"You don't understand who you're up against."
"Then explain it properly. I'm done with warnings that don't tell me what to do."
He took a breath. "My name is Nolan Pierce. I work at the hatchery. I reported the calibration fault. The production team kept the line moving, and management ordered your batch disposed of before the university's audit."
Kora held the phone tighter. "Why?"
"I don't know everything. I know they wanted Copper Crest gone from the books before somebody outside started asking why its viability reports looked so bad."
They spoke for another five minutes. Nolan refused to send documents while he was at work and said he would seek advice about how to disclose the records lawfully. Kora told him she would keep her records and avoid publishing claims she could not yet prove. She wrote his account in her notebook after the call, marking it as an unverified statement rather than a fact, because she could still hear Leah reminding her that suspicion and proof were not the same thing.
The following day a plain envelope appeared between the slats of her front gate. Inside was a photograph of the post she had deleted, the V-17 stamp circled in red, and a sentence typed on white paper: THE EGGS BELONG TO HARRINGTON. THEY ALWAYS WILL. Kora stood in the driveway reading the words while her old hens scratched beneath the fence. She had been more frightened by the bank's form letters, which at least identified who had sent them; the anonymity of this note carried a different kind of threat.
She called the county sheriff's non-emergency line and filed a report about the note and the unfamiliar vehicle. She did not expect the deputy to solve anything, but she wanted a dated record outside the farm. Then she called an attorney in town, Janet Vale, whose practice included agricultural contracts and small-business disputes. Janet asked her to bring the transfer document, the letters, and everything she had written down from the beginning.
"You have a lot of eggs to account for," Janet said after Kora explained the situation.
"Hopefully birds soon."
"Let's hope so. But we're going to prepare for the possibility that somebody comes after the birds no matter what happens inside the shells."
The twenty-seventh day arrived with no hatching. Kora paced from one incubator to the next, checking the humidity and trying not to touch the doors unnecessarily. Leah reminded her that eggs could be delayed by the cold period and that a quiet tray did not necessarily mean a dead one. Kora knew the words were reasonable; that knowledge did not stop the fear.
That evening Fletcher Wynn left another voicemail. The bank's appraiser would contact her to arrange a site visit. The foreclosure process was moving according to schedule, he said, and he hoped she would not interpret the administrative steps as unwillingness to consider a verified cure. Kora replayed the message while she stood beside the cabinet holding Walter's manual, feeling the strange cruelty of a calendar that did not care whether anything alive was struggling toward daylight.