The black car sat at the edge of the town square like a predator in a field of cattle. The engine emitted a low, mechanical hum that seemed to vibrate in Silas's teeth. He felt the weight of June's hand in his. Her skin was warm, but his own blood had turned to ice. He knew that car. It belonged to a security firm that Vane-Corp had kept on a million-dollar retainer. They didn't work for the company anymore. They worked for the creditors.
"Silas, you're shaking," June whispered. She pulled back to look at his face. The joy of the saved auction was already fading from her expression. "What is it? Who is in that car?"
"The people I just robbed," Silas said. He didn't take his eyes off the man in the vehicle. The man was wearing a tactical jacket and dark glasses. He didn't look like a lawyer. He looked like a recovery specialist. "When I destroyed the Alpha Code, I didn't just hurt Julian. I wiped out a three-billion-dollar asset that the banks were using as collateral. I made a lot of very wealthy people very poor in a single second."
Miller walked up the steps. He looked from Silas to the black car. He was a man used to the simple violence of nature, but he recognized a human threat when he saw one. "You need to get out of the open, Silas. Take June and go to the clinic. It's got a back exit."
"No," Silas said. "They aren't here for a scene. Not in front of the sheriff. They are here to deliver a message."
The man in the car didn't move toward them. He reached into the open window and pulled out a small, high-density tablet. He tapped the screen and held it up. A red light blinked on the device. It was a signal. He was tracking Silas's biometrics, or perhaps he was just letting Silas know that he was being watched from more than one angle.
The man tapped his watch again. It was a countdown. Then, he got back into the car and drove away. He didn't speed. He didn't burn rubber. He just drifted out of the square and into the mist.
"What does that mean?" June asked. She gripped the railing of the courthouse.
"It means the debt isn't settled," Silas said. "It just changed hands. I saved the orchard, but I put a target on this town."
They drove back to Oakhaven in Miller's truck. Silas sat in the middle, wedged between June and Miller. The silence was thick. The heater rattled in the dashboard, blowing lukewarm air that smelled of wet dog and medicine. Silas stared at the passing trees. They looked different now. They didn't look like a sanctuary. They looked like a perimeter.
When they arrived at the house, Bea was standing on the porch. She saw the look on their faces and didn't ask about the auction. She saw the way Silas moved—stiff, alert, and paranoid.
"The kitchen is hot," Bea said. "There's stew. Eat. You look like you've been dragged behind a horse."
They sat at the wooden table. Silas couldn't eat. He kept glancing at the windows. Every time a branch scraped against the siding, his hand twitched.
"You need to tell us everything, Silas," June said. She pushed her bowl aside. "No more secrets. No more 'protecting' me. If there are people coming for us, I need to know why."
Silas sighed. He leaned back and closed his eyes. "The Alpha Code wasn't just a logistics program. It was a predictive engine. It could calculate market shifts before they happened. It was the heart of the Globex merger. When I triggered the deletion, I didn't just erase the files. I destroyed the servers in the New York office. I burned the bridge behind me."
"So the company is dead?" Miller asked.
"The company is a carcass," Silas said. "But the investors—the private equity groups—don't care about the company. They want intellectual property. They think the code is stored somewhere else. They think I have a physical backup."
"Do you?" June asked.
Silas looked at her. He thought about the thumb drive he had given the feds. He thought about the encrypted cloud drive he had wiped before leaving the hotel. "No. It's gone. It's completely gone. But men like that don't believe in 'gone.' They believe in leverage. They think if they squeeze me hard enough, I'll find a way to rebuild it."
"And they'll use the orchard to squeeze you," Bea said. She sat down at the table, her face hard. "They'll come for the trees. They'll come for us."
"I won't let that happen," Silas said.
"How?" June asked. "You're just one man. You don't have your security teams. You don't have your lawyers. You're a farmer with a bruise on his jaw."
"I have the land," Silas said. "And I know how they think. They won't come with guns first. They'll come with paper. They'll try to find another flaw in the deed, or they'll buy the local utility company and shut off our water. They'll try to starve us out."
Miller stood up. "Not in this town. We've had our share of outsiders trying to buy us up. The people here don't like it. If you tell them what's happening, they'll stand with you."
"I don't want to drag the town into this, Miller," Silas said. "This is my mess."
"It stopped being your mess the moment you kissed her on the courthouse steps," Miller said. He grabbed his hat. "I'm going to the general store. I'm going to talk to a few people. We'll keep a watch on the main road tonight. If that black car comes back, you'll hear about it before they hit the driveway."
Miller left, the screen door clicking shut behind him. Silas felt a pang of guilt. He had spent weeks resenting Miller, and now the man was putting himself on the line to guard Silas's mistakes.
Night fell over Oakhaven with a heavy, suffocating darkness. The rain returned, but it was a quiet drizzle now. Silas sat on the porch of the cottage. He had a heavy flashlight and a tire iron. It wasn't much, but it made him feel less helpless.
June walked across the grass. She sat down on the steps next to him. She didn't say anything for a long time. She just watched the fog roll in over the north grove.
"I went to the barn tonight," June said. "I found the laundry basket Bea dropped. And I found a scrap of paper. A yellow scrap."
