FADE IN: EXT. TWO LANE ROAD, APPALACHIAN FOREST, DAY Late October. Old growth forest presses against both shoulders of a road that was two lanes a mile ago and is now barely one and a half. The canopy is amber and rust and the light comes through in broken columns that shift with the wind. The trees are close enough to scratch paint. A silver sedan moves through the corridor of color at a speed that suggests the driver has somewhere to be and the road disagrees. The window is cracked two inches. Woodsmoke enters the car before any building is visible, a smell that belongs to a place that has not appeared yet. Inside the car, NORA CALLOWAY (34) drives with both hands on the wheel. She is lean, precise in her movements, dressed in a canvas jacket and jeans that read city practical rather than mountain practical. Her hair is pulled back and her face carries the particular tension of a woman who has been clenching her jaw for three hundred miles without noticing. On the passenger seat: a manila folder of paperwork, a phone showing three missed calls from an unsaved number, and a printed Google Maps direction that ends in a grey void four miles back where the GPS signal died. The phone screen reads NO SERVICE. The radio hisses. Nora clicks it off. The cabin fills with engine noise and the sound of leaves scraping the windshield.