Elias read the conclusion twice.
Louise smiled.
“Evidence two.”
He looked at her.
“Two?”
“You look like a man who needs more than two.”
She kept searching.
Near sunset she opened an old file from a private ranch assessment.
Letterhead.
Voss Ranch.
Elias’s pulse changed.
The report had been commissioned more than a decade earlier.
Expansion evaluation.
Water resources.
Near the bottom:
Unregistered spring source on neighboring Marsh property, currently uncapped and unused.
Addressed to:
Garrett Voss.
Elias stopped.
Louise watched him read.
“How old is that?”
“Twelve years.”
“So he knew.”
“Yes.”
Garrett had known about the spring before shutting off the shared ditch.
Before the bottling contract.
Before offering to buy the farm.
Before filing the claim.
He had known.
Elias wanted to feel triumph.
Instead he felt something colder.
For weeks, he had treated the drought as weather.
Then policy.
Then conflict.
Now he understood part of it had been strategy.
Garrett had expected the property to weaken.
He knew a spring existed.
He expected Elias not to.
He waited for desperation to create a sale.
Louise folded her arms.
“What are you going to do?”
“Take copies.”
“Good.”
“Then lawyer.”
“Better.”
Elias drove home.
Dana read the Voss letter.
Her face became hard.
“He knew.”
“Yes.”
“And he still tried to buy us for eighty thousand.”
“Yes.”
Ren sat at the table.
She listened.
“Does that mean we win?”
Elias looked at her.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because evidence doesn’t make courts disappear.”
“But it proves he knew.”
“It proves that.”
“Then why isn’t that enough?”
Dana answered.
“Because adults built systems where the truth has to stand in line.”
Ren frowned.
“That’s dumb.”
“Yes.”
Dana smiled faintly.
“It often is.”
The fourth piece of evidence arrived unexpectedly.
Denny Cobb came to the house one evening.
Twenty-six.
County contractor’s assistant.
The man whose casual conversation had apparently helped the news of the spring reach Garrett.
Denny stood on the porch.
Hat in his hands.
“I need to tell you something.”
Elias opened the screen.
Denny stayed outside.
“My father worked irrigation maintenance for the Voss place.”
Elias waited.
“He passed last year.”
“I’m sorry.”
Denny nodded.
“He used to talk about valves.”
“Exciting family.”
Denny almost smiled.
Then became serious.
“The head gate.”
Elias stopped.
“What about it?”
“Dad said there wasn’t anything wrong with it.”
“I know there wasn’t.”
“No.”
Denny swallowed.
“I mean before the county order.”
Elias’s expression changed.
“My father serviced it two weeks before the restrictions.”
“Garrett told him to lock your side.”
“When?”
“Before the official conservation order.”
“How long?”
“Maybe three weeks.”
Elias stared.
Denny continued.
“Dad thought it was strange.”
“He asked if the ditch was damaged.”
“Garrett said no.”