Page 40 of Faultline

"Interior."

"He knows federal mineral law from the inside. Permitting, acquisitions, extraction rights on public land. If someone wanted to assemble a position that intersects with federal resources without drawing attention until the pieces were already in place, he's exactly who they'd hire."

The woodstove ticks behind me. The cabin absorbs what she's saying into its foundation, heavy as weather the valley can't stop.

"They've been planning this for years," I say. "The offers, the shell companies, the corridor. It's not an acquisition strategy. It's a campaign."

"A campaign aimed at something under these mountains that's worth more than what's on top of them." Her chin lifts. "What's underneath your land, Liam?"

"I don't know yet. But we're going to find out."

She holds my gaze with full attention and the steady calculation of a woman who's already mapped three outcomes and is waiting to see which one I choose.

I cross the kitchen and spread the topographic map on the table beside her laptop. My father's annotations crowd the margins. His timber data shares space with LLC registrations and filing dates.

The Stoddard notebook that started as a record of what this family grew has become a field manual for what this family is defending.

Outside, the overcast sits on the ridgeline like it's been nailed there. The temperature is dropping. The first real cold of the season is building in the north, arriving in a wall that won't leave until spring.

Tomorrow I'll sit across from Agnes Croft and ask her what she remembers about mineral surveys nobody else seems to know existed. Tonight, the woman at my kitchen table is running searches that someone in Anchorage doesn't want run, and the man in the hardware store parking lot is the first one they've sent who knows how to make problems disappear.

12

TOSH

The call comes before dawn. Liam's arm is locked across my ribs when the landline rings, and he's on his feet before the second ring reaches the bedroom.

I hear his voice in the kitchen, low and clipped, the cadence of a man receiving information he expected but hoped wouldn't come this soon. I pull on thermals and follow the sound down the hall. The floorboard creaks under my heel because I haven't perfected his avoidance route yet, and by the time I reach the kitchen he's already dressed, boots on, jacket in hand.

"The Anderson place," he says. "Fire. Carl's crew is on scene."

The Andersons. The family Hank mentioned weeks ago, the ones who reported someone walking their timber line after dark. The ones who held out when the offers came.

"How bad?"

"House is gone. Barn's gone. Timber's standing." He says the last part like it matters more than the structures, and I file that for later because right now I'm reaching for my own boots.

"You're not going without me."

He doesn't argue. That's how far we've come since the first time he left me at this cabin with a shotgun and instructions to call Rhys.

The truck takes the switchbacks fast in the dark. Liam drives with one hand, the other resting on the gearshift between us, close enough that my knee touches his knuckles when the road curves.

He doesn't move his hand. I don't move my knee.

Neither of us speaks. The headlights carve a tunnel through the spruce, and the road drops and climbs in the cadence I've learned over weeks of riding this mountain.

His driving is different now. The turns are tighter, the acceleration between switchbacks harder, and his eyes flick to the mirrors more often than the road ahead warrants.

He's watching for tails. The combat engineer doesn't announce when he surfaces. He just takes over.

"You're checking mirrors more than road," I say.

"Habit."

"That's not a habit. That's a threat assessment at fifty miles an hour."

His mouth pulls at one corner. Not a smile. The ghost of one, offered in the dark without taking his eyes off the road. "You want me to stop?"