Chapter 22 - The Iron Seal of Blackwood Creek
Mark stepped forward from the shadows of the doorway, his service pistol held low against his thigh, his deputy badge gleaming dull brass against his heavy wool jacket.
"You're trespassing on private property, Miss Vance," Mark said, his voice level and flat, the tone he used when pulling drunk loggers out of ditch fires. "And you smashed through a locked gate on a township road. That gives me enough cause to hold you and every man in those trucks until state troopers arrive from Oakhaven."
Victoria didn't even blink. She didn't look at Mark; she merely raised two fingers in the direction of the lead truck.
The passenger door opened, and a man stepped down into the snow. He wasn't dressed in tactical gear. He wore a heavy sheepskin coat over a tailored charcoal suit, his silver hair cropped close to a skull that looked like it had been carved from grey granite. Under his arm, he carried a red accordion file folder swollen with thick, legal-sized folios.
"Deputy Miller," the man said, his voice dry and scratchy, like corn husks rubbing together in a November wind. "I am Douglas Vance, chief counsel for the Vance Mineral and Asset Trust. You might want to inspect these before you invoke township ordinances that ceased to exist at midnight."
Douglas walked straight to the bottom of the steps, completely ignoring the bore of Arthur’s shotgun. He extended a single sheet of watermarked vellum encased in heavy plastic.
I snatched it before Arthur could react.
The top of the page bore the embossed seal of the State Supreme Court, Fifth District. But it wasn't a standard foreclosure or an eviction notice. It was a Writ of Partition and Immediate Corporate Reclamation. My eyes scanned the lines of dense legal typography: *In Re: The Subterranean Mineral Estate of Parcel 408, Blackwood Creek.*
"Read the secondary clause, son," Douglas said, pulling a brass lighter from his pocket and snapping it open, the flame illuminating the web of broken capillaries across his nose. "Your father owns the topsoil. Six inches of humus and pine needles. The Vance Trust has owned the limestone bedrock, the water table, and every cubic foot of mineral strata below the frost line since nineteen-sixty-eight."
"There are no minerals here," I said, my teeth chattering as the freezing wind swirled around us. "It's karst limestone. Sinks and scrub brush."
"Not minerals, darling," Victoria said, stepping past Douglas and mounting the first two porch steps. "Storage. Safe, dry, impenetrable storage. My father built a two-million-dollar bunker into the cavern system under this bluff before your father even drew the blueprints for this shack."
May you like
She stopped three feet from Arthur. She was shorter than him, but she leaned forward, her eyes gleaming with malice.
"Evelyn didn't leave you fifty-three mortgage chimes to pay off a loan, Arthur," she whispered. "She was counting the shipments. And the last one is still down there."
