Page 29 of Faultline

She opens the browser. "I can pull the transfer records and the corporate filings from here. The borough and the state both maintain public databases. If the buyers are LLCs, I can trace the organizing agent, the registered address, and the filing dates from this table."

"Do it. I'll go look at the plat map. The online records won't show me how the parcels sit against each other."

"Get a copy if you can. We'll need it."

Before I leave, I walk her through the cabin's security. The locks. Where the firearms are and how to reach them. The sensor on the access road and what the alert sounds like.

"If that alert goes off and it's not my truck, you call Rhys first and then you pick up the shotgun." I hold her gaze until I'm sure the instruction has landed. "Don't open the door."

"I'm a better shot than you think I am," she says. No bravado. Just information.

I file that and head for the truck.

The borough assessor's satellite office is a single room on the second floor of the community hall. Evelyn Marsh runs it three days a week and has been recording property transfers in this valley since before I graduated high school. She's behind her desk when I walk in, reading glasses low on her nose, paper files stacked beside a mug of tea.

"Liam Stoddard." She says my name the way people in Whitewater Junction say the names of families they've known for three generations. Recognizing the lineage, not just the man.

"Evelyn. I need to look at the survey plat. The Kessel place, the Harmon acreage, and the Duggan lot."

She pulls her glasses down and looks at me over the rims. "All three sold in the last couple of months. You're the fourth person to ask about them."

"Who else is asking?"

"A lawyer from Palmer. An appraiser I've never seen before. And a woman with a Cascade Mineral Partners business card who wanted copies of every transfer document going back to the original territorial claims."

She waves me toward the plat map mounted on the far wall. Large format, county survey, every parcel in the valley drawn to scale with boundary lines and owner names. The names on the Kessel, Harmon, and Duggan parcels have been crossed out in pencil and replaced with the new buyers. Three name changes in two months on a map that usually goes a year between updates.

I copy the boundary coordinates onto a sheet of paper and study how the parcels connect. Standing at the wall, the geography is clearer than any database could make it. The three sold properties share borders. They form a continuous strip running from the access road to the ridgeline.

The only property breaking the strip is mine.

"Evelyn, were the purchase prices public?"

"Filed with the transfers. All above market." She pauses. "Significantly above."

"Can I get a copy of the plat?"

She runs it through the copier behind her desk. The machine is older than the building, and it takes two passes to capture the full map.

I thank her and drive back to the cabin with the copy rolled on the passenger seat and the image of that wall map burning behind my eyes.

Tosh is at the table when I walk in. Her legal pad is filling with notations in the small, focused handwriting she uses when the connections are coming faster than she can write them down.

"I pulled the transfer records and the corporate filings," she says before I sit down. "The Kessel property sold to Ridgeline Holdings LLC. The Harmon acreage to Northern Corridor Ventures. The Duggan lot to Clearwater Basin Partners." Her chin lifts. "All three LLCs registered earlier this year. All three list the same registered agent: a law firm in Anchorage called Whitfield-Crane. And Whitfield-Crane is the same firm that filed the corporate registration for Cascade Resource Group."

The words land with the weight of a timber falling clean. I pull out the chair across from her and sit.

"It's the same money," she says. "Different names, different paperwork, but the registering agent is identical. Whoever is buying your neighbors' land is using the same legal infrastructure that created the subsidiary targeting my clients."

"There's more." I pull the topographic map from the shelf above the woodstove. The one I've been using since the survey markers appeared on my property, my father's annotations in pencil along the ridgelines and the creek drainages. I spread it across the table, weighting the corners with the coffee mug, a flashlight, a box of cartridges, and a folding knife. "The plat map at the assessor's office showed me something the transfer records don't. Those three parcels share borders."

"Show me the parcels," she says.

I mark them. The Kessel property sits on the north ridge, butting up against my eastern boundary. The Harmon acreage runs along the east side of the access road, from the county highway to the first switchback. The Duggan lot fills the gap between the creek drainage and the lower slope of the ridge.

Tosh leans forward and traces the parcels with her finger, drawn into the reading the way she draws into her files. Her finger moves from the Harmon acreage along the access road, north through the Duggan lot, up the creek drainage to the Kessel property on the ridge.

Her shoulder presses against mine. The cabin table isn't built for two people bent over the same topo sheet, and she doesn't pull away to make room. The heat of her bleeds through two layers of flannel, and a strand of her hair catches against my jaw. I lose the thread of the ridge contour line for a full second before I drag my attention back to the paper.