"Karen Vance is using them," I said, staring at the floor. "She's manufacturing HOA liens to force my house into auction. She needs my lot."
"Arthur, you need to go to the police. If they assaulted you..."
"The police won't do anything by Friday, Mike. And she knows it."
I hung up the phone. I stood up and walked to the small, grimy window at the back of my garage that looked directly out at Karen’s massive backyard.
I needed to see what she was protecting. Why the rush? Why next Friday?
Through the dusty glass, I could see the massive, unpermitted construction project Karen had been hiding behind high privacy fences. It wasn't just a patio. She was building a massive outdoor commercial kitchen and entertainment pavilion. It was built inches from my property line, explicitly violating city fire codes.
And right in the center of it, situated inside the open bay of her three-car garage, was a massive, commercial-grade BBQ grill and smoker. It was the size of a small car, hooked up to a terrifying array of high-pressure propane tanks and natural gas lines that snaked amateurishly across the floor.
Karen was standing in the garage, wearing her red dress, gesturing wildly to a man in a sharp grey suit. A developer. She was hosting a daytime walkthrough, trying to secure financing based on the property she was planning to steal from me.
Marcus and the two guards were lounging near the front of the garage, drinking bottled water, looking utterly bored.
I watched as Karen walked over to the massive commercial grill. She was trying to show off. I could see her turning the heavy brass valves on the high-pressure gas lines.
But I was a mechanic. Even from fifty feet away, through a dirty window, I could see she was doing it completely wrong.
She wasn't opening the regulator valve first. She was cranking the main pressure lines wide open while the ignition chamber was sealed. The pressure gauge on the side of the tank visibly spiked. She kept turning it, frustrated that the pilot light wasn't clicking on. She was flooding the enclosed stainless-steel chamber with highly pressurized, uncombusted gas.
"Don't hit the igniter," I whispered to the empty room, my heart suddenly jumping into my throat. "Do not hit the spark."
Through the window, Karen slammed her fist down on the electronic ignition button.
The explosion didn't sound like a movie. It didn't roar. It cracked.
It was a deafening, concussive BOOM that physically shook the concrete floor of my garage. The pressure wave shattered the dirty glass window right in front of my face, sending a shower of glass fragments raining down onto my workbench.
I threw my arms up, stumbling backward as the shockwave hit my chest, sending a sickening jolt of pain through my broken ribs.
I lowered my arms and stared out the broken window.
Karen’s garage was gone.
The massive commercial grill had detonated with the force of a small bomb. The heavy stainless-steel doors had been blown completely off their hinges, acting like shrapnel. The entire first floor of her new addition was instantly engulfed in a violent, roaring wall of orange and black fire. Thick, toxic black smoke began pouring into the sky.
I saw the grey-suited developer crawling through the grass, bleeding from his forehead, scrambling blindly toward the street.
But where was Karen?
I strained my eyes against the blinding glare of the flames. Inside the burning shell of the garage, a massive oak support beam—the main structural xà gồ that held up the second floor—had snapped in half from the blast. It had collapsed downward into the fire.
And pinned beneath it, trapped entirely inside the burning structure, was Karen.
She was screaming. A high, terrified, primal sound that cut right through the roaring of the flames. The heavy oak beam had crushed her legs, pinning her to the concrete floor. The bright red silk of her dress was covered in soot, and the flames from the ruptured gas lines were crawling across the floor, moving inches closer to her with every passing second.