Silas felt his heart stop. He didn't breathe.
"You found the letter," he said.
"I found the envelope," June corrected. "The letter was gone. My mother was burning something in the woodstove when I came in. She looked guilty, Silas. She looked like she had just gotten rid of a ghost."
"It was a letter to me," Silas said. "From ten years ago."
"What did it say?" June asked. She turned to him. Her eyes were searching for him. "Tell me the truth. No more shields."
Silas looked at his hands. He could hear the rain dripping off the eaves. "It said she tried to sell the orchard before I left. She had a deal to pay for your school. The deal fell through because I walked away. She blamed me for the failure of her own secret."
June went very still. She didn't cry. She didn't move. She just stared into the dark. "She let me believe you were the only one who didn't want this life. She let me carry that anger for a decade so she could feel like a saint."
"She was trying to protect you, June," Silas said. "In her own way. She didn't want you to know the farm was failing even back then. She wanted you to have a legacy."
"A legacy built on a lie isn't a legacy," June said. She stood up. She looked at the main house. "I've been fighting for ten years to save a dream that my mother gave up on before I even started. And you knew. You found out and you didn't tell me."
"I didn't want to be the one to break your heart again," Silas said. He stood up and stepped toward her. "I wanted you to have one thing that was pure. I thought if I could save the orchard, the rest wouldn't matter."
"It all matters, Silas," June said. She stepped back. "Everything you do is about fixing things. You fix the pump. You fix the taxes. You fix the board. When are you going to stop fixing and just start living? You're so busy being a hero that you forgot how to be a person."
Before Silas could answer, a bright light cut through the trees at the edge of the property. It wasn't a car. It was a spotlight. It swept across the north grove, illuminating the apple trees in a harsh, artificial white.
Silas grabbed June's arm and pulled her behind a porch pillar. "Get down."
The light moved slowly. It lingered on the barn, then the house, then the cottage. It was a searchlight, mounted on a drone that hummed high above them in the rainy sky. The sound was a high-pitched whine, like an angry insect.
"They're mapping the property," Silas whispered.
"The drone is illegal," June said. "We can call the sheriff."
"By the time he gets here, they'll be gone," Silas said. "This is psychological. They want me to know that there is nowhere to hide. They want me to feel the pressure."
Silas stood up. He walked out into the middle of the yard, right into the center of the spotlight. He didn't hide his face. He looked straight up into the lens of the drone. He raised the tire iron and pointed it at the sky.
"I know you're watching!" Silas shouted. His voice echoed off the barn. "I don't have the code! There is nothing left to take! Leave this family alone!"
The drone hovered for a moment. It seemed to consider him. Then, the light clicked off. The hum faded as the machine tilted and sped away toward the highway.
Silas stood in the dark, his chest heaving. He felt a hand on his back. June was standing there. She didn't look angry anymore. She looked terrified.
"They aren't going to stop, are they?" she asked.
"No," Silas said. "They won't stop until they realize that I am more of a liability than an asset. I have to make myself dangerous to them."
"How?"
"I have to use the one thing I didn't delete," Silas said.
"You told me the code was gone," June said.
"The code is gone," Silas said. "But the data I gathered on the people who funded the merger... that is still on a private server. I kept it as insurance. It's the dirt, June. It's the offshore accounts, the bribes, the illegal lobbying. It's the kind of information that ends careers and sends people to prison for life."
"If you use it, they'll kill you," June said.
"If I don't use it, they'll take the orchard," Silas said. "I have to go back to the city one more time. But not as a CEO. I have to go as a whistleblower."
June shook her head. She grabbed his shirt. "No. You just got back. We just saved this place. I won't let you walk into a trap."
"It's not a trap if I'm the one setting it," Silas said.
He looked at the main house. He saw Bea standing at the window, her silhouette dark against the light of the kitchen. He saw the trees of the south grove, standing tall in the mist. He knew what he had to do. He had to finish the war he had started ten years ago.
"I need you to do something for me, June," Silas said. "I need you to take Bea and go to Miller's place. Stay there for forty-eight hours. Don't answer the door. Don't answer the phone."
"I'm not leaving my home," June said.
"Please," Silas said. He took her face in his hands. "I can't fight them if I'm worried about you. Give me two days to burn their world down. Then I'll come back and we can pick the rest of the apples in peace."
June looked at him for a long time. She saw the iron in his gaze. She saw the man who had destroyed a billion-dollar company to save a few trees. She knew she couldn't stop him.
"Two days, Silas," June said. "If you aren't back in two days, I'm coming to New York myself. And I'm bringing a pitchfork."
Silas smiled. It was a small, sad smile. He kissed her forehead. "I'll be back. I have a lot of work to do on that tractor."
He watched her walk to the house. He watched the lights go out one by one. He waited until Miller's truck arrived to escort them away. When the yard was finally empty, Silas walked to the barn. He found his laptop. He sat on a crate of apples and opened the lid. The blue light reflected in his eyes.
He began to type. He wasn't writing code. He was writing a confession. He was naming names. He was listing account numbers. He was preparing to destroy the very world he had spent his life building.
The first email was addressed to the Department of Justice. The second was to the New York Times.
Silas Vane was done being a billionaire. He was ready to be a witness.