Chapter 27
The cabin sat at the end of a road that had stopped being a road two miles back.
Ryder kept his hand locked around Ivy’s as they navigated the icy path, his other hovering, ready to catch her if she slipped.
Trees pressed in on all sides, dense enough to muffle sound, isolated enough to make his instincts flare.
Her fingers were icy cold.
“Here.” He pulled his gloves from his pockets.
“I’m fine—”
“Put them on.”
She did as she was told and satisfied, he plowed on.
His mom had called Henderson a hermit who didn’t suffer fools. What she’d left out was how far off the grid the man had gone.
The cabin itself looked like it had been assembled from salvage—mismatched logs, a tin roof patched with what might have been road signs, windows that didn’t quite match their frames.
He wanted to turn around. Wanted to take Ivy back to his truck, drive her somewhere warm and safe, kiss her until neither of them could think straight. But she needed answers about the data Jack had given her, and damned if he was letting her face this alone.
He knocked. The sound echoed flat in the cold air, while his breath puffed white.
Nothing.
Ivy glanced at him. “Maybe—”
He knocked again, harder.
Wood creaked, and the door cracked open barely an inch. One bloodshot eye appeared in the gap, studying Ryder with the suspicion that came from years of avoiding people.
“Charles Henderson?”
“Depends on who’s asking.”
“Ryder Meyer. Sophie Meyer’s son.”
“Sophie, huh?” The eye narrowed.
The door opened another inch. Henderson was shorter than Ryder had expected. He wore a flannel shirt that had seen better decades, but his eyes were sharp. He squinted up at Ryder, rubbing one thick finger along the underside of his bulbous nose.
“I’m Ivy Lambourne, Mr. Henderson.” Ivy shifted into view. “We were hoping you could look at some geological data for us. It won’t take long.”
Henderson’s gaze shifted to Ivy, lingering in a way that made Ryder’s jaw harden. But there was no leer in it—just assessment, the same look a scientist might give an interesting rock sample. Still, he didn’t care if the man was harmless. No one looked at her too long without answering to him.
“We need only a few minutes of your time.”
There was strain beneath her polite tone. Ryder understood that. They were asking a stranger to look at information that could blow up a major corporate deal.
“Busy.” Henderson started to close the door.
Ryder wedged his boot in the gap, ignoring Ivy’s hissed intake of breath.
The old man pushed harder, but Ryder didn’t budge. “My mom says what you don’t know about sub-sea geology isn’t worth knowing.”
Henderson stopped pushing. “Sophie said that?”
“She did. And that you hate liars.” Ryder held the man’s gaze. “We think BlackRock might be lying. We need to know if we’re right.”
“That tracks.” Henderson’s breathing wheezed on the other side of the door. “You’ve got your mother’s eyes.”
“So I’m told.”
The door creaked open. Henderson shuffled back into the dimness. “Five minutes. Don’t touch anything.”
Ryder glanced sideways at Ivy. Real welcoming.
Inside, the air was thick with the smell of scorched coffee, damp wool, and something vaguely medicinal. Papers covered every surface—geological surveys, hand-drawn maps, journals with cracked spines and coffee-stained pages.
Ryder scanned the room, cataloging exits, potential threats, anything that felt off. One window facing the tree-line, partially obscured by stacks of core samples. A back door barely visible behind a mountain of equipment cases.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Just another old codger.
A shaggy brown dog limped out from behind a sagging armchair—ancient, with cloudy eyes and gray around the muzzle. It ignored Ryder completely and made straight for Ivy, pressing its grizzled head against her leg.
“Nelly, get back here.” Henderson’s voice carried more affection than he’d shown them. “Don’t bother the guests. They ain’t staying.”
“She’s not bothering me.” Ivy crouched immediately, rubbing the dog’s ears. The tense line of her shoulders dropped as she focused on something that wasn’t Charles Henderson.
Ryder waited at her side. She wasn’t doing this alone.
Henderson shuffled to a counter that might have been a kitchen once, lifting two chipped mugs. “Coffee.”
Ryder lifted a hand. “We’re fine, thanks—”
“Didn’t ask.” Henderson poured two cups of something that looked like it had been sitting on the burner since the previous century. He thrust one at Ryder, then one at Ivy, who’d straightened but kept one hand on Nelly’s head.
Henderson jerked his chin toward a pair of stools buried under stacks of geology journals. “Move that. Sit.”
Ryder cleared the nearest stool for Ivy and then did the same for himself. The coffee smelled like motor oil mixed with burned rubber. He swallowed. Hell. It burned like jet fuel all the way down and made his vision blur.
Across from him, Ivy’s eyes watered, but she managed a polite smile and set her mug carefully on the edge of a table already groaning under the weight of rock samples.
Henderson lowered himself into a battered rocking chair that faced them, mug in hand. He studied Ryder. “How’s your mother?”
“She’s good. Running the—”
“Your father still alive?”
The abrupt shift made Ryder pause. “Uh. Yes.”
“Shame.” Henderson sipped his toxic brew without flinching. “Sophie’s a fine-looking woman.”
Of all the ways Ryder had imagined this conversation going, having a seventy-year-old hermit hit on his mother hadn’t made the list. “Well. Um. I’ll pass that along.”
Ivy hid a smile behind her hand before Henderson turned his attention to her. “So, what do you want?”
