Page 13 of Faultline

"Sit down."

He sits. Paula brings him coffee without being asked, which tells me everything about how often Rhys occupies this chair. He wraps both hands around the mug and waits.

He's got the build of a man who was probably too big for every desk he ever sat at. He looks tired. Not the obvious kind. The kind that lives behind the eyes of a man who went to bed worried and woke up the same.

I lay it out. Della Pruitt. Nina Ballard. Maryanne Sobol. Three women, all Aurora Covenant clients, all unreachable after accepting relocation packages from Cascade Resource Group. Jeanine and the recruiter who knew about her protective order. The woman who declined twice and got a callback with more money. I slide the card from the lodge across the table.

"Denise Stahl," he reads. "Regional Relocation Coordinator."

"Two of my clients gave me that name independently. The card matches, the Anchorage area code matches."

"Cascade Resource Group." Rhys flips the card between his fingers. "Not Cascade Mineral Partners."

"Looks like they were built to keep distance. Same Cascade name, same footprint, separate paperwork. My guess is whoever set this up wanted the land buying and the relocations to never appear in the same filing."

Rhys sets the card down. I can see the calculation working behind his eyes as two halves of something find each other. "I got a call the other night from Liam Stoddard. Third-generation timber operator north of town. He's been finding survey markers on his property, on his neighbor's property, stamped with codes that trace back to Cascade Mineral Partners. They've got a surveillance position on his land with military-grade site selection, and somebody put survey flags on his family cemetery."

"On the graves?"

"Stapled to the crosses."

I let that sit for a second. "These are the same people."

"That's what I'm starting to think." He picks up his coffee and drinks. "Cascade Mineral Partners is buying land. Cascade Resource Group is clearing the people off it first. Liam's getting surveyed because he won't sell. Your clients are getting moved because they don't own what they're living on and nobody's going to file a missing persons report for a woman who left of her own accord."

"They didn't leave, Rhys. They were erased. The company builds a clean record—willing departure, job placement, paid moving costs—and by the time anyone notices the phone's dead, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation in a file somewhere."

He nods slowly. "I've been in law enforcement long enough to know that the cleanest operations are always the hardest to prosecute. If every step looks legal from the outside, you need someone on the inside to crack the surface."

"Or you need enough documented pattern to get a federal warrant."

"That's what you're building."

"Getting there."

Rhys picks up Stahl's card again, then pulls out his phone and scrolls to a photo. He angles it so I can see: a metal survey stake driven into the ground, orange flag, corporate stamp. He sets the phone next to my files. The card on one side. The stake on the other. He looks at both for a long moment, and I watch him arrive at the same place I did an hour ago.

"You need to meet Liam Stoddard," he says. "He's got the land side: trespassing, fraudulent survey markers, surveillance. You've got the human side. Right now he's sitting on a property dispute and you're sitting on willing relocations. Put them on the same table and that's a case a federal prosecutor can work with."

I think about the man at the window. The one who watched me like I was a fire he couldn't decide whether to walk toward. That pull in my stomach comes back, unwelcome and specific, and I shove it sideways before it can settle.

"Liam Stoddard. Tall, built like he was raised carrying timber. Drives a truck that's seen better decades."

Rhys almost smiles. "That's him. You've met?"

"We haven't met. I've seen him." I close my laptop and hope my voice sounds more clinical than my pulse feels. "Set it up. I'll bring the files."

Rhys leaves money on the table and stands. At the door, he turns back. "Tosh. The people behind this, they've already shown they're willing to destroy property and target women who can't fight back. If your investigation puts you in their crosshairs, I need to know about it before you're in danger, not after."

"I've been in crosshairs before, Rhys. I'm still here."

He studies me for a second. Decides whether to push. Decides against it. Nods once and walks out.

I sit at the table with my cold coffee and Stahl's card and the files spread around me. Outside, the fundraiser banner flaps in the wind. The boy with the trout is showing his phone to a new audience on the sidewalk. Paula is wiping down the counter with the efficiency of a woman who considers idle hands a personal failure.

I've made a career out of not getting attached to the places I work. Attachment is a liability in this profession. You build something, someone tears it down, and the grieving slows you for the next fight. Whitewater Junction is making that rule difficult, and I resent it the way I resent anything that has the power to hurt me later.

My phone buzzes. A text from Jeanine.