CHAPTER TWENTY
He read it now with coffee.
The counter-filing was prepared. Not a panic response.
Not boilerplate. The work of a legal team that had been given specific information by someone who knew specific things, and had taken the weekend, presumably, to translate those things into the kind of language a county clerk's office would receive as competent objection.
He read it once. Set the coffee down. Read it again.
The third paragraph addressed the convergence-point framing.
Specifically.
It didn't say convergence point. It said the geological feature referenced in the supplemental report. But it framed its objections in language that suggested the writer had known, before Friday afternoon's filing, that Pine Ridge's case was going to rest on a particular geological claim.
The fifth paragraph referenced known security protocols on Pine Ridge land in a way that could not have come from public records.
The seventh mentioned, as an aside, that the alpha of the local pack had been unavailable for community-relations meetings in a particular two-week window during the prior summer.
That window had been a pack-internal grief leave.
It had not been published anywhere.
Jackson set the coffee down a second time.
His body knew before his mind named it.
The feeling started somewhere in his lower spine and moved up. He recognized it. He'd felt it exactly twice. Once in West Virginia, the morning before the slope failure. Once in Vale Creek, the morning he came back to camp.
The feeling was: this is already happening and I have not been seeing it.
He sat in his chair and let it move.
He didn't call anyone yet.
He read the email a third time.
He wanted to be sure.
He was sure.
Dominic walked into the office at 0712. He didn't knock. He had a coffee in each hand, one for himself and one for Jackson, because that was what Dominic did on the mornings when Dominic had something to say.
He set Jackson's coffee on the desk. Looked at Jackson's face. Looked at the open laptop. Walked around the desk and read the email over Jackson's shoulder.
Read it slowly.
Read it twice.
Sat down on the edge of Jackson's desk.
They looked at each other.
Dominic said, "They have a source."
Jackson said, "Yes."
Dominic looked at the floor a long moment. Then back at Jackson.
"Internal."
"Yes."
"Wittingly?"
Jackson considered.
"No."
"You're sure."
"I am sure."
Dominic absorbed it. He drank his coffee. Set the cup down.
"How sure."
"Body sure."
Dominic nodded once. Body sure was a thing Dominic understood.
"Marcus and Mae first."
"Yeah."
"Quiet."
"Yes."
"You drive."
Jackson stood. Picked up his keys. Put on his coat. Looked at the email one more time and closed the laptop and set it in its bag, because he wanted Marcus to read it on the kitchen table at Marcus and Lucy's house, with Mae across from him, and he wanted to watch their faces.
He wanted to know what Mae's face would do.
He had a feeling about Mae's face.
He drove.
Dominic followed in his own truck.
The drive to Marcus and Lucy's took eleven minutes.
Jackson didn't turn on the radio. He drove with both hands on the wheel and the wolf fully present, not panicked, not snarling, simply with him.
He moved to the surface the moment he read the seventh paragraph and had stayed, watchful, the way a wolf watches a tree line at dawn.
Quiet now.
Quiet, the wolf agreed.
They were not fighting.
They were hunting.
Together.
Marcus opened the door before Jackson knocked. Marcus had felt the trucks coming. Marcus said nothing. He stepped back. He let them in.
Mae was already at the kitchen table.
Lucy was pouring coffee.
Nobody had called any of them.
Pine Ridge knew the shape of these mornings.
Jackson set the laptop on the table. Opened it. Turned it so Mae could read first.
Mae read.
Mae's face did exactly what Jackson had thought it might do.
Mae looked up. Looked at Jackson. Said, "Sweet Jesus."
Then said, "I have a notebook."
* * *