Page 23 of Faultline

"Same company?"

"Different subsidiary name, same phone prefix as the last one. They're rotating their brands, but they're not rotating their infrastructure." The laptop closes. She sits back in the chair. "That's sloppy. Which means they're either confident nobody's paying attention, or they're on a timeline that doesn't leave room for thoroughness."

Her mind works a problem the way I'd work a terrain assessment, and the sharpness of it lands in the same place her body did. Low. Hard to ignore.

The mug from the table has migrated to the counter beside the stove, half-finished and cold. A second one sits on the windowsill above the sink, equally abandoned.

"We need to go to town," I say. "I need fence staples and a spool of wire from Hank's. Someone cut my fence line last night. Eastern boundary, near the drainage. Boot prints along the fence, two men, moving with purpose. They opened a gap in the wire at the point where the tree line provides the most cover from the cabin."

She's quiet for a beat. The same analytical stillness I watched her apply to the phone call settles across her face. Her jaw sets in a line that says she's fitting this information into the pattern she's been building since her first client went quiet.

"While we were here," she says. The words are flat, and they aren't a question.

"While we were here."

We drive into town following the switchbacks down the eastern shoulder of the mountain. Tosh rides in the passenger seat of my truck with her files in her lap and her phone in her hand, typing notes with focused speed.

Every switchback pushes her weight toward the center console, and twice her shoulder touches mine before the road straightens. She doesn't brace against it. I don't lean away.

I keep my eyes on the road. Mostly.

Whitewater Junction is already moving when we pull onto the main street. The café windows are fogged. A flatbed is parked outside the post office, tailgate down, a stack of feed bags visible under a tarp. Two kids are walking to school, both of them wearing hoodies too thin for the temperature and neither of them caring.

We park outside Hank's hardware store. The door is propped open with a cinder block, which is Hank's way of communicating that he's present, the store is functional, and the concept of a formal business entrance is a waste of everyone's time.

Hank is behind the counter sorting bolts into bins with a patience that suggests he could do this until the mountain falls down and still find satisfaction in the work. He looks up when I walk in, registers Tosh behind me, and completes a calculation in the time it takes him to set down the bolt in his hand.

"Liam." He nods. "Ma'am."

"Tosh," she says.

"I know who you are." He says it without warmth or hostility, a statement of fact. "You need anything specific, or you just keeping him company?"

"Fence staples and a spool of galvanized wire," I say. "Someone's been cutting my line."

Hank's expression doesn't change, but his hands stop moving. When Hank's hands stop, he's paying a different kind of attention.

"Which section?"

"Eastern boundary. Near the drainage."

"You're not the first this month. Christian Fielding found tire tracks on his access road last week, and the Andersons reported somebody walking their timber line after dark." He reaches under the counter and pulls out a box of staples without needing to check inventory. "Whoever's doing this isn't worried about being noticed. They're worried about being stopped."

The wire and staples go into the truck bed.

Across the street, the Ridgeline's door opens and Paula leans out to flip the sandwich board that advertises the daily special. She sees the truck, sees Tosh climbing back into the passenger side, and goes back inside without a word.

In a town this size, every silence is a sentence. By this afternoon, the Ridgeline regulars will know that Liam Stoddard drove into town with the advocate from Aurora Covenant in his passenger seat before noon. The interpretations will be delivered in the careful half-sentences that constitute Whitewater Junction's primary information distribution system.

Let them talk.

Tosh walks into the Ridgeline while I load the truck. She comes out ten minutes later with two coffees and a look on her face that says she had a conversation worth hearing.

"Agnes Croft was in there," she says, handing me a cup through the open window. "Older woman, white hair, sits in the corner booth like she's holding court."

"I know Agnes."

"She told me the last time someone cut fence wire in this valley, it was back in the seventies and the coal company sent men up from Juneau to survey the pass. She said the town ran them off with a petition and a lawsuit and a rumor about grizzlies that wasn't entirely fabricated." Tosh takes a sip of her coffee. "Then she looked at me and said, 'The wire always gets cut first. It's what comes after that you should worry about.'"