Page 14 of In the Shadows
She opened her desk drawer and pulled out a file—not the centennial files, but the other one. The one she kept locked away, out of sight.
"I'm probably going to regret this." She set the file on the desk between them. "But my father always said that sometimes you have to trust your gut, even when your gut is telling you something crazy."
"What's crazy?"
"I think something is wrong in this town. Something that goes back years. And I think—" She took a breath. "I think you're not really here for the centennial. Are you?"
He looked at the file. Then at her. The mask he'd been wearing shifted slightly—not dropping, exactly, but thinning. She could see something else underneath. Something sharp and careful and very, very interested.
"Tell me what you've found."
She opened the file.
Chapter Three
The file was thicker than Ronan expected.
Lila spread the contents across her desk—photocopies, handwritten notes, printouts of property records with sections highlighted in yellow, pink, green. A color-coded system that matched the organized chaos of her office. She'd been at this for a while. Months, at least. Maybe longer.
"My father was a surveyor." She didn't look at him as she organized the papers. "He worked for the county for thirty-two years. Every property line, every easement, every boundary dispute—he knew them all."
"Was?"
"He died five years ago. Heart attack." Her hands stilled on the papers. "Or that's what the death certificate says."
Ronan kept his expression neutral, but his jaw moved ever so slightly. "You don't believe it."
"I believed it then. Now?" She pulled out a stack of photocopies and set them in front of him. "Look at these."
Property records. He recognized the format from his briefing materials—the same documents Caleb had flagged when Shadow Ops first identified Blossom Springs as a target. Deed transfers. Survey certifications. Permit applications.
"These are the waterfront properties along the north shore." Lila pointed to a highlighted section. "Six parcels, transferred between 2018 and 2022. All of them were purchased by different buyers through different real estate agents. All of them with the same attorney handling the closing."
"That could be a coincidence. Small town, limited options."
"Could be. Except." She pulled out another sheet. "The survey certifications on all six properties were signed by the same county surveyor. My father's replacement."
"Still not unusual."
"It is when the surveys don't match the original plat maps." She spread out two documents side by side. "This is the original survey from 1987. This is the certification from 2019. The property lines moved."
Ronan leaned forward. The documents were dense with measurements and legal descriptions, but she was right. The boundary markers on the newer survey were different. Not by much—maybe thirty feet—but enough.
"Someone adjusted the property lines."
"Someone adjusted them to include a strip of beach that was supposed to be protected coastal access." Her voice was quiet but steady. "Public land, deeded to the town in 1952. Now it belongs to a holding company registered in Delaware."
He looked at her. Really looked. The warmth was still there in her eyes, but underneath it was something harder. Steel wrapped in velvet.
"How long have you been tracking this?"
"Two years. Since I found some of my father's old files in the basement." She pulled out a worn manila folder, the edges soft with handling. "He was keeping notes. Questions about surveys that didn't add up. Names that kept appearing on too many documents."
"Did he tell anyone?"
"I don't know. Maybe. He died three weeks after I found him working late in his office, surrounded by these exact records." Her nostrils flared. "The doctor said stress contributed to the heart attack. Work pressure. But my father loved his work. It never stressed him. It energized him."
Ronan didn't respond. He was thinking about the timeline. Five years ago. That would put her father's death right around the time the first falsified permits started appearing in the county records. The ones that had triggered Shadow Ops' attention.
