Page 6 of Faultline

"Two of my clients relocated in the same two-week window. Both unreachable. Both mentioned corporate relocation assistance."

"That's pretty thin."

"I know."

"Rhys has been watching Cascade for two weeks and hasn't found anything actionable either. But if your ears pick up something ours don't, we want to hear it."

I hang up and sit with the name.

Cascade Mineral Partners.

I type the name into a browser. The website is polished. Professional. The banner image shows a smiling engineer in a spotless hard hat holding a tablet beside drilling equipment that looks like it has never touched dirt. A mission statement about sustainable resource development and community partnership. Language designed by committee, scrubbed of anything specific enough to be held against them.

I click through every page. Services. Projects. Careers. Community engagement. All surface. Not a single mention of Whitewater Junction.

The "About Us" page lists a corporate address in Anchorage and a regional office in Palmer. No individual names beyond the executive team. No mention of relocation assistance or recruitment services.

But the lodge manager said Nina had a business card from a resource outfit. And Della's sister said the company was helping with relocation. Housing. Moving costs. Everything.

Companies that buy land don't typically relocate the people who live on it. They buy the property and let the sellers handle their own moving. Unless the people they're relocating aren't property owners.

I look at that thought and let it settle. Della doesn't own property. Neither does Nina. Both are women who rebuilt from nothing in small communities where their departure would register as voluntary and unremarkable. That could mean nothing.

I close the browser and look out my window at the main street. A silver SUV is parked outside the empty lot next to my office. Two men inside, engine idling, rental plates.

The passenger has his window down and is holding a phone at an angle, pointing it at the storefronts along the street. Not taking a selfie. Photographing buildings.

I watch them for a full thirty seconds. In Whitewater Junction, people drive trucks, park, and get out. Sitting in a vehicle with the engine idling is the kind of thing people notice, and people here notice everything. Men in rental SUVs don't photograph main streets in Whitewater Junction. Not unless they're cataloging something.

The passenger's phone swings toward my window. I don't move. The SUV pulls away a moment later. It turns north at the end of the street and disappears around the bend toward the highway. I didn't get the plate number. I will next time.

I have two missing women, a corporate name, and a feeling I can't yet justify to anyone who deals in evidence.

But I've been doing this work long enough to know that the space between "something feels wrong" and "something is wrong" is usually measured in days, not months. And the women who disappear into that space are the ones nobody looks for until it's too late.

I pick up the phone and call Della's sister back. I ask her one more question.

"The company that offered Della the job. Did she say the name?"

A pause. The sound of someone reaching for a memory that didn't seem important at the time.

"Something with minerals, I think. Or mining. She said they were new in the area."

I write it down. I add it to the file.

Tomorrow I'll call every remaining name on my list and ask whether anyone else has been contacted by a corporate recruiter. I'll pull Della's lease records and find out whether her landlord received an offer on the property. I'll drive to the lodge where Nina worked and talk to the manager in person, because people say things face to face that they forget to mention on the phone.

I close the file. I lean back in my chair and look past the packing-tape logo at a small town trying to heal from the last time someone with money and power came here with a plan nobody saw coming.

I open the file again. I'm not done.

3

LIAM

Afew days after Ziegler's visit, I find the first trail camera missing.

The mount is still bolted to the spruce my father called the Sentinel at chest height, four lag screws sunk into bark that's grown around the edges over the years. The camera itself is gone. Housing, lens, SD card. All of it. That card held a season's worth of footage. Every deer, every moose, every fox and lynx and black bear that crossed the game trail below the north ridge.