Page 61 of Faultline

The tension in his shoulders isn't the focused calm of someone who just won a battle. It's the rigid preparation of someone bracing for the next one.

"Then we'd better be ready," I say.

"We are."

His hand finds the small of my back. Palm flat, fingers spread, the same grip he used at the Anderson fire scene. Possessive. Public. A declaration in a language everyone out here can read.

Agnes is still on the bench, watching the mountain with the steady patience of a woman who has seen companies come and go and considers the mountain the only constant worth trusting.

Inside, Carl's daughter's banner from the last fundraiser is still taped to the wall above the stage, the Es in DEPARTMENT backwards, the paint dripping still shows at the edges.

His shoulder is solid against mine as I watch the dark shapes of the spruce against a darker sky. Somewhere behind them, the ground holds a mineral deposit worth enough to attract the kind of people who don't lose gracefully.

Whitewater Junction just chose to stop fighting alone. Now we find out what Cascade does about it.

Liam's hand presses harder against my back. He's already thinking about that too.

17

LIAM

It's been two days since the town meeting, and Cascade hasn't answered. That's the part that keeps me checking the property before dawn, boots on and moving through the dark with a headlamp I rarely turn on because the terrain is in my feet by now.

Fence line, gate, service road, north ridge trail. The same circuit every morning since the hide site, looking for the response I know is coming because companies that drive survey flags into family graves don't absorb a public challenge and go quiet.

This morning, the service road gives me the answer.

Tire tracks. Two sets, pressed into soft shoulders where last night's rain turned the gravel to mud. Running parallel, entering from the junction with the main logging road and continuing uphill toward the ridge.

The tread pattern is narrow, uniform, consistent with mid-size SUVs carrying weight in the cargo area. They came in together. Drove slow enough that the impressions are clean and deep. Turned around at the switchback where the road narrows to single-lane, then back down the same way they came.

Nobody uses this road. I locked the service gate after the equipment sabotage, upgraded the padlock, and check it every morning.

The logging road that feeds into it serves a handful of properties, most of which belong to shell companies that haven't put a single person on the ground since the ink dried on the purchase agreements.

The padlock is on the ground. Cut clean through with bolt cutters, the hardened shackle severed at a forty-five-degree angle and dropped in the gravel beside the gatepost. The gate itself is closed, latched, positioned to look undisturbed from a distance.

Fieldcraft. The same professional staging I found on this gate last time when someone drove through and left the lock looking latched. They've graduated from pretending they weren't here to not caring whether I know.

The cameras should have been in place by now. The plan was in my notebook since the equipment was sabotaged: battery backup, cellular upload, coverage on the service road and the north ridge trail.

I kept putting it off. Kept going back to the timber instead of the security because the timber is what I do and the security is what I did. That distinction cost me footage of whoever was there.

Crouching beside the tracks, I study the turnaround. They didn't get out. No boot prints in the mud, no disturbance in the gravel where feet would have landed. They drove to the point where the road gives them a clear sight line to my cabin, turned around, and left. If reconnaissance was the purpose, they didn't need anything more.

Reconnaissance. Fresh. Professional. Targeted movement that precedes something worse.

My phone captures the tracks, then the severed padlock. I document the wheelbase, the tread depth, the turning radius where they reversed direction.

The tread profile is consistent with the SUVs I found evidence of last time. The kind Cascade's been running through the area since Ziegler first showed up with his checkbook and his clean shoes.

One vehicle on a logging road is curiosity. Two vehicles moving in formation through a cut gate on a road they've got no reason to know exists is operational.

The rest of the perimeter is clean. Fence line intact. Main gate untouched. Creek crossing showing no disturbance, and the north ridge trail undisturbed from the boundary to the point where it drops into the drainage and connects to what used to be Frank Kessel's land.

What used to be Frank Kessel's land. Three words that sit heavier every time I think them.

Frank sold because Linda needed surgery. The money Cascade offered through one of its shell companies covered the medical bills and three years of follow-up care. I don't fault him for that. I'd have done the same.