Page 22 of To Match A Dragon's Fire

Our old college crash house. The one I’d moved into for the last six months of my senior year, barely scraping up enough to cover rent with Riley and Willow splitting the bills while we partied like the seniors we were.

We didn’t get our rental deposit back.

“How do you—”

“713 Daisy Court, Apartment B.”

Gerald’s house.I gasped, holding the pistol steady as I took a cautious step back. “Are you stalking me?”

“42… No.” He frowned, pausing his rant. “Well… Yes. In a way, but not because I wanted to. You never stay in one place for long.”

“How do you know that?” I asked, ignoring the jab. I wouldn’t be shamed into apologizing for how I lived my life when I was dealing with my grief.

“2343 C. Sunset Cliffs Avenue, San Diego.” The stalker pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing as if I were the one giving him a headache.

I had a flashback to the few glorious months I’d spent on the beach with Kevin before he’d gotten all weird and tried to get me to join a cult.

“Is there a point to this?” I looked to my bare wrist. “You’re down to five minutes and you still need to pack.”

“My point is that my legal team has been sending notices over the past decade to every address you’ve stayed at for longer than five minutes.”

The disgust in his tone had my instincts screaming to defend myself. I wasn’t flighty. I’d spent years discovering who I was after my whole world had been crushed.

But I didn’t dignify him with a response. This trespasser and apparent stalker had no right to my history.

“Notices for what?” I growled, stepping to the side and blocking the view of my Bronco with my body as he tried to look past me.

“I was hoping to be amicable by giving you notice to come retrieve your belongings off my property,” he said.

I almost shot him then and there. “Your property? This ismyproperty. I’ve been paying taxes on it for the past twelve years. You don’t get to just walk up here and build a house and claim it for your own. This isn’t the old Wild West. There are laws about squatters and trespassers.”

Granted, this was an expensive-looking squatter. It must’ve taken him years to build. Years where no one bothered to chase him off.

People in town would’ve known he was here. They hadn’t stood up for me. Not like I’d expected much different from anyone after the way things had gone down with the divorce.

But ouch.

“If you’d have been around or reachable, you would know the law is on my side. The government seized this land about a decade ago.” He dug the knife in deeper and twisted, saying the one thing that hurt more than anything else.

I wasn’t here.

Not for the end.

My dad was alone when he fell off the roof, making repairs to the childhood home I hadn’t seen in over a year. He died by himself in this yard. I wasn’t here to hear him call out for help if he did. In his last moments, he had no one.

I blinked back tears, glaring at the trespasser.

“That’s not legal. My father had a will. This land is in my name and I’ve never missed a payment to the county.” I didn’t like this—the way his words were starting to sound like the truth.

It wasn’t possible.

Not after everything I’d been through.

“Your father’s will is invalid.” The trespasser sighed as something like pity crossed his face. “Eminent domain took precedence here. This site is a matter of national security and, as such, it’s been seized and reallocated.”

I figured out why no one in town had stopped him. If he walked around there spitting words like he worked for the government, most of the people I grew up with would’ve shut the door in his face.

They didn’t much trust our absent leaders and hadn’t for long before the government failed us during the last few years of decline.

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