd told Mia, but more complete—the specific contract, the specific request, what the intelligence had actually said versus what they needed it to say, what would have happened to the people on the ground if the operation had gone ahead.
I told him about walking, about the phone calls that followed, about the three cities and the new phones and the quiet, steady pressure of being a loose end that couldn't be tied off cleanly. I told him about Rowan and PeakBound and arriving in Hollow Peak telling myself it was temporary.
He listened the way Mia listened—fully, without interrupting. He didn't have the restless energy of a man waiting for his turn to speak.
When I finished, he was quiet for a moment.
"The organization," he said. "They're not going to send someone."
"No. It's reputational pressure, not physical. They want me unsettled, not disappeared. I'm more useful as a cautionary tale than a martyr."
"You're sure about that."
"I've been in that world long enough to know the difference," I said. "If they wanted me gone, I'd already be gone."
He looked at me for a long moment. I felt the weight of his gaze without shifting.
"My daughter," he said. "She's the best thing I've ever done. Her mother built the first part of her and I've been trying tohonor that for eleven years." His voice slowed. "I've been careful with her. Maybe too careful. I know that." He looked at the water. "She stood up to me for the first time in her life. You know that?"
"About what?"
