When Derek was finished, Wendy made her entrance. And make no mistake, Wendy Prescott did not walk into rooms; she entered them. She appeared in my garage doorway wearing white linen palazzo pants, a silk charmeuse blouse, and champagne Chanel slingback sandals that had no business within a hundred yards of a concrete slab, with sunglasses pushed up into her platinum hair like a crown she was temporarily storing. She surveyed my workshop the way a real estate developer surveys a condemned building, already bored by whatever small history was about to be erased. She picked up one of my grandfather's chisels—a half-inch bevel edge with a boxwood handle he'd shaped himself in 1962. She turned it over in her French-tipped fingers, examined it the way a woman examines a clearance rack blouse she has no intention of buying, and set it on the floor (not back in the cabinet, on the concrete next to a tire track and a smear of landscaping mud). Then she brushed her hands together, fingertip to fingertip, as if my grandfather's life's work had left a residue she needed to be rid of.
"That junk was in the way."
She pulled the overhead doors shut, locked the side entry with a bright brass padlock still in the packaging, and walked away on heels that clicked against the driveway like a metronome counting down to consequences she could not imagine. Phil told me he watched the whole thing from his front porch. He said Wendy looked over her shoulder, saw him watching, and waved a slow royal wave: three fingers, wrist rotation, the kind of wave you give to subjects from the window of a carriage. She was smiling. Of course, she was. Wendy Prescott was always smiling when she was destroying something.
I drove home on a Friday evening, late April. The sun was low behind the treeline, and the street was quiet in that 5:30 way that suburban neighborhoods get when everyone's inside starting dinner. I pulled into my driveway and looked at my garage. The first thing I noticed was the padlock: bright brass catching the daylight like a cheap earring. Not mine. I own Abloy padlocks: gray matte finish, engineered. This was a $12 Master Lock from the clearance bin—the kind of padlock Wendy Prescott would buy cheap where it mattered and expensive where it didn't.
I walked to the side entry and looked through the window. Three trucks. My workbench shoved sideways. My tool cabinet lying on its side. Sockets and chisels scattered like evidence at a crime scene. And the Triumph sitting there with a gouge in the tank that looked like someone had dragged a key across a painting.
I stood there for a full 60 seconds. I counted them. In the army, when you encounter an unexpected obstacle, you don't react; you assess, you identify the threat, you plan your breach, and you never ever let the enemy see you flinch—even when the enemy weighs 125 pounds, smells like Chanel No. 5, and signs documents in gold ink.
I went inside and pulled up the security camera footage. Four cameras cloud-uploaded recordings since day one. I watched Derek cut my padlock. I watched the tool cabinet crash open. I watched the Silverado door catch the Triumph's tank. I watched Wendy walk through in her silk blouse and designer sandals, pick up my grandfather's chisel, set it on the floor, and brush her hands clean of 60 years of family history.
Then I closed the laptop. I drove to the hardware store in Simpsonville. I bought three Abloy Protec2 padlocks (finish-engineered, drill-resistant, pick-resistant, bolt-cutter-proof, $212 each), three American Lock A748 hardened steel hasps, one Medico M3 high-security deadbolt for the side entry with a restricted keyway (no locksmith can duplicate the key without factory authorization), and 24 inches of case-hardened chain. Total cost: less than one of Wendy's handbags, but infinitely more useful.
I drove home and went to work. By 2:00 a.m., every entry point was secured with hardware that would require a cutting torch and 3 hours of sustained noise to defeat: carriage bolts with smooth dome heads on the outside (impossible to unscrew from the exterior), welded hinge pins on all three overhead doors, chain threaded through the roller brackets and padlocked at both ends. The only way into that garage was through me.
When I finished, I stood in the driveway and looked at my work the way I'd looked at forward operating bases in Kandahar. Three trucks sealed inside a military-grade lockdown. Somewhere inside, $30,000 of landscaping equipment sat in the dark, wondering why it had ever trusted a woman whose biggest qualification for leadership was a platinum AMX and a talent for bullying. I went to bed at 2:30. I slept better than I had in 11 days. Some people use melatonin. I use carriage bolts and finish engineering.
Phil Odum was on his porch at 6:00 a.m. when I walked out. He saw the new hardware: three gray padlocks where one brass one used to be, welded hinge pins gleaming dull silver. He nodded slowly, the way a man nods when he sees something that has been a long time coming.
"You locked them in."
"I secured my property, Phil."
He sipped coffee from a mug that said US Postal Service: Neither snow nor rain... "How long?"
"As long as it takes."
"Good."
Saturday morning, 6:45 a.m. Hour zero. Derek Prescott showed up at my side door with his truck keys and optimistic accessory when your car is behind more security than Fort Knox. He tried the side door: locked. He tried the brass padlock: gone (I'd cut it and dropped it in my recycling bin). He walked to the overhead doors, pulled. Nothing. The welded hinges didn't shift a millimeter. His face cycled through confusion, disbelief, and anger like a traffic light stuck on red. Then he rang my bell.
I opened the door holding my coffee. "Morning, Derek."
"Cole, I need my truck."