"Deputy Rowan held my phone under the ambulance lights and asked why my signature was on a guardianship petition I had never seen.

The damp, chilled air of the tunnel clung to their skin like a wet blanket as Lena and Eleanor hurried down the brick-lined chute, the soles of their boots squelching softly against the packed dirt floor. The rhythmic dripping of groundwater echoed off the low vaulted ceiling, punctuated only by the distant, muffled thud of heavy boots stomping across the kitchen floorboards back inside the farmhouse.

"They're tearing the pantry apart," Eleanor murmured, her breathing coming in short, raspy gasps as she navigated a particularly slick patch of mortar. "Those men aren't ordinary thugs, Lena. That equipment... that's military grade surplus. I saw gear like that on the news during the federal strike in Charleston back in the nineties."

"They're corporate security contractors working for Meridian," Lena replied over her shoulder, keeping the kerosene lantern low to avoid casting long shadows against the upper brickwork. "And if they're willing to breach a private residence with suppressors at midnight, it means the water rights on this property are worth hundreds of millions to whoever is bankrolling that semiconductor plant."

After another hundred yards of twisting descent, the brick walls gave way to rough-hewn stone and finally natural earth as the tunnel opened up into the overgrown ravine behind the old horse barn. A thick blanket of river fog hung low over the creek bed, swallowing the moonlight and turning the surrounding sycamore trees into towering, ghostly silhouettes.

Lena extinguished the lantern instantly, plunging them back into the deep gray gloom of the foggy night. She pushed Eleanor gently behind the wide, moss-covered trunk of a fallen oak tree that spanned the creek bank like a natural barricade.

"Stay behind this log," Lena whispered, her eyes scanning the dense underbrush upstream where the tunnel exit vent was located. "If anyone comes out of that pipe, you don't make a sound. You hear me?"

"And where are you going?" Eleanor asked, her hand catching the sleeve of Lena's jacket with surprising strength. "You can't fight armed men with your bare hands, child."

"I'm not going to fight them," Lena said with a cold, humorless smile. "I'm going to borrow their vehicle."

Before Eleanor could argue, Lena melted into the shadows of the creek bank, moving with the silent, fluid grace of a scout on a night reconnaissance patrol. She crept upstream through the thorny blackberry briars, ignoring the sharp tug of thorns against her clothing, until she reached the rusted iron grate that marked the exterior drainage outlet of the moonshine tunnel.

Two men in black tactical gear stood right beside the concrete drainage culvert, their carbines held at the ready, their breath pluming white in the freezing night air.

"Nothing down this end except mud and old tin cans," the first operative muttered into his shoulder mic, his voice crackling with static. "Command wants us to circle back around to the front perimeter. The extraction chopper is touching down at the north pasture in four minutes."

"Copy that. Move out," the second operative replied, turning toward the dirt access road where a matte-black Ford Explorer with high-intensity LED light bars sat idling in the shadows of the rusted tractor shed.

Lena crouched behind a rusted-out manure spreader ten feet away, her eyes locked on the idling SUV. The driver's side door was closed, but the engine was running, and the keyless ignition fob was likely resting in the console or clipped to the tactical vest of the man walking toward the passenger side.