Page 61 of Warrior Security
“He wasn’t watching. He’d consider such a thing way beneath him.”
She laughed, raw and warm and entirely her, and leaned into me. I put my arm around her, and we sat in the dirt beside thepaddock fence with the sky going dark above us and no reason to move yet.
We put ourselves back together eventually. She had a splinter in the material of her shirt. She pulled it out and held it up.
“I’m framing this,” she said.
I grinned. “You put that on a wall, and I’m denying everything.”
We finished settling the animals. I checked the water troughs while she did a head count in the barn, and when we met back at her front porch, the property was quiet and everything was where it belonged.
She held the door open. I walked through it, followed by Tova, who promptly settled on the kitchen floor, her chin on her paws, her tail giving one lazy sweep.
Lark set the check on the counter beside the coffeemaker and looked at it for a long moment. Then she turned off the kitchen light, took my hand, and led me down the hallway.
Chapter 18
Lark
I pulled the mail from the box at the end of the gravel drive and sorted through it standing in the road. Feed catalog. Electric bill. County assessor notice I’d deal with later. A postcard from a vet supply company offering fifteen percent off bulk orders, which went straight into my back pocket because fifteen percent off bulk was fifteen percent off bulk.
The second private booking had confirmed yesterday. Another three thousand dollars for four hours, and the family had already put down a deposit. I’d deposited the Hadley check and immediately sent all of it to Pinnacle Property Group last week to help catch up on the late payments on the second mortgage, and it had gone through.
The bookings weren’t a permanent fix, but they were a path, and for the first time in months, my brain was running forward instead of in circles.
I was thinking about which animals to bring for the next event when I pulled a white envelope from the middle of thestack. Pinnacle. Heavy paper, the kind that lawyers used when they wanted you to understand that whatever was inside had already been decided before you opened it.
I doubted this was to congratulate me on finally making some of the required payment. I tore the seal.
I read it once. Then I read it again, because the first time the language had rearranged itself into something that couldn’t possibly be right.
Pinnacle Property Group was exercising the acceleration clause in the mortgage contract. The entire outstanding balance of the second mortgage was due in full within thirty days.
Not just the missed payments. Thefullbalance of the loan. All of it.
I lowered the letter and looked at the barn at the far end of the gravel drive, doors open to the morning. The three thousand dollars from the birthday party wouldn’t touch the number on that page. Neither would the second booking, or the next ten after it.
I walked into the house, set the rest of the mail on the counter, and called James Ellison at the bank.
He picked up on the third ring. “Lark. Good to hear from you.”
“James, I just received a letter from Pinnacle Property Group.” My voice held, which was more than I expected from it. “It says they’re calling in the full balance of the second mortgage. The entire loan, due in thirty days.”
A pause.
“They sent you a letter directly, demanding payment?”
“I’m holding it right in front of me.”
“Can you read me the relevant language?”
I did. The sentences filled my kitchen with the flat authority of people who’d never set foot on this property and didn’t carewhat happened to it. When I finished, James was quiet for several seconds.
“That’s an acceleration clause,” he said. “They exist in most mortgage contracts, and technically, they give the lender the right to demand the full balance under certain conditions. But Lark, I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years. I have almost never seen a group invoke one this early in a default, especially when the borrower is making a good-faith effort to get current. You just made a significant payment last week.”
“But they can do it.”
“They can. It’s in the contract.” I heard the creak of his chair, which meant he’d leaned back. “It doesn’t make financial sense from their end. Calling in a full balance on a borrower who can’t pay triggers foreclosure, which is expensive and slow. These groups make their money by keeping loans performing, not by forcing defaults. I don’t have a good explanation for why they’d move this aggressively.”
