Chapter 14 #2
· RidgeLine Logistics – 5 months. Lists three pickups on insurance; one is a ?-ton diesel, color “black/charcoal,” no listed decals.
My stomach did a slow, unpleasant turn. I showed the screen to Mason and Levi. Their faces settled into the same hard calculation mine was wearing.
“Peterson?” Mason asked.
“Could be a coincidence,” I said.
“We don’t get many of those,” Levi muttered. “Pioneer sharing a phone exchange with the mayor’s legal folks is the kind of coincidence that gets people elected and unelected.”
I scrubbed through the footage again. The white square caught the light just enough for a hint of an angle inside it—two lines, not letters, more like a geometric logo. Could be a quarry mark. Could be a stylized “PF” if you squint.
“Carl,” I called. “You gotten any new vendors making deliveries for the mayor’s projects? Gravel, culverts, anything?”
Carl leaned on the doorframe, thinking. “New outfit called North Fork brought aggregate to the south pad two weeks back. Big ol’ black truck leading the convoy, loud enough to scare the pigeons dead.”
Levi whistled low. “And the plot thickens.”
“Who signed the delivery?” I asked.
“Site foreman from Peterson’s crew. Tall fella, buzz cut, called himself Trent. Didn’t look like a Trent. More like a man who misspells his own name on purpose.”
Mason grinned despite himself. “That’s a type.”
“Arnie been around?” I asked.
“Seen him jawin’ with folks at the diner,” Carl said. “Looked beat-up. Not in the fight way—in the ‘too many bad ideas’ way.”
Levi scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “We still holding the line that Arnie’s a pawn, not a king?”
“Until he proves otherwise,” I said. “Either way, he’s a handle we can pull.”
The back door banged; Justin Keller stepped in, smelling like leather and coffee. “You clowns playing detective without me?”
“Got any saddle clients been buying more zip ties than usual?” Mason asked.
“Funny,” Justin said, then nodded at me. “Heard from Red Hollow this morning. Buddy of mine over there said folks lost a compressor and two generators off a site last week. Security light cut, cameras sprayed. They’re swapping stories with Elm Creek—sounds like the crew knows what they’re doing.”
“Any talk of a mayor in the mix?” Levi asked.
Justin lifted a brow. “Our mayor, or theirs?”
“Either.”
“People whisper. That’s what they do when they don’t have proof yet.” He shrugged. “But they’re whispering near Peterson’s name more than usual.”
I pulled up a county map on the office computer, dragged a triangle between the fairgrounds exit, the Ridge Road complaint, and the south pad where Peterson’s crew is building God-knows-what this week.
The lines made a corridor. Trucks could run that in the dark and never meet a patrol if they timed it between shift rotations.
“Pattern,” I said, half to myself. “Ingress here, egress along County 9, staging near the south pad, then south to Red Hollow or west to Elm Creek. If they’re moving stolen equipment, they’re not storing it in barns. They’re short-hauling it between sites.”
Mason watched me draw the path again. “You’re thinking bigger than one truck.”
“I’m thinking logistics,” I said. “A shell company to bid dirt work. Another to provide ‘security.’ A third to shuttle equipment no one questions because it’s wearing a safety vest and a clipboard.”
“Pioneer Facilities. North Fork Aggregate. RidgeLine Logistics,” Levi recited. “Rock, paper, scissors.”
“And whose hand is inside the glove?” Mason asked quietly.
The room went still for a breath we didn’t want to take.
“Don’t jump to the mayor yet,” I said. “But don’t discount him either.” I looked to Levi. “We keep this tight. Dunn knows we’re nosing around. Hayes in Elm Creek is feeding him; he’ll feed us. No social posts. No coffee-shop theories. If this is real, it gets teeth fast.”
Levi nodded. “You want me to put a unit near the south pad tonight?”
“Quietly,” I said. “Unmarked, dark perch, no lights. Just ears.”
He tapped his toothpick against his teeth, thinking. “I’ll take the ridge turnout with binoculars and a sandwich.”
Mason tilted his cup toward me. “And you?”
“Two things,” I said. “I’m going to swing past the south pad this afternoon, daylight look, normal speed. If they’re using removable decals, maybe I spot the residue on a tailgate. And I’m calling Jake again to run ‘Trent’ through contractor databases—see if he’s legit or a borrowed name.”
Mason studied me. “You gonna tell Milly yet?”
The question landed like a weight on the desk.
“I promised I would before I did anything reckless,” I said.
