The river carried them for what felt like hours, though the clock on Elara's phone told her it had been only forty minutes. The skiff drifted with the current, spinning slowly in the dark water, its flat bottom bumping against ice floes that had formed along the banks. The cold was deeper here than it had been in the city, a penetrating, bone-deep chill that seeped through their wet clothes and settled into their joints. Nora had stopped shivering, which Elara knew was a bad sign. She had wrapped the younger woman in a tarp she had found in the bottom of the skiff, but the tarp was thin and torn, and the wind that blew across the river cut through it like a knife.
"We need to get off the water," Elara said, her voice hoarse. "We need to find somewhere to warm up and dry off."
Nora nodded, her teeth chattering too hard to speak. She pointed to a dark shape on the eastern bank, a cluster of buildings barely visible against the black wall of the forest. Elara rowed toward it, her arms numb with cold and exhaustion, and the skiff ground against a muddy shoal a few minutes later. They stumbled ashore, dragging the boxes of files with them, and collapsed in the shelter of an old boathouse whose roof had partially caved in. The walls were still standing, and the floor was dry, and there was a pile of old canvas tarps in one corner that smelled of mildew but were thick enough to provide some insulation.
Elara wrapped Nora in the tarps and then used the last of her strength to build a small fire from the dry wood she found stacked against the back wall. The flames caught slowly, sputtering and smoking, but eventually they grew into a steady, warming blaze. They sat huddled together beside it, their clothes steaming in the heat, the boxes of files stacked around them like a fortress.
"We can't stay here long," Elara said. "Whoever was chasing us will be searching the riverbanks. They'll find the skiff, and then they'll find us."
"Then what do we do?" Nora's voice was steadier now, the warmth of the fire bringing color back to her cheeks. "We have the files, but we can't go back to your apartment. We can't go to the police. We can't go anywhere they might be waiting for us."
"We go somewhere they won't expect." Elara pulled her phone from her pocket, but the screen was dark, the battery dead from the cold. She asked Nora for hers, but it had been lost in the river during their escape. They were cut off, isolated, with no way to call for help and no one they could trust. But they had the files. They had the evidence. And they had each other.
They spent the next two hours going through the boxes, drying the damp papers by the fire and organizing them into piles. The files were a chronicle of corporate malfeasance that spanned half a century. There were memos from the company's legal department advising managers on how to avoid liability for workplace accidents. There were letters from Gresham & Fisk to the state worker's compensation board, arguing that Stefan Lysander's death was the result of his own negligence, not the company's. There were deposition transcripts from witnesses who had been intimidated into silence, and affidavits from others who had been paid to lie. And there was a thick folder, marked "Vance, M. - Disciplinary Matter," that contained the full record of what the firm had done to Elara's father.
She opened the folder with trembling hands. Inside were letters between Lawrence Gresham's father, Harold Gresham, and the chief counsel for the state bar association. The letters detailed a plan to fabricate the trust account irregularity, to plant the deposit that would trigger the investigation, to ensure that Marcus Vance was disbarred before he could submit his evidence to the U.S. Attorney's office. There was a list of payments, coded as "legal consulting fees," that corresponded to the dates of the bar association's investigation. And there was a final letter, dated November 12, 1994, in which Harold Gresham confirmed that the disbarment had been completed and that the Ashenvale matter was "resolved to the firm's satisfaction."
Elara read the letters three times, the words blurring and sharpening in the firelight. Her father had been destroyed not because he had broken the law, but because he had tried to uphold it. He had been destroyed by the very system he had believed in, a system that had been corrupted from within by the people who were supposed to be its guardians. And the man who had orchestrated his destruction was the father of the man who had just given her the key to the storage unit.
"Lawrence Gresham knew," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "He told us he found the files after his father died. But these letters, these payments, they happened while he was working at the firm. He was a junior associate in 1994. He would have known what his father was doing. He might even have been involved."
Nora looked up from the file she was examining. "If he knew, why did he give us the key? Why did he help us?"
"Maybe he's been carrying the guilt for thirty years, and this was his way of making amends. Maybe he thought we wouldn't find the folder, or that we wouldn't understand what it meant. Or maybe he set us up. Maybe the whole thing was a trap, and the men who chased us were working for him."
They sat in silence, the fire crackling between them. The evidence of Harold Gresham's crimes was damning, but Harold Gresham was dead. His son was still alive, and his son was the only person who could authenticate the files and testify about what the firm had done. If Lawrence Gresham was an ally, he was an ally with blood on his hands. If he was an enemy, they were in more danger than they had realized.
"We need to talk to him again," Elara said. "We need to confront him with what we've found. But we can't do it in person, not until we know whose side he's on."