She pulled the memory stick from her bag. “I was given geological data on the area surrounding the Deepwater Vega. Seabed surveys, core samples, fault line analysis. It’s complex. I need to know what it all means.”
“You're the English woman everyone’s talking about in town.” Henderson slurped noisily.
Her spine straightened. “Probably. My brother George and I are considering investing. But I need to know if what we’re being given is real. People back home are counting on us, and so are the people here.”
Henderson wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “They still drive on the left over there?”
Ryder frowned. “What?”
“Yes,” Ivy said, her tone warming. “We do.”
Henderson nodded, his gaze drifting to the middle distance.
“Love Scotland. I worked the North Sea for years. Spent a lot of my on-shore time in the Cairngorms. Most beautiful granite I ever laid eyes on. Nearly stayed.” His gaze remained unfocused a beat longer before snapping back to Ivy.
He held out his hand. “Well? Let’s see it. ”
Ivy handed over the memory stick, and he shuffled to a battered laptop on the far side of the room, which looked like it belonged in a museum. He swept printouts and hand-drawn diagrams aside and plugged in the stick, whistling through a gap in his teeth while the ancient machine whirred to life.
“Who gave you this?” His tone shifted, all business now.
“I’d rather not say.” Ivy rubbed Nelly’s head.
Henderson grunted as he lowered himself into an office chair held together with string. “Smart. I like that in a woman.” He clicked through files, his fingers surprisingly nimble on the worn keyboard. “BlackRock, huh?”
“Yes.”
The whistling stopped. Henderson leaned closer to the screen, his bulk blocking Ryder’s view. The only sounds were his breathing and the occasional click of the mouse.
Ivy clasped her hands in her lap, knuckles white. Ryder wanted to reach over, cover them with his.
“Son of a bitch,” Henderson muttered.
A frightened look flared across Ivy’s face. “What is it?”
Ryder got up and crossed the room.
Henderson was scrolling through a dense file, a complex mix of soil strata images and mathematical formulas. When he finally turned around, his expression was grim.
“Where did you say you got this?”
“I didn’t.” Ivy joined them.
“This isn’t good.” Henderson tapped the screen. “These core samples show heavy methane hydrate deposits in the extraction zone. And the extraction zone surrounding the Vega is Swiss cheese. Landslide risk.”
“No.” Ivy locked her arms across her stomach.
“The seabed’s unstable. Methane hydrates are temperature and pressure sensitive. Start drilling, change the thermal dynamics, and you risk triggering a massive gas release. Best case? You lose a rig. Worst? You ignite half the damn coastline.”
“Are you certain?” Ivy whispered.
Henderson fixed her with a look. “Spent twenty years mapping sub-sea geology for Shell, BP, and half a dozen other companies that thought they could outsmart physics. I’ve seen what happens when corporations ignore data like this.” He gestured at the screen. “Mother Nature always wins.”
“But BlackRock’s public surveys show stable conditions,” Ivy said. “They wouldn’t have permits otherwise.”
Henderson snorted. “Public surveys and actual geology are two different things. Companies pay for the results they want.” He toggled between two images. The differences were stark, even to Ryder’s untrained eye. “See this? What they filed publicly versus what’s on your stick.”
“They left out entire sections,” Ivy breathed. “The areas with the highest methane concentrations.”
“Bingo. Classic corporate maneuvering. Submit enough data to pass regulatory review, omitting anything that might raise red flags.”
“Wait.” Ryder leaned forward. “Ivy. Once you sign, when would you and George take over the lease?”
Ivy pulled out her phone, scrolling. “End of this quarter.”
“And when’s the first proposed extraction scheduled?”
“Beginning of next month.”
Ryder’s jaw clenched. “They drill fast, extract everything they can before the end of the quarter—maximize their profits before the final handover. Then when this goes south—and Henderson’s saying it will—BlackRock is long gone and you’re stuck with a billion-dollar disaster.”
Henderson nodded grimly. “That’s exactly what they’re doing. Pumping it dry before anyone realizes the risk. If it blows? The lease belongs to the new owners. BlackRock is long gone, avoiding a clean-up bill in the billions.” His eyes narrowed. “Does anyone else know you have this?”
Ivy hesitated. “The person who gave it to me.”
“They still work for BlackRock?”
“Yes.”
Henderson’s expression darkened. “Then they’re in danger. The second BlackRock figures out this data leaked, they’ll be digging for the source. Your source needs to lie low for a bit or lawyer up. Preferably both.”
Ryder’s jaw tightened. Jack. He needed to speak with her.
Ivy sat back down on her stool, fingers pushing through her hair. “I can’t believe this. I thought they were hiding something. But this?”
Henderson’s tone was certain. “Someone paid good money to make sure this data never saw daylight. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
“Stop them, of course. Make this public.” Ivy lifted her chin. “We can’t let them get away with this.”
Ryder understood. She had so many people counting on her. If this blew, it wouldn’t just bankrupt them—it would destroy people’s lives.
“Not yet, Ivy.” His voice was firm but gentle.
She turned on him, eyes blazing. “What more do you need? It’s all right there!”
“On a memory stick from a mystery source? BlackRock will bury this as fake before you even finish your first sentence. We need something they can’t explain away—core samples, records from the original survey, hell, even your original source backing it up.
Otherwise, it’s just your word against theirs. ”
Ivy looked ready to explode, and damn if he didn’t admire it—her fire, her need to protect people even when it cost her everything.
She had courage in spades. What she didn’t have was backup.
Until him.