"Then we'll find it."
"We?"
"Yes, Mom. We."
The old woman stood silently.
Then she nodded, although her daughter could not see her.
"All right."
After the call, she climbed into her pickup.
She placed the certified record carefully on the passenger seat.
The sun was beginning to sink.
A truck loaded with wheat passed along the highway.
The woman watched it disappear toward the grain elevator.
Then she started the engine.
She had spent the day chasing a document her father had filed nearly seventy years ago.
Tomorrow, she would begin finding out why somebody wanted it forgotten.
Chapter 4: The Man in the Black Jacket
The bank manager returned to his office shortly before six that evening.
His office occupied a corner of the second floor in a regional banking building sixty miles from the ranch.
A framed aerial photograph of commercial farmland hung behind his desk.
On the shelf beneath it stood three awards recognizing commercial property performance.
He had earned two of them.
The third had been given to his department.
He liked looking at them.
They reminded him how far he had come.
His father had worked construction jobs.
His mother cleaned motel rooms.
Growing up, he had watched wealthy landowners sit in air-conditioned offices while men like his father worked beneath the sun.
He had promised himself he would never spend his life taking orders from people who owned things.
Now he managed properties for a bank.
He had authority over foreclosed farmland, commercial buildings, development parcels, and access agreements.
He wore expensive clothes.
He drove a black SUV.
And when he arrived at a property, people were expected to listen.
The old ranch woman had not listened.
That irritated him.
He set his folder on the desk and called a land-development consultant.
The call was answered almost immediately.
"How did it go?"
The banker sat down.
"She's stubborn."
"Will she sign?"
"Not yet."
A pause.
"We need access certainty before the end of the month."
"I know."
"Did you explain that?"
"I explained the maintenance assessment and the bank's position."
"What did she say?"
The banker stared at his reflection in the dark window.
"She told me to read the old records."
The consultant went quiet.
"What records?"
"Some family nonsense. Her father built the road."
"Did you check the title report?"
"Of course."
"The exceptions?"
The banker hesitated.
"There's a historical access reference."
"What kind?"
"An old easement note."
"Is it recorded?"
The banker looked toward the closed folder.
"Possibly."
The consultant's voice hardened.
"Possibly?"