Cross turned back to me, his tone shifting into something urgent. "Mrs. Vance, we have an active federal subpoena for the county's digital transfer logs, but the regional transit board will not wait on our subpoenas. If Sterling presents that computerized transfer deed at eight-fifteen, the board will vote, the contracts will execute, and the heavy equipment already staged on the highway will cut through your timber before noon. To stop that vote, we need the original, physical deed book from the clerk’s vault."
I looked across my front yard at the torn liriope, the deep muddy tracks Briggs's cruiser had cut into the sod, and the spray nozzle still lying in the hydrangeas. My shoulder burned with every breath, and my hands were smeared with dirt and dried blood from my temple.
For three years, I had believed that walking away quietly from the courthouse would keep me safe from the corruption festering behind its marble columns. I had convinced myself that keeping my head down, planting my garden, and minding my own boundary fence was enough to preserve my dignity.
It was not enough. They had taken my father’s land, they had taken my thirty years of honorable public service, and they had turned my own name into a weapon against my life.
"Tyler," I said, stepping past Agent Cross until I stood two feet from the deputy who had just driven my face into the flagstones, "Cole has the key to the courthouse service entrance in his visor, doesn't he?"
Briggs flinched, his lips parting, but no sound came out.
"I know he has it," I continued, my voice steady now, purged of every tremor. "Because I was the one who instituted that emergency entry protocol thirty years ago. Agent Cross, get your vehicle ready. The digital registry is their playground, but the master parchment books in the basement vault cannot be rewritten with a stolen password. We have forty minutes to get inside that building before Harlan Sterling locks the vault."
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
"I ride in front," I told him, wiping dirt from my palms against my dark trousers. "And we take County Road 4. Harlan has deputies watching the main bypass. If dispatch flags your convoy on the courthouse boulevard, the basement vault will be sealed before your boots hit the steps."
Cross nodded to his driver, and within thirty seconds we were moving. Watching oak trees along County Road 4 blur into late-afternoon shadow, the pain in my collarbone settled into a dull ache. My father had spent forty-two years tending the twelve acres behind my house, paying county taxes every November with a cashier’s check delivered by hand. When he died, he handed me the 1954 original deed, wrapped in oiled cloth, its wax notary seal intact. For thirty years as chief archivist, I had protected those paper records from rot and greedy developers who treated our county like an open trough.
I knew why Harlan needed my land. The regional highway project had been approved six weeks ago, requiring a four-lane feeder route through our northern township. Harlan's shell company, Piedmont Valley Logistics, had quietly bought seventy percent of surrounding acreage at distressed prices. My parcel was the linchpin. Without my father’s twelve acres, their heavy haul road couldn't reach the interstate junction without an eight-mile detour costing fifteen million dollars. They had manufactured a fraudulent tax delinquency, altered the assessor’s database, and sent armed deputies to stage a violent arrest on my lawn so they could declare the property abandoned under expedited receivership.
"The digital terminal in the assessor's office records the transfer as finalized yesterday at three in the afternoon," Cross said, glancing at a field tablet mounted between the front seats. "It lists a signature bearing your maiden name, notarized by magistrate Thomas Greer."