Page 10 of The Fire Line

The concentration in Jay’s face eased instead of tightening. “I’m sorry.”

Harris nodded.

“We can move on.”

Jay reached for his water and gave Harris a moment without making a display of giving it. People usually got greedy around grief. They lowered their voices, moved closer, and mistook witnessing pain for earning access to it.

Jay did none of that.

“What else?” Harris asked.

They kept going through staffing, insurance, fire mitigation, grazing, and land value. At forty-one minutes, Eli lowered the camera, and Harris stood immediately.

Jay glanced toward his chest. “The mic.”

Harris removed it himself and placed it in Jay’s palm.

At the door, Jay said, “One thing.” Harris paused. “If anything about your sister ends up in the film, I’ll show you the relevant sequence before it’s locked.”

Thanking him would have been too large for what Harris could manage with Eli and a camera still in the room. He gave Jay a curt nod and headed for the north fence.

He spent the next two hours replacing a damaged section of wire. The work required measurements, tension, and enough force to leave little room for anything else. Grief was easier when it could be turned into labor. So was nearly everything.

Still, the interview returned in pieces: Jay’s fingers beneath his collar, the way his face had eased when Harris said Nell’s name, the fact that he had known when to stop.

Harris drove the first staple crooked.

“Shit.”

He pulled it free and began again.

* * *

By the time Jay got upstairs that evening, Harris’s interview had transferred to the drive. Eli sat at the conference-room table checking the footage while Priya worked across from him.

Onscreen, Harris looked even less cooperative than he had in person, one forearm braced across his thigh and his attention fixed on Jay somewhere beyond the frame.

“Forty-one minutes,” Eli said. “I had twenty-five.”

Jay set his notebook on the table. “You were betting on how long he’d tolerate me?”

“Priya had thirty-five.”

“I had thirty,” Priya corrected without looking up.

“Excellent team culture we’ve built here,” Jay muttered.

Eli dragged the playhead forward. Watching it back, Jay could see the pattern of the interview more clearly. Harris answered quickly when the subject was practical—water, grazing, fence lines—but anything personal came slowly, usually after a silence long enough that most interviewers would have rushed to fill it.

It was good footage. Better than Jay had expected from a man who had entered the room looking prepared to survive an interrogation.

Eli reached the question about Eleanor. Harris changed before he spoke. His shoulders went still and his gaze shifted away for the first time in several minutes.

Jay leaned across the table. “Mark this section. Nothing involving Eleanor gets used until Harris sees it.”

Eli nodded and added the note without asking why. Jay watched another few seconds, then moved the playhead forward himself. There were interviews where silence meant someone was deciding whether to trust you, and others where it meant you had reached the edge of what they were willing to give. Knowing the difference was part of the job.

* * *