“And this is?” Levi asked.
“Not reckless.” I shook my head. “Careful. Directed. But it’s a slope.”
Mason clapped my shoulder once. “Then we stick together on it. Three’s harder to tip than one.”
Carl reached into the jar of bolts and rattled them like dice. “You boys be careful. Small towns keep secrets like squirrels keep walnuts. Sometimes you don’t want what cracks open.”
“We’re past wanting,” I said. “We’re in the business of needing.”
On the way out, I pocketed a roll of electrical tape, paid for it at the counter, and ignored Carl’s knowing look. Outside, the heat hit like a wave. I stood in it a second, eyes closed, hearing the sound from last night the way musicians hear a note after it’s gone.
Low. Heavy. Wrong.
I opened my eyes to the honest blue of the Everwood sky and the ordinary clatter of a feed-store Wednesday.
Then I got in the truck and pointed the nose toward the south pad, where the dirt piles looked like nothing and might be something, and where men who didn’t want to be seen sometimes forget they still cast shadows.
Sheriff Dunn’s office smelled like the same burned coffee from that morning, plus dust and tired authority. He’d traded his uniform shirt for a flannel, badge clipped to the pocket. A stack of paperwork leaned like it had been waiting for him to blink first.
“You find anything new?” he asked.
“Enough to bother me,” I said. “Feed-store footage caught a black pickup, cracked taillight, no plate. Same make that’s been floating through Elm Creek and Red Hollow. Magnetic decal—temporary, probably company truck.”
He nodded, lips pressing thin. “And you’re thinking our construction boom’s got a ghost company in the mix.”
“I’m thinking ghosts leave tire tracks.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You ever notice how quiet Peterson’s gotten lately? Usually, he’s in here twice a week, wanting updates, wanting reassurance the town’s safe. Now I can’t get him to answer a text.”
“Maybe he finally learned delegation.”
“Or maybe he’s neck-deep in permits he doesn’t want me to see.”
The sheriff pushed a file toward me. Inside: photocopies of bids for the south-pad expansion—two stamped with Pioneer Facilities Group at the bottom.
“Public record?” I asked.
“Supposed to be.” He gave a small, humorless laugh. “But when I asked for copies at City Hall, the clerk said they’d been ‘misplaced during digital migration.’ ”
“Convenient.”
“Exactly.”
He leaned back, the chair groaning under him.
“I’ll tell you straight, Austin. Peterson’s no fool, but he’s the kind of man who thinks he can build a legacy out of other people’s sweat.
If someone offered him an easy path to money—aggregate contracts, off-book hauling—he might not ask too many questions. ”
“And if someone’s using his projects to cover theft?”
“Then we’ve got ourselves a hydra. Cut one head, two pop up.”
I scanned the file again, tracing the signature line. “You want me to keep digging?”
“I’m not telling you to,” he said slowly. “But I’m not telling you not to, either. Just—keep it quiet. If Peterson’s innocent, we don’t torch him on rumor. If he’s not, he’s got friends who don’t like daylight.”
It wasn’t a warning so much as a reality check. Every town had its lines of loyalty, and in Everwood, those lines twisted like creekbeds.
I stood, the chair legs scraping the floor. “If I find proof, I’ll bring it here first.”
Dunn gave me that tired, knowing smile cops get after twenty years of half-victories. “Just don’t bring it in a body bag.”
Outside, the afternoon light had gone syrup-thick, the heat shimmering off Main Street. I crossed to my truck, pulse steady but too fast. Training whispered through the noise—verify source, confirm threat, control perimeter.
I’d already broken the third rule by letting Milly anywhere near this story.
As I started the engine, my phone buzzed again. Jake Rainer: Got a name on your “Trent.” Full record coming. Spoiler: not real.
The text sat on the screen like a loaded chamber.
I stared at it for a beat, thumb hovering over reply, then typed: Send everything. Secure channel.
Traffic rolled past—a small-town normal that pretends nothing bad ever happens. But normal was an illusion, and I’d lived long enough to know illusions make the best cover.
If Dunn was right, Peterson might be a fool dancing near a cliff—or the man shoving others off it. Either way, the ground under Everwood just shifted.
And if I was going to keep Milly safe, I needed to know which it was before the dark came back around.
The sun was slipping down when I turned off the county road toward home. The light had that honeyed weight it gets in late summer, heavy and forgiving. My hands still smelled like machine oil and paper, the residue of a day spent chasing ghosts through files and gossip.