Katrina Wilde's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Katrina Wilde had a folder full of accusations and no proof. She kept it in her kitchen, next to the tank where her boa slept and the tub where her baby alligator paddled. For weeks she had chased one thing: the town official who signed off on illegal wildlife trades. He hid every deal behind clean paperwork. Last Tuesday someone called animal control on her boa. She was certain the official sent them. But certainty was not evidence. Without a document tying his name to the trades, her word was just a rescuer's grudge. So she drove to Miretown Hall. The town records lived there, in a damp back room behind the mayor's office. If the official filed his fake permits anywhere, they filed them there. The records clerk turned her away. Sealed, she was told. Only the mayor could open them. Katrina found Mayor Tiana Beaumont in the front hall. The mayor wore a sharp navy suit and gold at her throat, dressed like she ran a nation instead of a swamp town. Katrina had met her once, at a flooding hearing. The mayor had listened then. She hoped that still counted. "I need the wildlife permit records," Katrina said. "Someone in your office is signing off on trades that break the law." Tiana studied the dye stains layered in Katrina's hair. "That's a serious thing to say. Name him." Katrina named him. The mayor did not flinch. "He works for me. You have proof?" "That's why I'm here. It's in your sealed records." Tiana was quiet a moment. Then something in her face shifted, went smaller and more direct. "People have been disappearing from my town. Quiet. No bodies. No notes. I've wondered who moves things through here without me seeing." She looked at the record room door. "Permits could hide more than animals." She unlocked the room herself. They worked by lamplight for an hour. Katrina pulled every trade permit the official had signed. Most looked fine. Then she found one dated the day before her boa was reported. It licensed a shipment of exotic skins. The buyer's name was listed. The signature was his. And clipped behind it was a shipping receipt, paid in cash, routed through a private dock. Katrina held it up. "This is it. His name, his signature, an illegal shipment. He can't call this a rumor." Tiana took the page and read it twice. "That's proof," she said. "That's the first proof I've had of anything." Then the mayor's jaw tightened. "But he'll know the records were opened. My clerk will tell him by morning. Whatever he's hiding, he'll start burning it tonight." Katrina stared at the receipt in the mayor's hand. She had her evidence at last. And she had just started a fire she could not put out.