"No."
"Good."He opened the door wider."Come in."
"They came for my advertisers first."
Marsh sat in an armchair that had molded to his shape over the years of use.Harper had taken the couch across from him, a mug of weak coffee cooling in her hands.
"Hardware store, grocery, car dealership—everyone I'd worked with for twenty years."He stared past her, out the window."Gone in ten days.They called to cancel their contracts and wouldn't say why.Wouldn't look me in the eye when I saw them on the street."
"What triggered it?"
"A story.A series, actually—three parts.I'd been digging into property sales in the county.Patterns that didn't make sense."His jaw tightened."Families selling land they'd owned for generations, always to the same handful of buyers.Prices below market.Transactions that happened fast, sometimes overnight."
"Shell companies."
"At least a dozen of them, all connected if you knew where to look.They were buying up Blossom Springs piece by piece, and no one was asking questions."He set down his mug with more force than necessary."So I asked them.In print.With names and dates and public records, anyone could verify."
"And the advertisers pulled out."
"That was just the start."Marsh's voice flattened."Distribution dried up next.The company that delivered my papers suddenly couldn't make the route.Then my printer had 'equipment problems.'Then someone bought the building I'd been renting for fifteen years and tripled my rent."
"Who?"
"A company called Coastal Venture Partners."
Harper kept her face still.The name was all over Geri's album.All over her own research.But Marsh didn't need to know that yet.
"I've heard of them," she said.
Marsh looked at her sharply."Then you know more than you're letting on."
"I know enough to believe you.I'm trying to understand the rest."
He was quiet.The wind chime outside stirred, a faint hollow sound.
"I tried to fight," he said finally."Went digital.Published online.Thought maybe I could survive without the print edition, without the advertisers, without the building."He shook his head."But they came for that too."
"How?"
"Legal threats.Copyright claims on photographs I'd taken myself.Cease and desist letters for stories that were completely factual.My website got hacked three times in one month."He rubbed his eyes."Then my lawyer called.Said he couldn't represent me anymore.Conflict of interest.Wouldn't explain what that meant."
"So you stopped."
"I didn't stop.I was stopped."The distinction mattered to him.Harper heard it in his voice."I couldn't publish.Couldn't distribute.Couldn't afford to defend myself against an endless stream of lawsuits.They didn't beat me.They buried me."
Harper glanced at the wall behind him.Framed awards—Florida Press Association, Community Journalism Excellence, and a certificate from the Society of Professional Journalists.The glass was dusty, but the awards themselves gleamed.He still cleaned them.
"The day my lawyer dropped me," Marsh said, his voice going rough, "I drove to my office.Former office, by then—I'd already moved everything out, couldn't afford the rent.But I still had the key.Landlord hadn't changed the locks yet."
He stopped.His hand trembled slightly where it rested on the armchair.
"I sat at my desk for three hours.Empty room.No computer, no files, nothing.Just me and the desk I'd written ten thousand stories on."His voice cracked.He cleared his throat, hard, and pressed on."I kept thinking someone would call.One of my sources, one of my old contacts, someone who'd readThe Heraldfor thirty years and wanted to know what happened.The phone never rang."
Harper said nothing.She'd learned when to push and when to let silence do the work.
"My wife left me six months later."He said it flatly, like a fact about someone else."Thirty-one years of marriage.She said she didn't recognize me anymore.Said I'd become obsessed with something I couldn't change, and she couldn't watch me destroy myself over it."
"I'm sorry."
