CHAPTER 10
The houses built above Green Lake were well-spaced, each sitting on six to nine acres.
The properties were nestled deep into the trees so that many of the residents of the town didn’t even know people lived on the hill, let alone in mega-million dollar estates.
A solitary road snaked between the houses on the rise and the town below, which meant only one viable way in or out, a single-lane dirt path through dense California oak, cedar, and Douglas fir. Hiking trails crisscrossed the area since the private land abutted the forest. Most of the paths ran along “the river,” as the locals referred to it, although it could never have been much more than a wide, year-round stream.
Chaco considered the one serviceable road both a good thing and a bad thing—bad because, in emergencie
