At one thirty-seven, the phone buzzed again.
If you want the real map, come to the ferry terminal at dawn. Alone.
Mara read the message twice. Then she took a pen and wrote the number on the inside cover of her mother's notebook. She was not going to the terminal alone. Whoever had sent it would have to learn that, too.
CHAPTER 04
The Woman At The Ferry
At dawn, Port Alder smelled of wet timber and diesel. Mara approached the ferry terminal beside Tessa, who wore a hooded jacket and carried a paper bag of breakfast sandwiches. Tessa had answered the late-night request to accompany her with a single question: "Coffee first or after?" There were reasons Mara trusted her with emergencies.
They separated near the ticket machines. Mara waited beside a public timetable while Tessa took a bench from which she could see both the entrance and the waterside doors. Ferries sounded their low horns across the channel. Commuters hurried beneath umbrellas, intent on catching boats that would carry them to offices and schools.
A woman in a fluorescent maintenance vest stopped beside Mara. She was small, middle-aged, and held a rolled poster tube beneath one arm. Her expression was composed but exhausted.
"Your mother was Ruth Brooks?" she asked.
Mara straightened. "Yes. Who are you?"
"I'm Anika Rao. I used to work for the city flood office. Ruth translated for my neighborhood after the 2012 storm. She refused to let the public meetings happen in only one language."
Anika glanced behind them, saw Tessa watching, and almost smiled. "You didn't come alone. Good."
"You sent the messages?"
"I did. There are things I can discuss openly, and things that have cost people their jobs. I prefer to know the difference before I begin."
She handed Mara the poster tube. Inside were large engineering drawings, each stamped with revision numbers. The first showed the proposed Tidal Gate wall beside the new marina. The second, dated two months earlier, showed channels extending beneath Maple Street. Some of the channels were marked for removal. A third drawing included a red arrow pointing toward East Quay's residential blocks.
"The public version uses a model with the western culvert assumed clear," Anika explained. "It hasn't been clear for twenty years. The city knows. The developer knows. The investment committee might not. When they close the old canal entrance, stormwater backs up into the neighborhood."
Mara examined the dates. "How did you get these?"
"I reviewed the first model. Then they reassigned me. I retained my own annotations, but I don't have authority to release the city's current files. These are copies of records already circulated to contractors. I'm trying to obtain the original through the proper channels."
She spoke carefully, like someone who had practiced every word against the possibility of cross-examination. Mara felt the same warning beneath her own ribs. It would be easy to rush toward a dramatic accusation, especially after the video. It would be harder to verify every mark on the paper.
"Why contact me?" she asked.
"Because Dr. Lin asked the right question, and you translated it. Because people will now listen to you for a week, maybe two, before they find somebody else. And because I know what your mother would do with that attention."
Mara looked away across the water. Ruth had been a public-school teacher, never a saint. She misplaced her keys, yelled when the bus was late, and sometimes forgot dinner while preparing students for examinations. But she had never believed that information belonged only to those who understood the meeting's official language.
"I don't know engineering," Mara said.
"Then don't pretend you do. Find engineers who can explain this independently. Ask for the raw assumptions. Ask whose homes were counted."
Anika pressed a business card into her hand. "The public hearing is in twelve days. The environmental comment period closes in nine. Those are the dates that matter."
Before Mara could ask another question, the woman stepped into the boarding crowd. Tessa crossed the concourse and peered inside the tube.
"I'm guessing those aren't concert posters."
"No. And now I need a lawyer, an engineer, and possibly a week of unpaid leave."
Tessa handed her a sandwich. "You can start with breakfast. Strategy is worse when you're hungry."
On the bus home, Mara unfolded one smaller sheet from the tube. Anika had circled a name on the engineering firm's approval line: D. BROOKS. The letters were machine printed, followed by a signature resembling her father's, though it could not possibly have been his. Daniel had never worked as a civil engineer.
She stared until the bus passed her stop. There might be another D. Brooks in Port Alder. There might be hundreds. Still, the sight of that name in red ink made the entire question of the floodwall feel suddenly personal.