I met him outside before he reached the door.
“This has gotten tiresome,” he said without preamble.
“Good. Maybe you’ll stop.”
“You think a few old records and one antique attorney are enough to stop a regional development project?”
“I think they’re enough to slow one down and expose the fraud behind it.”
His jaw tightened. “Fraud is a colorful word.”
“So is theft.”
Snow gathered on his coat shoulders. Behind him the mountain dropped away into gray.
“You are nothing,” he said softly. “Do you understand that? A man with no address, no money, no credibility. If you vanished tomorrow, this county would keep serving pancakes and arguing about football.”
That should have crushed me.
Months earlier, it might have.
Instead I heard, buried inside his insult, exactly what he feared: not my status, but my refusal to act like it.
“I don’t have to be somebody powerful,” I said. “I just have to be the guy holding the papers you want.”
For a second, something vicious flashed across his face.
Then he stepped close enough that I could smell expensive cologne over the snow.
