Chapter 4 - The Predator at the Door
The night air in West Baltimore was heavy with the scent of damp pavement and approaching rain when Maya finally clocked out at 7:30 PM.
Her body felt like a lead weight, every joint in her feet aching after thirty-two hours of near-continuous hospital labor across two days. She pulled her woolen coat tightly around her shoulders, keeping her head down as she stepped off the city bus three blocks from her apartment.
The streetlights along her block were flickering, casting long, distorted shadows across the rowhouses.
As she reached the narrow flight of wooden stairs leading to the apartment above the dry cleaner, she noticed the front door was slightly ajar.
A chill that had nothing to do with the autumn wind gripped her chest.
She hurried up the stairs, pushing the door open into the small kitchen.
Her mother, Linda, was standing against the refrigerator, clutching her worn Bible to her chest, her face pale with terror.
Sitting at the small laminate kitchen table was a heavyset man in a cheap leather jacket, chewing on a wooden toothpick, casually flipping through a stack of opened mail.
Beside him stood a younger man with tattoos creeping up his neck, leaning against the sink with his arms crossed.
“Who the hell are you?” Maya demanded, her voice shaking with adrenaline as she stepped between the men and her mother. “Get out of our apartment right now, or I’m calling the police!”
The man at the table smiled, revealing a row of crooked, stained teeth. He slid a plastic business card across the table.
“Carl Miller. Field investigator for Apex Recovery Solutions,” he said, his voice rough and grating. “And calling the police won't help you, Miss Brooks. Your father signed a personal guaranty with an acceleration clause. You’re sixty days delinquent on the settlement schedule.”
“My father died three years ago!” Maya shouted, her hands clenching into fists. “You cannot harass my mother in her own home! That is a violation of federal debt collection laws!”
Miller laughed, a harsh, mocking bark that made Linda flinch behind her daughter.
“Federal laws take eighteen months to litigate in city court, sweetheart,” Miller sneered, leaning forward on his elbows. “Meanwhile, tomorrow morning, our legal division files a wage garnishment against your employer at Harbor Medical. Fifty percent of every nursing paycheck will come straight to our desk.”
The blood drained from Maya’s face.
Fifty percent.
If they garnished her wages, they wouldn't even be able to cover the seven-hundred-dollar rent on this cramped apartment, let alone her mother’s heart medications.
“We agreed to two hundred a month,” Maya whispered, fighting back tears of humiliation and rage.
“The two-hundred-a-month agreement expired when the account was transferred to my desk,” Miller replied, tapping the table with a blunt fingernail. “We want five thousand dollars by five o'clock tomorrow, or we attach the lien to this building and serve your mother with an eviction summons.”
“This building doesn't belong to us!” Linda cried out from the corner.
“We’ll let the sheriff figure that out while your furniture sits on the sidewalk, lady,” the tattooed man near the sink chuckled cruelly.
Miller stood up, towering over Maya with an oily, intimidating smirk. He reached out a heavy, dirty hand to pat her cheek.
“You’re a pretty girl, Maya,” Miller purred. “Maybe you can find a wealthy doctor at that hospital to help you out with the down payment—"
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Before his fingers could touch her skin, the wooden door behind them exploded inward with a deafening crash.
A massive hand reached out of the hallway shadows, gripped Miller by the throat, and slammed the two-hundred-pound collector backward across the room, smashing him through the laminate kitchen table in a splintering shower of wood and broken chairs.
