"Why are we even considering this?" Jace says. "We don't need the money. We already have more than we'll use in our lives."
"We need what the money can do." Reid leans forward. "The Wolf Rescue Center has been running on what we can privately divert. With acquisition capital we can build it properly."
"Your water project in Guatemala has been stalled for two years waiting on infrastructure investment," I say. "The convertible jacket donation program for the homeless, same problem. Both are viable at scale. Neither is viable at current funding."
That lands.
"Scale matters," I add. "At the capital level this deal would produce, we're talking about actual reach. More operations, more jobs, more permanent infrastructure."
Jace is quiet for a moment. He doesn't like being out-argued, particularly when the argument is correct and concerns something he cares about. I watch him arrive at the same conclusion the numbers arrived at two weeks ago.
"Fine," he says. "Offer a counter-proposal. Retained control over product and brand, final approval on anything that affects the company's core identity." He points at me. "You draft it."
"I'll have a framework by end of week."
The meeting closes. No one summarizes. No one assigns follow-up. We've been doing this long enough that the machinery doesn't require maintenance. Jace moves toward the door. Reid begins closing documents on his tablet.
I take my glasses off. Fold them and set them on the desk beside the cold coffee.
I go back to the window.
The corridor of sky above the tree line is still clear. 4:51 pm. The light has gone another shade flatter, the particular grey of late afternoon in early March when the sun drops behind the western ridge and takes the warmth with it. I can feel thetemperature falling through the glass now. Not a change in sensation so much as an acceleration of the cold that was already there. Ten degrees in the next hour, easy. Fifteen if the wind shifts north.
"There's still no smoke," I say.
Reid stands with urgency. Meaning he's moved into assessment. He crosses to the window and looks at the same corridor of sky I've been watching, and he's quiet long enough for me to hear the tick of the baseboard heat cycling on.
"She should have the fire going by now," he says. "It'll drop below freezing in that cabin within the hour."
"Maybe she went into town." Jace says it flat, testing the explanation against what he knows. It doesn't hold.
The three of us look at each other. I can read the calculation in Reid's face, the rapid assessment of variables that his training made automatic. The risk of going. The risk of not going. The weight he assigns to each.
"We go check," Reid says.
We gear up without discussion. Boots, jackets, gloves. Reid takes a headlamp and the first aid pack from the hall closet, which tells me he's already past the version of this where she forgot to start the fire or lost track of time. He's operating on the version where something went wrong.
The walk down the mountain takes twelve minutes. Nobody comments on the pace, which is faster than a walk to a neighbor's cabin warrants. Frozen ground underfoot, the crunch of it rhythmic and percussive in the quiet, our breath visible in the cooling air. The tree line swallows what's left of the light as we descend. Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir pressing close on either side of the trail, the smell of cold sap and frozen earth and something mineral underneath, old snow compacting to ice. The temperature is dropping.
Nobody speaks. Reid is in front. Jace is behind me. My breathing is controlled. Measured. The same rhythm I use for anything that requires sustained attention.
The cabin comes into view. Her car is in the drive.
Reid doesn't slow down, but the quality of his movement changes. Tighter. More contained. The transition from walking to operating.
He tries the door. It opens. We go through.
The room is as I remember it from the first day. Small and low-ceilinged. The fireplace cold, ash from yesterday's fire still in the grate. No fire started today. The cabin smells like woodsmoke residue and cold air and coffee that's been sitting too long. The temperature inside is only marginally warmer than outside, which means the fire has been out for hours.
Her things on the kitchen table: laptop open, screen dark from inactivity. Phone beside it. A notebook with a pen laid across an open page, the handwriting visible from here, small and precise. A half-full mug of coffee.
She didn't plan to be gone long.
"Separate." Reid's voice drops to something stripped and functional. Not a field command exactly, but built on the same bones.
Jace goes right, toward the front of the cabin and the tree line beyond it. I go left, into the narrow space between the cabin wall and the slope behind it, then around to the back. The light here is worse, the cabin blocking what's left of the afternoon sun. Grey-white snow on the ground, undisturbed except for one set of footprints leading from the back door toward the woodpile.
My eyes adjust. The first thing I register is the woodpile. Or what's left of it.
