“It does,” /Nellie agreed pleasantly. “Deputy Haines and I have already discussed it. She’s very nice, actually. She gave me a thumbs-up earlier”
From across the access road, the deputy made a face that suggested she deeply regretted the thumbs-up.
Sawyer glanced at the phone on the branch. The viewer counter was live, and the chat scrolled too fast to parse. She’d clocked the number before she got out of the car: nineteen thousand now. She understood, without needing to calculate, exactly what the press response would look like if she sent a deputy in with bolt cutters right now. “Alburn Systems CEO Arrests Activist Live on Stream”wasn’t a headline anyone recovered from cleanly, and the county board—already skittish, three members of whom were up for re-election in November—would table the vote indefinitely on the basis of optics alone. Gina’s timetable would collapse. The project would stall. And Sawyer would spend six months in media remediation when she could be doing literally anything else.
She did not make decisions she’d have to undo.
She also, and she was being very clear with herself about this, was not standing here somewhat dumbfounded because Nellie Fuller’s eyes were so hazel they were almost gold in the gradually rising morning light or because the woman had memorized Sawyer’s acquisition history and quoted it back at her without a tremor in her voice. Those were not factors. She was running a calculation about media fallout, same as she always did, and the calculation was coming out against arrest. That was the beginning and the end of it.
“I’ll make you an offer,” Sawyer suddenly said, hearing it as if someone outside of herself was speaking.
Nellie’s eyebrows rose. “Okay...”
“Sixty days.” Sawyer told herself she was doing exactly what she needed to do, what her lawyers were going to say about it was a separate and later problem. “You want to prove this land qualifies for protected status? Prove it. State designation, federal designation, I don’t care which. Bring me peer-reviewed science, a credible ecological survey, statutory grounds—anything thatholds up to legal scrutiny. Any avenue available under environmental law, you use it.”
“And if I can demonstrate qualifying status?” Nellie was fully focused now, the gold in her eyes glinting as they narrowed. Sawyer recognized the look of making quick calculations.
“Alburn Systems withdraws the development proposal. Entirely. No litigation, no countersuits. We leave the project and we don’t revisit it.”
Silence. A jay called somewhere overhead in the canopy, loud and briefly absurd.
“And if I can’t?”
“You leave my land and you stay gone. No chain actions, no streams, no signs.” Sawyer paused a half-second. “Regardless if the font is legible.”
The laugh from the flatbed was louder this time. Nellie’s mouth did something that was not quite a snarl and not quite a grin—somewhere between the two, and unreasonably distracting. Sawyer redirected her attention to the middle distance.
“Your lawyers are going to hate this,” Nellie taunted her.
“My lawyers work for me.”
“That’s not actually a counterargument.”
No, Sawyer thought,it really wasn’t.
The offer was good sense. It was clean. It put a hard deadline on the activism, separated the question from the noise of public opinion, and if Nellie Fuller couldn’t meet the burden of proof—which was a high one, because the criteria for protected designation were specific and demanding, and this forest had already been surveyed by Sawyer’s team shortly before the acquisition—then the project proceeded on a timeline Alburn Systems controlled.
She was being tactical. That was what this was.
“Is there a catch?” Nellie’s gaze was steady, searching her face for something.
“The criteria are the criteria. I’m not narrowing them beyond what the law already specifies.” Sawyer held eye contact. “I’m not in the habit of offering things I intend to take back.”
Nellie was quiet for a long moment. Sawyer watched her think—watched the consideration move across her face without any apparent effort to conceal it.
“I’d need access,” she said finally. “The full four thousand acres. For surveys and sampling.”
“Coordinate with my office. You’ll have access within the parameters of standard survey protocols.”
“And the construction crew?”
Sawyer glanced at Dave, who had stopped pacing entirely and was watching with his arms folded. “On hold for sixty days.”Dave nodded.
Nellie’s eyes were still narrowed. “Sixty days,” she repeated.
“Starting today.”
“Make it tomorrow. On research days, I need to start the morning with better coffee.”
