Chapter 5 - The Velvet Eviction
"You did this," Chloe spat, taking two aggressive strides toward me. Her manicured fingernails were curled into claws. "You called the city from Alaska!"
"I didn't call anyone, Chloe," I said calmly, setting the yellow notice down next to my car keys. "You did this to yourself. You’ve been running an illegal hotel in a quiet suburban cul-de-sac with four cars parked on the lawn every weekend and drunken bachelorette parties howling in the hot tub. Did you honestly think the retired neighborhood watch captains on Willow Creek Lane wouldn't notice?"
"Shut up! Just shut your mouth!" Chloe turned toward Jason, who was now clutching his head in his hands at the dining table. "Get off your ass, Jason! Call Amber! Tell her we need the notary here right now. If we get the deed recorded at the county clerk's office before noon, the LLC becomes the owner of record, and the city notice has to be re-served under the corporate entity! It buys us another ninety days!"
"Are you insane?" Jason wailed, looking up with red, bloodshot eyes. "The city is outside right now! And Maya hasn't signed the deed! You can't record an unsigned deed!"
Chloe’s gaze snapped toward the blue folder on the table.
There was a look in her eyes that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up—a reckless, feral desperation.
"She doesn't need to sign it," Chloe whispered.
The room went dead silent.
Jason froze. "Chloe... what are you talking about?"
"Amber has her stamp," Chloe said, her voice dropping into a rapid, manic clip. "She’s my best friend. We’ve done this before on three estate liquidations in Round Rock. Nobody verifies signatures at the county clerk’s recording desk, Jason! They just verify the notary seal and the ten-dollar filing fee! Once it’s stamped, recorded, and indexed in the county database, the burden of proof is on *her* to hire a forensic handwriting expert and sue us in Travis County District Court to unwind the title! That takes two years! Two years, Jason! By then, the cash-out refi will have cleared, the crypto debts will be paid, and we’ll be in Costa Rica!"
Jason looked at his wife as if seeing her for the first time. "That’s... that’s felony wire fraud, Chloe. That’s grand deed forgery. That’s ten to twenty years in Huntsville."
"It’s twenty years in prison or your kneecaps broken by loan sharks by Friday night!" Chloe screamed, smashing her fist against the kitchen counter. "Which one do you prefer, you pathetic coward?!"
I didn't wait for Jason’s answer.
I picked up the blue folder from the dining table, clutched it to my chest, and backed toward the front door.
"Give me those papers!" Chloe shrieked, lunging toward me.
She was fast, but I had spent eight months wrestling two-hundred-pound pipeline workers undergoing delirium tremens in the back of moving ambulances. When she reached for the folder, I pivoted sharply, caught her right wrist with my left hand, and twisted her arm down into a standard arm-bar control hold.
Chloe gasped in shock, her face pressed down against the edge of the entryway console table.
"Listen to me very carefully, Chloe," I whispered in her ear, applying just enough pressure on her radial nerve to keep her pinned without leaving a mark. "I am an emergency room trauma nurse. I know exactly how many pounds of pressure it takes to dislocate an elbow. If you take one more step toward me, you are going to spend the next six hours in the Dell Seton waiting room waiting for an orthopedic consult. Do you understand me?"
"Let go of me, you psychotic bitch!" she wheezed.
I shoved her forward toward the couch. She stumbled, falling onto the cushions, panting and clutching her wrist.
Jason was on his feet, holding his hands up in panic. "Maya! Stop! Please! Don't call the police! We’re family! We can work this out!"
"Family?" I unlocked the front door and pulled it open to the bright morning sun. "You stopped being my family the second you planned to forge my name to save your own skin."
I stepped out onto the porch, pulled my phone from my pocket, and dialed a number I had memorized during my flight from Fairbanks.
It wasn't 911.
It was Detective Marcus Reed, Travis County Sheriff’s Office—Special Financial Crimes Division. A man whose daughter’s life I had saved two years ago when she was rushed to my Austin ER in anaphylactic shock from an undiagnosed peanut allergy.
May you like
"Marcus?" I said when the call connected on the second ring. "It’s Maya Torres. I’m at my house. And I have an active title theft and deed forgery in progress."
***
