Part 2
“Hands where I can see them,” Sarah said.
Curtis drew a pistol.
I grabbed Mrs. Bell and pulled her behind a folding table. Metal legs shrieked against the floor. Someone screamed.
Sarah was already moving.
She knocked his gun arm away from the crowd and drove him against the edge of the stage. They collided hard enough to shake the microphone stand. The pistol struck the floor.
I kicked it beneath an empty cabinet.
“Don’t touch it!” Sarah called.
One of Curtis’s men bolted for the exit. A deputy coming through the doorway caught him before he reached it. The other dropped to his knees with both hands raised.
Sarah held Curtis facedown until Lena took control and cuffed him.
“You tricked me,” he gasped.
Sarah stepped back, breathing hard.
“You brought a gun into a room full of your neighbors.”
Then she came straight to me.
“Are you hurt?”
I couldn’t answer. I kept looking at the spot where the pistol had landed.
She took my face between her hands.
“Owen. Look at me.”
I did.
Her cheek was bleeding where she’d struck the stage.
That tiny red line nearly broke me.
State investigators arrived within the hour. Sarah gave up her place at the center of the room and sat beside me while an agent named Patrick Ellis took our statements separately.
Across the clubhouse, Mrs. Bell kept twisting a tissue in her fingers.
“I signed it,” she whispered.
“Signed what?” I asked.
“The sale agreement. Curtis said the association could take my house if I didn’t pay the penalties.”
She had lived there thirty-one years.
I looked around. Two other neighbors were crying.
This wasn’t about our fence.
Ellis returned with a photograph on his tablet.
“Do you recognize this man?”
Curtis, younger, without the beard.
“His name is Russell Keene,” Ellis said. “He’s used several aliases. We’re still verifying the records, but there are prior impersonation and fraud cases.”
Sarah’s expression hardened.
“Who hired him?”
“We found payments from an acquisition company controlled by Grant Hollis.”
I knew that name.
Everyone did.
Hollis sponsored the county food drive. His smiling face appeared on real estate signs all over town.
“He bought Mrs. Bell’s house?” I asked.
“And two others through separate companies,” Ellis said. “We need the records before we can establish the whole arrangement.”
A sound escaped Sarah that wasn’t quite a laugh.
“He asked me for a photograph at a fundraiser last month.”
Then the clubhouse treasurer, a nervous man named Neil Foster, grabbed my elbow.
“Owen. The maintenance room. Now.”
I pulled away.
“If you know something, tell the investigator.”
Neil glanced toward the doors.
“I paid them.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“The board approved safety inspections,” he said. “That’s what the invoices called them. When I found the property payments, I made copies. Curtis caught me.”
Sarah signaled Ellis over.
Neil reached into his pocket and produced a small brass key.
“Copies are in my clubhouse locker. He said he’d go after my daughter if I talked.”
Ellis took the key and sent an agent with him.
I sat down hard.
Neil had helped us unload our moving truck. He’d carried the box containing our wedding dishes.
Sarah settled beside me.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“Thinking those notices were just a nuisance at first.”
“We both did.”
Her phone vibrated.
A security alert from our house.
We watched the live image together.
A man in a delivery jacket stood at our side gate. He opened it without hesitation, lifted a red fuel can, and disappeared toward the back porch.
My stomach dropped.
“The porch roof,” I said. “That connects to the house.”
Sarah handed the phone to Ellis and gave our address. He called dispatch immediately.
Then my own phone rang.
Unknown number.
Ellis nodded for me to answer on speaker.
A calm male voice filled the space between us.
“Your wife has made a terrible mistake, Mr. Bennett.”
Sarah went utterly still.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“You have something of mine. Tell your new friends to stop opening lockers.”
On Sarah’s screen, the man emerged from behind our house.
He was holding a lighter.
Part 3
“Dispatch has units approaching,” Ellis said quietly. “Stay on the line.”
I gripped the phone so hard my fingers hurt.
“What do you want?”
“The copies. The originals. Everything Foster stole.”
Sarah leaned close enough for the caller to hear her.
“There’s a camera on him, Grant.”
Silence.
Then: “You should have kept your little dispute private.”
The man on the screen cupped one hand around the lighter.
Blue light suddenly washed across our fence.
He looked toward the driveway, dropped the lighter, and ran. Another camera caught a deputy intercepting him beside our garage. He hit the ground. The red can rolled across the concrete.
