Chapter 11 - The Hunter Becomes the Hunted
Four months later.
The summer heat of Texas had given way to the crisp, golden winds of late October.
The Mendoza farm looked more beautiful than it ever had in my lifetime. The dilapidated wooden fences had been replaced with sturdy cedar posts, the chicken coops were newly renovated, and my father’s antique tractor had been replaced with a top-of-the-line John Deere that he proudly drove across the south pasture every morning at sunrise.
The thirty-five-million-dollar state easement agreement had closed without a single hitch. My father had set up an educational trust for all our extended family, established an endowment for rural farmers facing predatory corporate foreclosure across Central Texas, and finally retired his worn work boots.
I had moved back to San Antonio, renting a sunlit office suite downtown where I officially opened *Mendoza Bookkeeping & Financial Defense*. My experience with the Vance family had given me a new purpose in life: protecting small business owners and vulnerable rural families from predatory contracts and financial vultures.
The divorce had been finalized two weeks ago. Richard and Beatrice were currently awaiting sentencing at the Travis County Correctional Facility after pleading guilty to federal conspiracy and extortion charges.
Everything seemed settled. Peace had returned to our lives.
On a quiet Friday evening, I drove down to the farm to spend the weekend with my parents. The sky was an enormous expanse of violet and indigo, dotted with the first bright Texas stars.
I sat on the wooden porch swing with a mug of chamomile tea, listening to the crickets singing in the tall grass along the creek bed. Inside the house, my mother was humming an old hymn while baking a peach cobbler, the sweet scent of cinnamon wafting through the screen door.
Then, down at the end of our two-hundred-yard gravel driveway, the beam of two high-powered headlights cut through the darkness.
A sleek, unmarked black Cadillac Escalade turned off the county road, kicking up dust as it slowly crunched along the gravel toward the house.
I set my mug down on the porch table, my body tensing with immediate, instinctive alertness. My father stepped out through the screen door, holding his twelve-gauge shotgun casually in the crook of his arm, his eyes narrowing into the gloom.
“Expecting company, Clara?” he asked quietly.
“No,” I said, standing up from the swing.
The black SUV came to a halt fifty feet from the porch. The engine purred smoothly before shutting off, plunging the yard back into darkness save for our amber porch light.
The driver’s door opened. A tall, immaculate man in a charcoal bespoke suit stepped out, followed by a woman with sleek, silver-cropped hair wearing a dark trench coat.
They didn't look like process servers. They didn't look like police officers.
The woman walked forward, stopping just at the edge of the light cast by the porch lantern. She had piercing green eyes and held a thick leather binder stamped with a gold seal I didn't recognize.
“Good evening, Clara,” the woman said, her voice smooth, cultured, and unsettlingly familiar.
“Who are you?” my father called out, shifting the shotgun slightly. “This is private property.”
The woman offered a polite, chilly smile that sent an electric jolt of warning down my spine.
“I apologize for the late arrival, Mr. Mendoza,” she said, looking past my father directly into my eyes. “My name is Eleanor Sterling. I am the managing director of Sterling Global Assets in New York. And Mark Sterling’s estranged older sister.”
I froze. “What does this have to do with Mark?”
Eleanor opened the leather binder, drawing out an aged, yellowed document encased in archival plastic.
“Mark is a very talented attorney, Clara. He did an exceptional job ensuring Vance Capital took the fall for the state land fraud. But my brother only told you half the truth about why this land is so important.”
She took two steps closer to the porch stairs.
“The Vance family didn't discover Parcel 402 on their own four months ago, Clara. My family’s foundation has been tracking this specific deed for forty-five years. And according to the original 1884 Republic of Texas land grant titled to your great-grandfather...”
May you like
Eleanor paused, her green eyes fixing onto mine with chilling intensity.
“...the person who actually owns the controlling shares of the entire transit consortium isn’t the state, and it wasn’t Beatrice Vance. It’s you. And the men who were using the Vance family as their disposable front are arriving in San Antonio tomorrow morning.”
