Chapter 2 - The Setup
The walk back to my house was quiet. The evening sun cast long shadows across the perfectly manicured lawns of Pine Valley. To the untrained eye, it was suburban paradise. To me, it was a tactical grid, and Evelyn Cross had just declared war.
When I unlocked my front door, Leo practically tackled me. My ten-year-old son buried his face in my jacket, shaking. My sister, Sarah, who had rushed over from her clinic, stood in the hallway with her arms crossed, her eyes blazing with protective fury.
"They just let you go?" Sarah asked, pulling me into a hug over Leo's head.
"For now," I said, ruffling Leo's hair. "You did perfectly today, buddy. You stayed inside, you locked the door, and you called Aunt Sarah. I'm proud of you."
"That man with the crowbar... he was going to hit the ramp," Leo mumbled.
"He’s not going to touch our house again," I promised, my voice hardening. I looked up at Sarah. "Did they leave the notice?"
Sarah pointed to the kitchen counter. A bright red envelope with the HOA seal sat next to the fruit bowl. I opened it. It was a formal declaration of intent to place a lien on the property for "gross negligence, assault on a vendor, and unapproved architectural modifications."
"She’s demanding fifty thousand dollars in damages and fines by Friday, or they foreclose," Sarah read over my shoulder, her voice trembling with anger. "Tom, she can't do this. You have permits for that wheelchair lift. You need it for your shoulder and your knee."
"She knows that," I said, walking into my home office and turning on my encrypted desktop. "She doesn't want the money. She wants the house. The fifty thousand is a number she knows a retired military single father supposedly can't pay in three days."
I logged into a secure server, a leftover perk from my days working with the DOJ task force. "But she made a mistake. She assumed I was a civilian who would panic. Instead, she just handed me the paper trail."
I dialed a D.C. area code. It rang twice.
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"Sterling," a gruff voice answered. It was Marcus Vance, lead prosecutor for the DOJ's real estate fraud division. "Tell me you aren't dismantling another crime syndicate, Tom. I'm still doing the paperwork on the last one."
"Clear your desk, Marcus," I said, a cold smile touching my lips. "I’ve got a localized racketeering ring in my neighborhood. And they just kicked in my front door."
