195 I walked into our anniversary party with a man my husband had never met. He laughed in front of everyone and asked, / Chapter 25 / 86

Chapter 25 - The Titan's Summons

By midnight, the Trinidad switching yard looked like a military encampment.

Two squads of Colorado State Patrol cruisers had their red and blue flashers illuminating the derailed locomotive, casting rhythmic, surreal shadows against the Spanish Peaks. State rail safety investigators and federal transport agents crawled over the wreckage, collecting paint chips and torching through the welded cab door.

Arthur Vance sat inside my makeshift office in the restored depot, three secure satellite phones lined up on the plywood desk in front of him. His tie was loose, his jacket tossed over a chair, and for the first time since I met him, the consummate legal strategist looked deeply rattled.

"Julian Croft just landed at Centennial Airport," Arthur said, hanging up the third phone with a heavy click. "He flew in from Zurich on a private Gulfstream. He’s requested an emergency summit at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver at nine o'clock tomorrow morning."

Jonah stood by the window, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes fixed on the floodlit yard below where Mack was directing an eighty-ton crane to secure the derailed locomotive.

"He's not requesting a summit, Arthur," Jonah said, turning around. "He tried to kill our apprentices today. That was an execution attempt."

"Julian Croft doesn't execute people with his own hands," Arthur countered, rubbing his temples. "He creates pressure. He uses corporate deniability. The locomotive was purchased from a scrap company in Pueblo yesterday afternoon by a shell LLC based in the Cayman Islands. Paid for in bearer bonds. The federal agents will find zero paperwork linking that steel to Croft."

"He made one mistake," I said, stepping into the circle of light cast by the desk lamp.

Both men looked at me.

I laid my father’s tarnished brass watch and the 1994 letter from William Porter on top of the shipping maps.

"Croft thinks he’s dealing with the same scared young woman whose husband locked her out of their bank accounts six months ago," I said, my voice razor-sharp and cold as glacial run-off. "He thinks because he has twenty billion dollars in private equity, he can treat Colorado like his personal toxic landfill. But he forgot who built the right-of-way."

"Nina," Arthur warned softly. "Julian Croft has bought governors. He broke the Chicago transit unions in ninety-eight. He isn't Marcus."

"Marcus was a coward hiding behind his mother's skirt," I said. "And Victoria was an arrogant technocrat who thought she was smarter than the law. But Croft is a predator. And predators don't negotiate when they think they have you cornered. If we don't meet him tomorrow, he’ll drop another train on this yard, or he’ll buy the state inspectors to shut our operating permit down before Friday."

Jonah walked across the room, stopping directly in front of me. His gray eyes searched mine, looking past the exhaustion, past the soot on my skin, looking for the girl who had walked into that anniversary party with her head held high.

"We go together," Jonah said simply. "You, me, and David's ledger."

"No suits," I said, a grim smile touching my lips. "We don't meet him on his terms. If Mr. Croft wants to discuss the southern corridor, he comes to the soil where my father died."

Arthur looked stunned. "You’re refusing to go to Denver?"

"I’m sending him a counter-offer," I said, reaching for Jonah’s satellite phone. "Arthur, call Croft’s legal team. Tell them Chairwoman Nina Taylor will receive him at the Trinidad roundhouse at sunrise. If he isn't here, I release William Porter’s signed confession to the Department of Justice, the EPA, and the Wall Street Journal simultaneously."