Chapter 29
Levi
Matt’s house was a small craftsman on the east side of town.
He had coffee made when we arrived and a stack of printed documents in the center of the table with the careful organization of a man who had been processing information all day and had decided the best way to present it was simply to put it in order, without editorializing.
Aggie had already arrived. She sat at the table with her hands around a mug, and Gerald tucked into her coat on her lap.
She looked up when we came in, gave Becca a long, steady look, then gave me one too, and whatever she found seemed to satisfy her, because she nodded once and looked back at her coffee.
Becca sat across from her. I sat next to Becca. Matt took the end of the table, closest to the documents, and stood for a moment with his hands on the back of his chair.
“I’m going to tell you what I found,” he said. “All of it. And then we’ll talk about what comes next.”
Nobody argued with that. He sat down and started from the beginning.
Pacifica Valley Holdings, Matt explained, was not the top of the structure.
It was a subsidiary—a clean, locally incorporated entity designed to be the visible face of something that didn’t want to be visible.
The entity above it was a Portland-based development group called Carver Group.
Carver Group was not a household name, which was deliberate.
They operated through subsidiaries in multiple markets, acquired land through pressure rather than purchase where possible, and had a documented pattern across three Oregon valleys over the past two years.
The pattern was always the same. They identified river-corridor parcels with development potential—riverfront access, tourism infrastructure, scenic value.
They commissioned studies through friendly planning contacts.
They made quiet approaches to leaseholders and property owners—cash offers with short windows, compliance reviews triggered on technicalities, and gentle suggestions that things were going to get more complicated if the offer wasn’t accepted.
They worked slowly. They worked quietly.
They were just short of outright threats and intimidation.
And in two of the three valleys Matt had identified, they had succeeded.
Sweetbriar was the third.
“It seems like they want Riverside Pines,” Matt said. “Along with a few other properties in town. Along the river, of course.”
Aggie didn’t react. She stroked Gerald with one hand and kept her eyes on Matt.
“Without that access to your property, Aggie,” he continued, “the corridor doesn’t connect.
The parcels on either side of the campground have both had quiet approaches in the last eight months—one sold, one is under pressure.
Riverside Pines is the linchpin. Without the river access your land provides, the whole development corridor falls apart.
” He paused. “Which means you’re not incidental to this. You’re the reason this is happening.”
The table was quiet for a moment.
I watched Becca. She was very still, in the way she got when she was organizing something large and complicated in her mind. Her hands were flat on the table. Her eyes were moving over the documents Matt had slid toward her.
“Mayor Whitaker,” she said. “What about him?”
“His name appears in two planning commission documents in relation to the Carver Group. Not illegally so far. We can’t prove he’s doing anything wrong.
But he was present in meetings that should have been flagged as a potential conflict of interest.” Matt’s jaw was set.
“He knew about all of this. He’s known for a long time. ”
“What about Travis?” Becca asked.
“Peripheral. He works for the mayor, and we can assume he’s involved that way.
He was used as a messenger—the podcast link, showing up at your place.
I don’t think he understands the full scope of what he’s involved in.
” Matt looked at his sister steadily. “He’s not the threat. He’s, at best, a distraction.”
Becca nodded slowly. “Anyone else I should watch out for?”
“I’ve been contacted by a PI from Willowmist Falls.
” Matt was careful here, measured. He showed me a picture, and I recognized him.
He was the one who freaked me out, asking questions a while back at the Stop & Go.
“His name is Emmett Harrington. Former Marine, currently licensed in Oregon. He’s tracking the same pattern up there—he has his own reasons for being in this, and they go deeper than this case.
He told me he’s been in the Stop & Go to check up on you.
You don’t need to worry about him. He’s on our side.
I’m not going to get into the details yet because they’re his to share, but he’s not working against us.
When the time is right, he’ll be a resource.
” He paused. “That’s all I’m going to say about him for now. ”
I filed the name. Former Marine. His own reasons. I didn’t push.
