by Zoe Chant
She'd never had sex like this before in her life. It wasn't just Alan's skill as a lover, although he was amazing. It went deeper than the physical pleasure she felt. There was a sense of connection every time their bodies met.
She couldn't imagine having this and then giving it up. But she had no idea what she was going to do when her two weeks were up. Don't think about it now, she told herself, shying away from the wrenching pain she felt in her chest every time she imagined boarding that plane on Sunday. They'd figure something out.
After a while, the cooling evening air and the fresh breeze on her face woke her from her thoughts. When the horses picked up their pace on the last stretch of road, eager to get home to their food, Alan let them fall into an easy canter.
Jessica had loved this from the first time she'd done it, the feeling of speed, the horse's hooves pounding away beneath her. They were both flushed and laughing when they arrived on the farm. And then they rounded the last corner to the stall, and Alan pulled Arrow up so sharply Grace almost ran into them.
"Nina? Joel? What's going on?" Alan asked, all the levity gone from his voice.
Jessica looked up to see the two of them huddled together on the bench in front of the stall. Nina was pale as a sheet, clutching a newspaper, huddled into Joel's arm around her shoulders. There were tears in the corner of Joel's eyes.
Nina held up a copy of the Mountainville Herold, crumpled around the edges where she was holding it in white-knuckled hands. Her voice shook. "Octane International, the big oil company, they say they've bought the land up on Kingshead and they found a shale gas well below the caves. They want to start fracking. They say everyone within several miles of the foot of the mountain is going to need to be relocated. That… That means we'll lose the farm, too, right?"
***
Alan held the paper with hands gone numb. Between the lines, beneath a thin veneer of journalistic neutrality, he could tell that the editors were as shocked as he was. No one had seen this coming. Octane had somehow leapfrogged the usual process, gotten approval for this whole project without town hall meetings, without even informing the resident of Mountainville, without any of the things that were supposed to happen before a decision of this magnitude.
The article went on to talk about the environmental impact of fracking, the pollution, the risk of contaminating the area's water supply. But Alan could hardly read the words through the red haze in his vision. It was all he could do to hold back the bear that wanted to come roaring out of him.
"But—they can't just do that, can they?" Joel asked, echoing Alan's own thoughts. He looked up to find Joel fixing Jessica with a pleading look in his eyes. "They can't, right? This can't be legal?"
"That's not the right question to ask," Jessica said. Alan startled a little at the calm, implacable tone of her voice. Unlike all the rest of them, Jessica didn't look scared, or angry, or even shocked—but there was a fierce gleam in her eyes that kindled a new hope in his chest.
"The law's what you make of it," Jessica said. "There's always a loophole somewhere. And if you're a multi-national oil company with a couple hundred lawyers on retainer, there's loopholes everywhere. Whether this is legal probably depends on who's looking at it, and how."
She took the paper from Alan's hands."What you need to ask is, who's going to fight them? I mean, look at who's affected by this. Maybe a couple dozen small town farmers who are struggling as it is. Octane's one of the richest companies in the world. If you take them to court, they've got the resources to tie you up in lawsuits for a decade. Who could afford to get into a fight like that? It'd take a billionaire."
And with that Alan finally recognized what the gleefully malicious spark in her eyes was all about.
"And Octane doesn't know there's a billionaire here," he said. "They're in for a surprise." He felt the corners of his mouth twitching up to match Jessica's shark-like grin. "You really think we can fight this?"
"Fight it? Sure," Jessica said. "Win it, that's a different question entirely. But we can certainly tie them up in litigation for a decade, and that's a decade where no one will be mining anything, and they'll be paying taxes on a big patch of land that's gaining them nothing but a bunch of expensive lawsuits and bad press from environmentalists. At some point, they're going to be the ones asking if this fight is really worth all the money and trouble."
She grinned. "So, what do you think? Want to pick a fight with an oil giant with more money than God?"
There was a wild look in her eyes, a core of steel suddenly showing through beneath her gentle exterior. Alan found himself imagining her as she might have been if this were a less civilized kind of fight, an Amazon calling her troops to battle with that look in her eyes. Alan would have gladly followed her into battle. He'd follow her to the ends of the Earth.
"What do we need to do?" he asked.
"First of all, we'll need a temporary injunction. These people are moving quickly." She tapped the newspaper. "It says here they want to start construction for a new road on the 15th already." She tilted her head, considering. Alan could all but see the wheels turning in her mind. He couldn't take his eyes off her. "I'm going to need access to the town archives."
Alan took her hand. "Then let's go to the library."
***
Alan watched with interest as Jessica pulled out reference material, stacking tome after tome around herself. She started working through the research, tearing through book after book quickly and systematically, flipping from indices to various chapters and back, skimming for relevant passages. Occasionally she'd pause to look something up on the internet, or go back to a book she'd already discarded.
He set up his own laptop and tried to force himself to get some work done. But he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from her. This was Jessica in her element, her face transformed with concentration, a triumphant gleam in her eyes every time she found something useful. She had a quickly-growing list of notes in front of her, full of page numbers and citations.
