Wednesday

Garrett didn't call the police. He didn't say much else at all — he grabbed his keys back off the counter and left, tires spitting gravel the same way they'd arrived, and I spent the next two hours on the phone instead of breathing normally.

Foster Higgins, the elder-law attorney Priya had put me onto, moved fast once I laid it out for him. "Fabricated tax debt, a shell-company buyer controlled by the person holding power of attorney, a documented APS complaint, and a below-market sale price — that's about as clean a fraud case as I've seen in twenty years," he said. "I'll file an emergency petition to suspend the POA and get an injunction on the closing. Should hold it past Friday, easy."

"Should?"

"Courts move slow, Mr. Boyd. Crooks don't always wait for them."

I didn't love that answer, and I liked it even less three hours later, sitting in my rental car outside the county recorder's office, when my phone rang and Priya's name came up.

"He's there," she said, breathless, like she'd been running. "I drove by to check on her — I still do that sometimes, off the clock — and there's a car in the driveway I don't recognize, and Garrett's, and I looked through the front window and there's a woman with a laptop and a stamp sitting at the kitchen table with your aunt."

"That's a mobile notary."

"Terrence, the closing's not supposed to be until Friday."

"I know."

"It's Wednesday."

I was already moving before she finished the sentence, keys in one hand, phone wedged against my shoulder, Higgins' unfiled emergency petition sitting uselessly on a court clerk's desk somewhere behind me because paperwork doesn't outrun a man in a hurry to steal a house before anyone can stop him.

"Don't let them finish," I said. "Whatever you do, don't let her sign anything before I get there."

"I'm not going in there alone, Terrence. He'll—"

The line cracked, went thin, then dead. Whether it was a bad signal or something else, I didn't have time left to wonder.