Chapter 2: The Parcel Nobody Mentioned
Daniel met me at the edge of the trust parcel the next morning, where a narrow gravel road gave way to weeds and a sagging wire fence.
“Your mother’s map shows the creek on this side,” he said, checking the paper against the land. “But it doesn’t tell us where the boundary markers are.”
The sky was low and gray. Damp grass brushed my jeans as I followed him along the fence, keeping one eye on the map and the other on the ground.
I had expected the parcel to look abandoned. It did, at first: tangled brush, a rusted gate, trees bending toward the creek. Then Daniel pointed to a bright orange stake planted beside the fence.
It looked too new to belong there.
He crouched and turned it gently. A small white tag had been wired to the top, its printed numbers still sharp against the plastic.
“Survey marker,” he said.
“Is it on the company route?”
“Not according to the line we saw on your map.”
We walked farther. Another orange stake stood beyond the first, and then another, each one angling away from the visible construction corridor. They were set in a clean, deliberate row through the brush.
My stomach tightened.
“They’re marking more land than I thought they needed.”
“Or checking it,” Daniel said. “We don’t know why yet.”
I looked at him.
“You always say that.”
“Because I don’t want you mistaking a guess for a fact.”
A car door slammed somewhere nearby. A woman in a quilted jacket stood beside a pale-blue house across the road, watching us over the roof of her car. Daniel raised a hand in greeting. After a moment, she came toward us.
“You two with Copperline?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m Rebecca Collins. My family owns the trust parcel.”
Her gaze shifted to the orange stakes.
“I wondered when somebody would come looking.”
“Have you seen crews out here?” Daniel asked.
The woman’s mouth tightened. “I’ve seen trucks.”
“What kind?”
“Covered ones. They came through late. Not every night. A few nights in a row, maybe two weeks back.”
“Do you know what they were carrying?” I asked.
She glanced toward the road, then back at us.
“No. And I don’t want to know.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” Her voice wasn’t cruel, just tired. “My husband works for a contractor. We don’t have money to pick a fight with a company like that. If they hear I talked—”
“We won’t use your name,” Daniel said.
She studied him as if weighing whether that promise was worth anything. Then she looked at me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t tell you more.”
She turned toward her house.
I wanted to call after her, tell her I wasn’t trying to drag her into anything. But the fear in her face made my words feel selfish. She had already given us more than she meant to.
Daniel waited until the woman was inside before speaking.
“That’s a lead,” he said. “Not proof.”
“I know.”
The words came out sharper than I intended. I kept walking, following the line of orange markers as it dipped through the brush. My mother’s map had shown the parcel as a slim strip of land beside the creek. Here, the stakes seemed to press farther into it, toward a low, muddy stretch where the trees thinned.
Daniel stopped at the edge of a shallow clearing.
“Rebecca.”
A dark patch cut through the earth near the creek bank. The soil looked scraped and disturbed, its surface marked by tire tracks. A few weeds lay flattened beneath a crust of gray-brown dirt.
I took out my phone.
“Don’t touch it,” Daniel said.
“I’m not.”
I photographed the ground from several angles: the ruts, the bare patch, the nearest orange stake. The camera clicked softly. Each picture made the place feel more real and less like a troubling line on my mother’s old map.
A low engine rumble rose behind us.
Daniel turned first.
A white work truck had appeared on the gravel road. Its windshield flashed with the washed-out sky as it rolled toward us. It slowed, then kept coming.
“Let’s go,” Daniel said.
We moved quickly through the brush. The truck turned off the road and stopped where the weeds began. The driver didn’t get out. He sat behind the wheel, watching us.
I had my phone clenched in my hand. My pulse thudded in my throat.
Daniel opened the passenger door of his car.
“Now, Rebecca.”
I climbed in. As he pulled away, I glanced back through the rear window. The white truck remained beside the clearing, its engine running.
At home that evening, I spread my mother’s map across the kitchen table. I placed my phone beside it and enlarged the photos. The dark soil looked even darker on the screen. I couldn’t tell what it was, and neither could Daniel. Still, someone had marked the land and disturbed the ground beside the creek.
The house creaked around me. I jumped at the sound of David’s name lighting up my phone.
I let it ring twice before answering.
“Rebecca.”
“David.”
A pause. I heard traffic behind him, then the muted click of a turn signal.
“You need to stop going out there.”
I sat very still.
“Out where?”
“Don’t do that.”
The calm in his voice felt worse than shouting. I looked down at the map, at the parcel number I had given Daniel, at the photographs I hadn’t shared with anyone else.
“How do you know where I went?”
Another pause.
“You don’t understand what you’re getting into.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Just stay away from the parcel.”
Fear moved through me, cold and quick. Then it hardened into something I could hold.
“You don’t get to tell me where I can go.”
“I’m trying to keep you safe.”
“No. You’re trying to keep me quiet.”
He exhaled sharply.
“Rebecca, listen to me. Stop digging.”
His words hung between us. I gripped the phone until my fingers hurt.
“Who told you I was there?”
Silence.
“David?”
“I have to go.”
The call ended.
May you like
I stared at the dark screen, then at the map. He had known which parcel I visited. He had warned me away from it before I’d told him a single thing about the markers, the neighbor, or the creek.
The investigation was no longer private.
