When I dragged my waterlogged boots onto the docks of Baltimore after a Category 2 gale on October 14th, my landlord and port developer Harrison Gable was already standing under the harbor lights w...
My truck’s engine sputtered but finally caught, coughing out a plume of gray smoke. I drove past the harbor district, the late afternoon sun glinting off the water.
Then I saw it. Tacked to a lamppost, right beside the city council’s official notice board.
A crisp, full-color flyer. My face, grim and distorted, stared back.
“$50,000 REWARD,” screamed the bold red letters. “For Information Leading to the Immediate Arrest of CALEB ROSS. Wanted for MURDER and EMBEZZLEMENT. Contact Gable Properties LLC.”
My breath hitched. Gable wasn’t just smearing my name on the news. He was turning everyone against me.
I drove further, and the flyers multiplied. They were on every utility pole, taped to shop windows, even slid under windshield wipers in the parking lots.
Fifty thousand dollars. That was more than most dockhands made in a year.
My own apartment building came into view. A fresh flyer was taped right over the keypad entry.
When I tried my key in the lock, it wouldn’t turn. The cylinder had been changed. A cold wave washed over me.
Then I noticed the window on my second-story apartment. A jagged shard of glass glittered on the sill. The pane was shattered.
“Ross! You got some nerve showing your face here!”
I spun around. Marcus, my next-door neighbor for five years, stood on his porch. He gripped a baseball bat, its scarred wood gleaming in the dim light.
“Marcus, what are you doing?” I asked, my voice tight. “Gable changed my locks.”
“Don’t play dumb!” he snarled, taking a step down. “My kid saw you on the news. They say you killed Eli. They say you stole from the port.”
He gestured wildly at my shattered window. “That’s Gable’s property now, you hear? You broke it, you’re paying for it!”
“Gable broke it, Marcus,” I countered, but his eyes were wide with a fear I hadn’t seen before. Or maybe it was greed.
“Fifty grand, Ross,” he hissed, tightening his grip on the bat. “That’s a lot of money to keep quiet about a killer sleeping in our building.”
He took another threatening step, the bat swinging slightly.
I held up my hands, backing away slowly. There was no reasoning with him, not with Gable’s words and the bounty burning a hole in his mind.
I got back in my truck, watching Marcus standing guard on his porch, the bat still in his hand. The city glowed around me, but every light felt like a watching eye. Gable hadn’t just isolated me; he’d weaponized the entire community against me.
The truck rattled as I drove, my only option for shelter now its cramped, cold interior.
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