Sometime around eight Mabel, the librarian, tapped him gently on the shoulder.
"We really need to close for the night soon," she said, looking uncertainly at Jessica, who was so absorbed she hadn't even noticed the interruption, four books open in front of her at the same time.
Alan drew Mabel aside. "We need to talk," he said.
Five minutes later he came back with the key to the library.
"You take as long as you need, honey," Mabel told Jessica, who looked up, startled, seeming to realize that they weren't alone for the first time. Mabel was already marching towards the door. "And you stick it to those bastards!" she called back over her shoulder, just before the door fell shut between them.
Alan blinked in surprise. Mabel was usually more the soft-spoken sort.
Around midnight he finally forced himself to settle down and get some real work done, and after that he lost all sense of the passage of time. So he was surprised to realize that it was half past four already when Jessica suddenly raised her head with a shark-like grin and said "Gotcha" in a tone of deep satisfaction.
"Did you find something?" Alan asked.
"Something even better than I was hoping for," Jessica said. "So the land rights to Kingshead mountain were sold to Octane by William Smith, who inherited it from his aunt, Maria Faith Smith. We knew that much already."
Alan nodded. It had been mentioned in the newspaper coverage.
"Look at this," Jessica said. She gently spread an old book open in front of him, yellowing pages and a cracking leather cover. "Maria inherited the land from her grandfather, Zaccharias Philippe Smith—except his will contained a clause which basically comes down to, if the land is ever sold, by her or any of her heirs, the community of Mountainville gets right of first refusal. And it names a price per hectare here, too."
Alan peered over her shoulder. "That's cheap even for farmland," he said, surprised.
"Well, I don't suppose Zaccharias thought the land would ever be very valu
able," Jessica said "You can't really build up there, it's all steep slopes on porous sandstone—you told me yourself, the snowmelt washes out new caves every spring, and there's collapses all the time. You can maybe let some cows or sheep graze up there, but that's about it."
"I guess Smith had a good reason to try and let that clause fall under the table," Alan said. "I'm sure Octane paid him a lot more than that."
"But since he didn't offer first refusal to Mountainville, the entire sale's invalid," Jessica said, her lips twitching up into a grin.
"So… that's it?" Alan asked, stunned. "It's over? Just like that?"
"Oh, no," Jessica said. She leaned back in her chair, ticking points off on her fingers as she spoke. "First of all, they're going to dispute the authenticity of the will. They're not going to get far with that, because, and this is the best part, one of the original copies of the will is archived right here at the library. Then, they're going to dispute the validity—you know, try and proof it doesn't hold up under current law, or maybe Zaccharias wasn't in his right mind at the time… And after that, they're going to try and find a loophole in the law, or bribe enough people to get a new one passed."
That sounded like a hell of a lot of complications to Alan, but the little grin hadn't left Jessica's face. This was her element—she enjoyed this kind of fight, Alan realized all over again.
"I told you, this isn't going to be easy," Jessica said. "It'll be one hell of a fight. But with this, we've got them dead to rights. It's going to take time, but that's time they're not going to be building anything on our mountain. We've got time. They don't. We can win this, Alan."
Alan found himself reaching out, buoyed on a wave of hope and love and relief. He yanked her into his arms and kissed her breathless. "You did it," he said. "You saved us." And then he kissed her again and again, until she was gasping breathlessly into his mouth; until she finally drew back, laughing.
"Well, mostly I've gotten you embroiled in a lengthy expensive lawsuit, so don't thank me yet." But her eyes were crinkling with mirth at the corners.
"So what happens now?" Alan asked.
"Well, first of all we're going to have to file the temporary injunction. I've got enough here to work with that I should be able to write something up by Friday. After that, the judge is almost certainly going to suspend construction at the site. Octane will have two weeks to respond. And after that, the real fun starts. You're going to have to file a lawsuit. But, well. You're going to need an actual law firm to do that part."
Because she's going to be back in NYC by then, Alan thought, his chest clenching. But they still had half a week to go, he reminded himself. They'd find some sort of solution, they'd make this work. Now that he'd found his mate, he wasn't ever going to lose her again.
Jessica covered a yawn with her hand. Alan's body forcefully reminded him that it was almost five in the morning. He suppressed a yawn of his own. In an hour or two, the first birds would start to sing.
"What time is it?" Jessica asked. She seemed to be flagging as quickly as he was now that the rush of excitement had passed.
"Way past time to be in bed," Alan said. "Come on, let's get this cleaned up and then I'll drive you home."
***
It took Jessica the rest of the week to prepare the injunction. She'd spend all morning at the library, come home, take a quick break for lunch, and then continue her research on the internet. If she wanted to get this done before she had to leave, there wasn't going to be much time for anything else. Which meant the only quality time she really got to spend with Alan were the evenings, cutting what little precious time they had left down even more.
But Alan never once complained, or got impatient with her preoccupation. He'd sit quietly beside her while she worked, his laptop in front of him, focused on his own work for NavTech.
