I laughed before I could stop myself. The sound felt strange in the open air. “You want HOA fees on empty prairie?”
Her perfume drifted toward me, lavender and something synthetic, clashing violently with sun-warmed grass and soil. “If you refuse, we’ll file liens. Contact county commissioners. Make things very difficult for you.”
She handed me a stack of printed emails, allegedly from the previous owner. The formatting was off. The timestamps didn’t line up. Anyone who’d spent a lifetime fixing machines knew a bad weld when they saw one.
“I’ll need actual legal documents,” I said.
Her smile tightened. “They’re filed with the county. You can look them up.”
Then she turned and walked back toward her mansion, heels clicking defiantly, leaving me standing in my own field with fake paperwork and a bad feeling crawling up my spine.
That wasn’t confusion. That wasn’t a neighbor misunderstanding property lines.
That was predatory.
I’d spent twelve years as a diesel mechanic in Montana, crawling under Peterbilts, breathing exhaust, hands permanently stained with grease no soap ever fully removed. I knew the smell of WD-40 better than cologne. I knew what it felt like to wake up with your spine compressed, knuckles swollen, lungs tight from fumes.
Three weeks earlier, I’d been under a semi when my phone buzzed. My grandfather was gone. He’d left me fifty thousand dollars.
Most people would’ve bought a new truck.
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