“Do you?” It came out with a fraction more accusation than she’d probably intended, and Sawyer watched her register that, and recalibrate immediately. Gina softened her voice, which was almost worse. “It’s not just the capital expenditure. The board has been restless since thissave the treescampaign started getting traction. There are two directors who’ve been making noise about the PR situation for weeks. If they see us abandoning the build because some activist with a clipboard has?—”
“Gina.”
Her voice was quiet. She was giving her too many warnings.
She heard it, hesitated, and then pressed on anyway. “You’re too smart to let this derail you. That’s all I’m saying. You did not build this company on sentiment. The Phoenix Ridge land was a clean acquisition, we were operating in full compliance, and this new survey is a manageable liability. Whatever’s tugged at your heartstrings in the last few weeks to make you feel differently?—”
“I’m going to stop you there.”
Sawyer stood up. She wasn’t going to pace; she never paced, it gave the other person too much to read. She walked around her desk, unhurried, and leaned against the front of it with her arms folded, looking at Gina from two feet away. Gina had to look up at her slightly, a fact Sawyer hoped would remind her of her place.
“Let me be clear about something.”
Gina held very still.
“I know how to run this company. I built it long before you were a name on an application, and I’ll be running it long after this conversation. The instincts you’re currently worried about are the same ones that got you a salary in the top point-five percent of your field, so I’d encourage you not to second-guess them too enthusiastically.” She opened her mouth. Sawyer kept going. “And second, if you use the wordsentimentto me again in this office or imply that any decision I make is the result of something that’s beentugged”—she spat the word out with full contempt—”I will invite you to see yourself out and revise your resumé at your earliest convenience. Are we clear?”
“Yes,” Gina said tightly.
“Good.” Sawyer moved back behind her desk, sat down, and pulled her keyboard toward her as if the matter had just concluded on entirely reasonable and collegial terms. “New sites. One week. Five options minimum, with preliminary infrastructure assessments and a land acquisition cost comparison. Not agricultural land, not anything with a prior conservation designation. Something clean, something we can move quickly on, and something that won’t require me to have this conversation again.”
Gina stood. She had a slightly stunned look, as if she’d come in primed for a skirmish and taken a clean defeat instead.
“One week.” Gina nodded, at the door. Sawyer could still hear the shape of the argument Gina had walked in with somewhere underneath it, packed away.
“Thank you, Gina.”
The door clicked shut.
17
CHAPTER 17 – NELLIE
The balloons arrived first.
There were ten of them, each a different shade of pink, and they made it through the cottage doorway only after a sustained operational effort involving Paloma twisting sideways and swearing at them under her breath in both English and Spanish. They immediately formed a cheerful, bobbing congregation against the low beamed ceiling. Behind them came Paloma herself, red-cheeked from the cold and grinning, cradling a white bakery box in both arms with a bottle of Malbec pinched under each elbow and a third swinging from two fingers.
“Happy birthday to my favorite ecological menace!” she announced, kissing Nellie once on each cheek.
“You brought balloons.” Nellie chuckled.
“I broughttenballoons. One for each year I’ve been better-looking than you.” Paloma deposited the cake box and the wine bottles on the dining table with a decisive thump, turned, andlooked around the cottage in a slightly clinical sweep Nellie immediately recognized as a welfare inspection. The scattered survey maps, the empty mugs abandoned across every surface, the fleece draped over the back of a dining chair that had not made it back to the hook in approximately eleven days. Her gaze finished its circuit on Nellie, and her dark eyes immediately narrowed. “You look tired.”
“I am aging,” Nellie hedged with a wry grin.
“No, I mean it. I haven’t seen you like this since Oregon. Are you gettinganysleep at all?”
Nellie considered this at length. “The sleep thing could be better…”
Paloma pointed at a chair with atsk. “Sit down. I’m opening the first bottle.”
Nellie sat. The balloons drifted like a pink cloud above the dining table, and Nellie watched them while Paloma navigated the small kitchen like she owned the place. Soon enough, she’d identified which drawer held the corkscrew and which held four years of knotted rubber bands and broken cable ties. Two glasses appeared. The cork popped out. Paloma poured with brisk, agenda-driven generosity, set the glass in front of Nellie, and dropped into the opposite chair.
“Okay,” she said. “Talk.”
“About anything in particular?”
“Your face has been saying things since I walked in. It’s givingI have done something and I can’t decide if I’m happy about it.” Paloma picked up her own glass and sat back. “And the last time your face looked like that, you’d chained yourself to a logging road gate and only told me four days later.”