She pulled out her laptop, which had survived the escape in its waterproof case, and connected it to the battery pack she always carried in her briefcase. The signal was weak, but it was enough. She composed an email to Lawrence Gresham, attaching scans of the letters she had found in the folder, and sent it to his private address before she could second-guess herself.
We found the Vance file, she wrote. We know what your father did. We know you were at the firm when it happened. If you want to help us, meet us at the old courthouse in Ashenvale tomorrow at noon. Come alone. If you don't show up, we'll release everything we have to the press and the U.S. Attorney's office. You have until then to decide whose side you're on.
She closed the laptop and looked at Nora. "We need to get back to the valley. It's the only place we can be sure of finding allies. Sheriff Holt is there. Dr. Orin is there. The forest court is there. And if Gresham decides to come after us, the valley is a place where outsiders don't last long. You told me that yourself."
Nora nodded slowly. "The valley protects its own," she said. "And you've proven that you're one of us now. The court will remember what you did for Caleb. They'll remember what you promised. They'll help us."
They waited until dawn, and then they gathered the files and set out on foot through the forest. The boathouse, Nora explained, was on the southern edge of the national forest, about twenty miles from Ashenvale. If they followed the old logging roads, they could reach the valley by nightfall. It would be a hard walk, especially in the snow, but it was safer than trying to find a road where they might be spotted.
The forest was silent as they walked, the snow muffling their footsteps and the pines towering overhead like the pillars of a cathedral. The sky was a pale, watery blue, and the sun, when it broke through the clouds, cast long, cold shadows across the trail. They walked in silence for the first hour, conserving their energy, their breath pluming in the cold air. Then Nora began to talk.
She talked about her childhood in the valley, about the long winters when the roads were impassable and the village was cut off from the outside world for weeks at a time. She talked about her grandfather, about the stories he used to tell her about the old country, about the mountains and the forests and the traditions that had been brought across the ocean and planted in the soil of Ashenvale. She talked about the forest court, about the first time her grandfather had taken her into the tunnels beneath the mill, about the weight of the wooden eye when he had placed it around her neck and told her that she would be the next Recorder.
"I was twelve years old," she said. "My parents had just died. I was alone, and angry, and scared. And my grandfather gave me the eye and told me that I was part of something bigger than myself, something that had existed for a hundred years and would exist for a hundred more. He told me that the court was the only thing that had ever protected the valley, the only thing that had ever given us justice when the outside law refused. And I believed him. I believed him for a long time."
"When did you stop believing?"
Nora was silent for a moment, her boots crunching on the frozen snow. "When Grafton came," she said. "When I saw what the court did to him. He was a bad man. I know that now. But he was still a man. He had a life, a history, a story. And the court ended it without a second thought. They threw him off a cliff and left his body to freeze, and they called it justice. And I realized that the court had become the thing it was created to fight. It had become the company. It had become the lawyers. It had become the machine."
"But you still wear the eye."
"I wear it because it reminds me of what I'm trying to change. I wear it because my grandfather asked me to, and because I loved him, and because I want his legacy to be something other than blood and silence. That's why I helped you. That's why I'm still helping you. Because I think you can help us find a different way."
They walked on through the afternoon, the trail winding deeper into the mountains. The snow was deeper here, and the going was slow. By the time the sun began to set, they were still ten miles from the valley, and their energy was flagging. But then, in the distance, they saw a light: a yellow rectangle shining through the trees, the window of a cabin that was still occupied. They approached cautiously, and the door opened before they could knock.
An old woman stood in the doorway, her face creased with age but her eyes sharp and watchful. She looked at Nora, and then at Elara, and then at the boxes they were carrying. "You're Viktor's granddaughter," she said. "And you're the federal officer who came asking questions. I've been expecting you."
"You've been expecting us?" Elara asked.
"The valley talks. News travels fast, even in the winter. Come inside. There's food on the stove and a fire in the hearth. And there's someone here who wants to see you."
They stepped inside, and Elara saw a figure sitting in a chair by the fire. It was Sheriff Mason Holt, his face haggard with exhaustion, his uniform rumpled and stained. He looked up when they entered, and there was something in his eyes that Elara had never seen before: fear, raw and undisguised.
"You need to listen to me carefully," he said. "The men who chased you last night, they weren't from the company. They weren't from the law firm. They were federal agents. The Department of Justice sent them. Someone in the U.S. Attorney's office leaked your investigation to the wrong people, and now the whole thing is being shut down. They're calling it a matter of national security. They're saying the forest court is a domestic terrorist organization. And they're coming to Ashenvale to shut it down."
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