Chapter 9 - Highway to the Coast
We left Lydia sobbing on the leather sofa of Sterling & Partners, Vance desperately packing his personal files into cardboard boxes as his firm prepared to implode.
Cole threw the SUV into reverse, tore out of the underground parking garage, and launched us into the blinding sheets of rain on Interstate 95 South.
The wipers swung violently across the windshield, battling against the remnants of the tropical front pushing up the Atlantic seaboard.
In the back seat, Mateo was on the phone, his voice steady but urgent. "Cooper, listen to me! I don't care who Thorne’s company made a campaign donation to! Henry Mercer’s original 1999 deed is in my hands! We have a signed federal stay order! If those bulldozers cross the boundary canal, your deputies are aiding and abetting criminal trespass and destruction of historic wetlands!"
He paused, listening to the crackle on the other end.
"I know it's midnight, Cooper! Sofia died on that canal! You were at her funeral! Don't you dare turn your back on us now!" Mateo ended the call, breathing heavily, staring out at the blurred highway lights. "Cooper says Thorne's men have private security permits. The deputies won't intervene without a written judicial order from a sitting judge."
"Then we make our own jurisdiction," I said from the passenger seat.
My laptop was balanced on my knees, plugged into a high-gain mobile satellite antenna suction-cupped to the rear passenger window. My screen was an intricate dashboard of blue command lines and state land-boundary maps.
"What are you doing, El?" Cole asked, keeping the SUV pinned at eighty-five miles per hour through the hydroplaning spray of eighteen-wheelers.
"Parcel zero-four-eight-eight-three-one isn't just commercial waterfront, Cole," I said, zooming in on the historical surveyor overlays Henry Mercer had left in his journal. "Look at the coordinates Henry logged in 1999. The boundary of the boatyard overlaps directly with the Cape Lookout National Seashore buffer zone."
Cole glanced at the screen, his navigator instincts kicking in. "The federal maritime corridor?"
"Exactly," I said, a grim smile forming on my lips. "Lydia and Vance filed their fraudulent conveyance using county parcel registries to bypass federal environmental surveys. But because I hold credentials with the Department of the Interior’s Registry Oversight, I just cross-referenced Henry's original deed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Protected Coastal Estuary database."
"Meaning?" Mateo asked, leaning forward.
"Meaning the moment Thorne's bulldozers cross that canal fence, they aren't just trespassing on Alvarez land," I said, hitting *ENTER* to transmit an emergency priority notification. "They are committing a Class C federal environmental crime on protected barrier wetlands. And that means the local sheriff doesn't have the final say."
"Who does?" Cole asked.
"The United States Coast Guard Maritime Safety and Environmental Protection Detachment out of Fort Macon," I said. "And the commanding lieutenant at the station happens to be my cousin, Gabriel Alvarez."
Mateo let out a deep, chest-rattling laugh—the first sound of genuine relief I had heard from him in years. "Sofia’s nephew. The boy she put through the Academy."
"Blood remembers, Dad," I whispered, watching the digital timestamp tick to *11:42 PM.* "Lydia thought she could cut us out because she had country club money. But she forgot that the people who work the water never leave each other behind."
Just then, Cole’s dashboard console lit up.
Incoming call: *LYDIA MERCER.*
May you like
Cole stared at the screen for two seconds before hitting the red button, rejecting the call without hesitation.
"Let it ring," Cole said, gripping the steering wheel tight, his eyes fixed on the dark southern horizon. "She has nothing left to say that I ever want to hear again."
