Page 9 of Faultline

I shut it down. I've got bigger problems.

By the time I get back to the cabin, the light is fading. I spread everything across the kitchen table: orange tape, three CMP stakes, the false boundary marker, Clif Bar wrappers from the observation site.

When I call Rhys, he answers on the second ring. "Liam. What've you got?"

"A problem."

"Specific."

I tell him. The missing camera. The boot prints on a game trail that hasn't seen human traffic in years. The hide site overlooking my cabin. The unauthorized survey on Frank Kessel's property. The CMP-WJ-07 markers. The boundary stake that moves my line several feet south.

Rhys doesn't interrupt until I finish. "How far off the monument?"

"Several feet. Surveying firm I've never heard of, and I know every outfit that works this area."

"Don't do anything else with that stake."

"I already pulled it."

A pause. "Of course you did."

"It was on my property."

"I know, Liam."

His exhale carries half the argument he's decided not to have.

"Photograph everything. The stake, the monument, where you found it. I'll run the firm's registration and check whether anyone filed coordinates with the borough."

"What are they trying to do?"

"If somebody's building a boundary challenge, an alternate survey gives their attorneys something to put into a filing. Doesn't make the new line legitimate. It makes you spend time and money proving it isn't."

That fits. Delay. Exhaust. Pressure.

"And while I'm fighting over several feet of boundary?"

"They keep pushing everywhere else."

Then I tell him about the cemetery. For the first time since he answered, Rhys says nothing.

"The crosses," I say. "They stapled survey tape to all four."

I hear him breathe. "They tagged the grave markers?"

"Cataloged them the same way they cataloged the timber. Coordinates matter. The crosses don't."

"You pulled them."

"Every one. The holes are still in the wood."

"I would've done the same." Another breath. "I'm coming up tomorrow. I want to see the observation site and that boundary monument myself."

"Fine."

A beat passes before Rhys says, "There's something else."

I wait.