“Okay,” Becca said. “So. What do we do?”
Matt outlined it methodically. The attorney general’s office was already interested—his contact there had been searching for exactly this kind of documented pattern across multiple jurisdictions.
A formal complaint, supported by Aggie’s folder, the planning documents, and the assessor’s records Matt had pulled, would open a formal investigation. That was one track.
The other track was public.
He said it plainly, without ceremony: “Your podcast.”
Becca didn’t flinch.
“A documented, careful episode—no names we can’t support yet, no speculation, just the question asked out loud where people can hear it—would do something a legal filing can’t.
It would make this visible. And visibility changes the calculation for Carver Group.
” He looked at her. “They’ve succeeded twice because nobody was paying attention to what they were doing.
The moment people are paying attention, the plan changes.
People need to know that plans are in the works that will affect this town and potentially, their homes. ”
“So you want me to be the bait,” Becca said. “Just like we were talking about before.”
“I want you to be the light,” Matt said. “There’s a difference. Shine a light on it. You have enough listeners that it will spark a discussion in town. Think about it. News like this is more effective if it starts locally and everyone in Sweetbriar knows you, Bec.”
I kept my hands still on the table. Kept my face neutral.
There was a version of this conversation where I said something—where the part of me that had spent over a decade running toward fires and pulling people out of them said no, not her, find another way—but I knew that saying it would be exactly the wrong thing.
Not because it wasn’t true. Because it wasn’t my place. It was her choice.
Becca had already made her decision. I could see it in the set of her shoulders. I could see it in the way she wasn’t arguing, wasn’t pushing back, wasn’t asking Matt to find another option. She was asking questions because she was thorough, not because she was undecided.
She had decided.
I stayed quiet.
“Timeline,” she said.
“AG is initiating an investigation first. I want that to start before anything goes public.” Matt looked at her.
“And then I record a podcast and tell everyone what’s happening. And what to look out for.”
“Exactly.”
She nodded.
Matt looked at me over her head, briefly. I held his gaze and didn’t say anything. He nodded, barely, and looked back at the documents.
It was Aggie who stopped us before we stood to leave.
She had been quiet for most of the meeting, with Gerald motionless in her lap.
“Can I say something?” she said. She looked at the table for a moment.
“I have lived in Riverside Pines for eleven years,” she said.
“I moved there after my Harold died, because I needed somewhere to be that wasn’t a house full of his absence.
I thought it was temporary.” She paused. “It wasn’t temporary.”
She looked up.
“There is a woman in that campground who has been sober for three years, and she knows she’s safe there because nobody is going to judge her or ask her to explain herself.
There is a man in lot seven who is eighty-one years old, and his children live in three different states, and the campground is the reason he isn’t alone.
There is a girl—” she stopped. “There is a young woman who arrived after a bad breakup with everything she owned in a secondhand trailer and a podcast nobody was listening to yet, and she is more important to me than anyone.”
“Aunt Aggie…” Becca breathed.
“I am not sentimental about property,” Aggie said.
“I am not going to stand up and make speeches about the land or the river. That is not the point.” She set her mug down.
“The point is that there are people in that campground who have nowhere else to go. Not in the dramatic sense—in the simple, true sense. This is where they went when they needed somewhere to be, just like I did. And someone is trying to take it from them quietly, in the hope that they won’t notice or won’t have the means to fight back.
” She paused. “Well, we have noticed. And we have the means. I’m with you, Becca, whatever you decide.
I’m here. That’s all,” she said, and looked back at her coffee.
I sat with that for a moment. The woman is three years sober.
The man in lot seven is eighty-one years old.
I thought about the campground in the early morning—the Christmas lights still blinking on Aggie’s awning, the river murmuring through the trees, Becca’s warm rectangle of light—and felt something wash over me.
Not anger. Not even determination, exactly.
Something more subtle than that. This is worth it.
Whatever came next, whatever was required, this was worth it.