Page 8 of Faultline

The new stake moves my recorded boundary south. Several feet of Stoddard land vanish on paper if those numbers are accepted.

That's no mapping error. Someone wants the boundary to be somewhere it isn't. What I can't see yet is what they intend to do with the discrepancy.

I pull the stake and add it to everything else I've collected. Missing camera. Observation post. Unauthorized survey on Frank's land. False boundary marker on mine. The pieces are connected. I just don't know the shape yet.

I head south. The trail drops through old birch where the canopy opens and the air cools. Whitewater Creek is audible before it's visible, running low and steady over rocks below the rise. Late-afternoon light slants through the trunks and lays pale bars across the forest floor. September is already working on the leaves, gold creeping into the edges.

The cemetery sits on a rise above the creek. My great-grandfather chose the spot because the drainage keeps the earth firm and the birch stand like white pillars against the snow in winter.

Four graves. Three generations.

Ezra Stoddard filed the original claim on this land and built the first cabin with hand tools and draft horses. His wife Catherine held every acre alone after Ezra died until my grandfather Dale was old enough to take over. Dale planted the first managed timber and taught my father that the land is a conversation that outlasts the men having it.

Then my father. Robert. Who finished that conversation the way he finished everything, with his hands in the dirt.

The crosses are white spruce. My father carved Ezra's and Catherine's, working with a drawknife and chisel slowly enough that every cut was deliberate. I made Dale's cross the spring after my grandfather died. My father stood behind me while I worked and corrected my grip once.

I made my father's alone. Those cuts are rougher. Nobody corrected anything.

I see the orange before I reach the birch line. Four strips of fluorescent survey tape. One fastened to each cross.

I stop. This time it’s not tied, it’s stapled. Industrial-gauge staples punched hard enough to bury the metal in carved spruce. Each strip is fixed to the center of a crossbar, orange plastic hanging against the grain like an equipment tag waiting to be inventoried.

I walk to Ezra's first. His staple sits half an inch from the joint. Catherine's tape hangs crooked where the metal caught the edge of the wood grain instead of the face.

They didn't reposition it. The coordinates matter. The cross doesn't.

Dale's is next. The place where my father's hand guided mine is still visible if you know where to look, one shallow correction in the blade angle. A strip of fluorescent plastic is stapled directly over it.

Then my father's. The one I made alone. Orange tape fixed to the crossbar with the same indifferent precision as every marker on the mountain.

Whoever stood here saw names carved into wood. Dates. Graves. And reduced all of it to coordinates. A polygon on a survey map. The dead are features on a parcel. The crosses are vertical surfaces. The names don't appear on mineral-rights filings, so the names don't matter.

Something inside me gives.

The anger goes past cold. Past the clean, controlled version I carry like a tool I can pick up and put down when the work is finished. This is older. The thing I locked away when I came home because the door only opens one direction and the man who walks through it doesn't stop until something is done.

I can feel him pushing against the hinges. I stand very still among the birch, listening to the creek below me and the cold air moving through the branches, until I'm back in a place where I'm not driving straight to Cascade's regional office and introducing Ziegler to the worst version of myself.

Not yet.

I take out my multi-tool and work the staples loose one at a time. Each comes away carrying a bite of white-spruce fiber. The holes left behind are tiny, clean, permanent. Every cross in this clearing will carry those punctures for as long as it stands.

I close my fist around the tape and staples until the metal bites into my palm, then walk back to the truck.

I head toward town just to drive. I'm not planning to stop. I've got a call to make and the kind of anger that needs walls around it before I put it in front of another human being.

I slow down and stop in front of the Ridgeline Café when I register the dark-haired woman at the counter.

Rebecca MacIntosh. The woman they call Tosh. She’s the advocate who set up Aurora Covenant in the old storefront next to the post office.

I've seen her from a distance twice, both times crossing Main Street like she had somewhere to be and resented anything that slowed her down. Rhys mentioned her during the Marshal aftermath. Said she was the sort of person who'd go through fire for a stranger and probably light the match herself if you got in her way.

She's leaning one hip against the counter, coffee in hand, making a point with enough conviction that the woman behind the register has stopped wiping down to listen. Tosh catches my gaze through the window and holds it for a full beat.

Direct. Unbothered. Measuring. Then she turns back to her conversation without giving me anything else.

I get back in the truck and keep driving, but her face stays with me longer than it should. That level stare. A woman deciding what I am and filing the answer away.