It was amazing how much of a difference it made, having his quiet supportive presence beside her, being able to look up and see him quietly making notes, or paging through a report with a tiny wrinkle of concentration between his brows. Occasionally they'd catch each other's eyes and share a smile before sinking back down into their work.
She could so easily imagine spending the rest of her life like this, sharing Alan's sunny home office, the two of them working side by side.
And then it was Friday, and she was done.
Jessica hesitated one last time before entering the courthouse, looking down at the manila envelope in her hands. It felt strange to know that she'd been the only lawyer working on this. With the firm, a senior partner would at least glance at everything that went out.
But then, this didn't have to cover every facet of the case. It was only a temporary injunction. All it needed to do was buy enough time for Alan to file a proper lawsuit, to get some press out here to Mountainville, and to start gathering community support for their case.
They had a celebratory dinner when she was done, sharing an enormous bowl of mussels in Mountainville's cozy little Italian restaurant and getting pleasantly tipsy on red wine, and then fell into bed together to continue their celebration a little more privately.
***
Jessica woke up to her phone ringing. She fished it off her nightstand, blinking sleep from her eyes. 07:30, said the clock beside the bed. Squeak was still asleep, curled up into a tidy ball on top of the covers.
Jessica reached out blindly for her phone. Alan had left early in the morning to check on the farm. He'd said he'd wake her up when he was done, but he couldn't have been gone for even a full hour; it seemed much too early for him to be calling.
"Hello?" she said, her voice still slightly blurry with remnants of sleep.
"Jessica? This is Martha."
And with all the instant clarity of being unexpectedly drenched in ice water, Jessica was awake.
Martha Jones, senior partner at Seaborn, Eccleston & Chase. Her job. Which she hadn't so much as spared a single thought for the entire last week. While she'd picked a legal fight with a multinational oil company without even notifying her employers, never mind asking for permission. And until the moment she'd heard Martha's voice on the phone right now, she hadn't once paused to consider what the senior partners would think about that.
"Did I wake you up? I'm sorry, I know you're on vacation, but I hope you brought your laptop with you. Can you get on Skype? There's some things I need to talk to you about. Face to face," Martha said. Jessica could barely hear her voice over the rushing in her ears.
"Yes. Thirty minutes?" she said numbly.
Jesus, what had she been thinking?
Except now that Jessica thought about it, she realized she'd been lying to herself, and she'd done it so well she hadn't even realized she was doing it. She hadn't wanted to consider what the senior partners would think. Alan had needed her, so she'd helped. It'd been as simple as that, an instinct deeper and more powerful than conscious thought. He'd needed her, and there was no possible scenario where she could imagine herself turning away from that. She hadn't asked, because if they'd told her no, she'd have done it anyway.
And even now, facing whatever consequences Martha was going to bring down on her, she couldn't bring herself to regret it. She thought of the joy and relief on Alan's face when the judge had granted the temporary injunction, and knew she'd do it again.
It was a frightening thought. Her career had always been so important to her. She'd sacrificed everything else in her life for her job. Her free time, her friendships, her chance at a family. But she couldn't sacrifice Alan. She wouldn't. And if that cost her her job—
Jessica swallowed hard. Her throat felt tight.
There were other law firms in NYC. She'd be starting from the ground up if she ever wanted to make partner, she'd lose all the goodwill she'd worked so hard to gain—
She couldn't regret it. But God, she was scared out of her mind.
Thirty minutes, she'd told Martha, which gave her just enough time to have a quick shower and put some make-up on. She dug the only suit
she'd brought out of the back of the closet. After two weeks in jeans and t-shirts, the pressed linen of her suit felt strange, as if she was a snake trying to slip back into a skin she'd outgrown.
Even her own face looked strange and unfamiliar behind the mask of professional make-up. Jessica took one last deep breath, straightened her lapels, and activated Skype.
"Jessica! You look great! How's your vacation going?" Martha said.
Jessica wished she could read something into Martha's tone of voice, but as usual Martha's perfect professional mask didn't show anything she didn't want to show, and right now all she saw there was neutral friendliness.
"It's been great. Very relaxing," she said. She felt like every cell in her body was vibrating with tension. If Martha would just get to the point…
"Well, I'm sorry I have to disturb you on your last weekend! But I've got some news that I figured you'd probably want to hear sooner rather than later."
"Of course," Jessica said, knowing her voice sounded a little shaky despite her best attempts.
"While you were gone, Seaborn, Ecclestone and I sat down to review the work you've done for the firm," Martha said.
Under the table, where the webcam wouldn't pick it up, Jessica's hands clenched into nervous fists.
"And then of course we found out about you contracting with NavTec during your vacation. Without permission from the firm, I might add," Martha said, her voice sharpening. Jessica flinched minutely. "We all agreed that we've got a decision to make, and I don't want you to think we were taking it lightly," Martha added.
If Martha drew out the suspense another minute, Jessica was going to snap, she thought. Hell, even if they were going to fire her for going off on her own, all she wanted right now was to have this conversation over with and the uncertainty off her chest. And then hopefully to get off the Skype call quickly, so she could burst into tears without anyone seeing her. And then start thinking about how she'd pick up the pieces of her professional life in peace.