Without a company representative present.
Nellie had documented eleven species in active water features today alone. The seep zone where she’d found theBotrychiumwas, by the form’s own proposed definition, off-limits unless Gina Marsh or one of her people stood at her elbow while she worked.
She sat back in her chair.
She picked up her tea and read the attachment again from the top, slowly,analyzing the exact words and the specific references cited.
Clause three. Gina had cited clause three of the original access agreement in support of the restriction.Standard operational survey parameters, as outlined in clause three of the Agreement dated?—
Nellie pulled up the original contract.
She read clause three. Then she pulled the original agreement’s definition schedule, which was appended to the back, and read the definition ofactive water featureas the agreement’s authors had actually written it. Then she read clause seven, which Gina had not cited, presumably because Gina had not read clause seven or had read it and concluded, incorrectly, that it didn’t apply.
“Gotcha,” she muttered to herself. “Better luck next time, Gina.”
Clause seven said, in language that was dense and specific and absolutely unambiguous, that any access restriction implemented after the agreement’s execution date requiredfourteen days’ written notice and written consent from both parties before taking effect.
Gina had given her forty-eight hours.
Nellie chuckled quietly, then cracked her neck like she was gearing up for a fight. The woodstove ticked softly behind her. She pulled the original contract into the markup tool and started highlighting.
It brought her a grim sort of satisfaction to imagine the look on the famous Sawyer Alburn’s face when she told her that her Head of Development wasn’t at all the sly fox she thought she was.
Then she wondered why she was thinking about Sawyer Alburn at all.
6
CHAPTER 6 – SAWYER
The budget report had ninety-three pages. Sawyer was on page forty-one, which was the section on infrastructure depreciation schedules, which was not—objectively, by any reasonable measure—less interesting than a generator installation confirmation. And yet…
She read the email that had just popped up on her screen twice.Backup generator unit successfully installed at eastern cottage, eastern access track, Phoenix Ridge property. Fuel status: 0%. Unit ready for commissioning upon fuel delivery.
Zero percent. She rolled her eyes. Zero percent fuel was, technically, a generator. It was also, technically, a very expensive metal box. She flagged the email and returned to page forty-one.
The words blurred together as Sawyer’s mind wandered far from anything in the realm of budget reports.
She was not, she told herself, concerned about Nellie Fuller specifically. She was concerned about liability. There was a legally binding access agreement. There was a person on her property under the terms of that agreement, and if thatperson experienced some kind of wilderness-related misfortune—flood, fallen tree, storm damage, whatever inconveniences the wilderness saw fit to manufacture—Alburn Systems was the responsible party. She Googled ‘what kind of fuel do backup generators use.’
Twenty minutes later, she had fourteen browser tabs open across three overlapping categories: diesel vs. propane, portable generator capacity ratings, and, inexplicably, a forum thread titledHow much fuel do I need for a 3-day storm emergency (rural, single occupancy)?The forum consensus was ten gallons as a minimum. She closed all the tabs, opened a new one, and found a fuel supplier with same-day delivery windows.
Same-day delivery required a four-hour lead time. It was already seven-fifteen.
At seven-seventeen, Sawyer drove to a gas station and bought ten gallons of diesel in two five-gallon containers, which she then loaded single-handedly into the trunk of her car.
Huffing, slightly sweaty, and more-than-slightly questioning her own sanity, she climbed back behind the wheel. Then she got back onto the highway.
It was past eight when she pulled down the access road, which she’d been on often enough now that she no longer required the GPS. This did not feel like a milestone. The containers shifted against each other in the trunk as the road dipped, producing a loud sloshing sound she had chosen not to find alarming on the drive up and was finding increasingly hard to dismiss now that she had nothing else to focus on.
She parked twenty feet from the cottage and turned the engine off.
Dropping her head back against the leather headrest, Sawyer sat with her hands in her lap and applied herself to the question of why she had not, at any of the numerous reasonable juncturesbetween receiving that email and this moment, simply sent someone else.
She could not produce a satisfactory answer.
All that was left to do was simply get out of the car.
She was not-so-gracefully hauling the containers out of her trunk when the cottage door opened.
