He didn't yet know what Pine Ridge wanted.
But he knew one thing.
People did not enter a locked mountain property in the middle of the night to measure a gravel road without a reason.
And Ethan Walker had spent most of his life learning that when something didn't make sense, the first job was not to react.
The first job was to preserve the evidence.
The Sheriff and the Evidence
The next morning, Ethan called Sheriff Cole Harper.
Cole had served as sheriff of Ravalli County for eleven years. Before retiring, Ethan had worked in a neighboring county, and their jurisdictions had crossed often enough for the two men to know each other well.
They met at a diner in Hamilton.
Ethan arrived with his tablet, his deed, parcel maps, gate records, and a written timeline.
Cole watched the video without speaking.
When the footage showed one of the men entering the access code into the gate keypad, he paused it.
“They knew the code,” Cole said.
“Yes.”
“Who has it?”