Page 78 of Faultline

My phone buzzes. A news alert. I open it.

Cascade Mineral Partners Expresses Deep Concern Over Whitewater Junction Bridge Failure; Offers Immediate Reconstruction Assistance and Community Support

The statement is a page of corporate sympathy written by someone who has never set foot in this valley. Infrastructure concerns. Community resilience. A commitment to responsible development. An offer to fund and oversee reconstruction efforts in partnership with local and state authorities.

I read it twice. The language is clean. The tone is precise.

Every sentence is designed to position Cascade as the solution to a problem they created. The reconstruction offer includes what I told Nancy it would: access provisions that would put Cascade's people on the bridge site before federal investigators arrive.

"Tosh."

Liam's voice comes from the kitchen. Low. The rasp that means the silence has been working on him.

I walk back in. He's standing at the stove with his hands braced on the mantel, head down, the firelight catching the tension in his forearms. He doesn't turn around.

"Read this," I say, and hold up the phone.

He reads the screen over his shoulder. His jaw sets. The muscle in his temple jumps once.

"They're already offering to rebuild the bridge they blew up."

"And the offer includes site access that would let them sanitize the evidence before anyone with a badge gets there." I pull the phone back. "Nancy has the preservation motion in front of a federal judge. If Cascade tries to get reconstruction crews on that site before the forensic team, they'll have to explain it to the court."

His eyes hold mine. The firelight sits in them like something that burns without producing heat. The look is possession and fury and the sharp, unwilling recognition that I'm doing more damage to Cascade right now with a phone and a legal filing than every gate and obstacle on his mountain combined.

"You got a federal filing done from the front seat of my truck."

"I made a phone call. Nancy filed the motion. I'm an advocate, not an attorney." My mouth lifts at one corner. "Although at this point, the distinction is academic."

The corner of his mouth twitches. The closest thing to a response his face has produced since the bridge went down.

"Sally doesn't know about Danny yet," I say. The words are deliberate. I don't soften them. Danny is dead, and the people who loved him deserve the same directness I'd give a client sitting across my desk.

"Once his name is public, Cascade will issue condolences. They'll offer money to the family. They'll try to fold his death into the same recovery narrative they're building around the bridge."

Liam's knuckles whiten against the stove surround. "They don't get to use him."

"No. They don't." I hold his gaze. "Which means we control how his name enters the public record. Not Cascade. Not their PR team. Us."

His body turns toward me. The motion is slow, controlled, the deliberate pivot of someone choosing carefully between the thing he wants to do and the thing he needs to do.

"That's tomorrow's problem." I set the phone on the table beside the case files I left this morning. The laptop is still open to the federal filing I was building when Carl's radio call changed the shape of the day.

"Right now, I need to get the video to the state troopers independently of Aurora Covenant. Redundant channels. If Cascade tries to suppress the filing, the troopers already have the footage."

Liam watches me pull up the trooper barracks' email on my phone. His eyes track my hands like they'd track a perimeter. The possessive focus hasn't dimmed since the bridge. If anything, the crisis has stripped away everything he usually hides it behind.

He crosses the kitchen in two strides. His hand closes on the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair, and he pulls my head back until I'm looking up at him. The grip is hard. Deliberate. The grip of a man who nearly lost the only thing he doesn't know how to rebuild.

"Send the email," he says. His voice is rough against my mouth. "Then stop."

"I don't stop."

"I know you don't." His thumb presses against the hinge of my jaw. "That's the problem."

"Your problem. Not mine."

He holds my gaze for a beat that lasts longer than the tactical situation requires. Then he releases my neck, steps back, and picks up the radio.