Chapter 1

I set up a free charity water station.

A neighbor started hauling it home by the case.

Slapped price tags on the bottles and sold them for two-fifty each.

I posted in the group chat:

"Please leave it for the people who really need it."

She fired back in a second:

"If you can't afford to play saint, then don't."

"Cheap little penny-pincher, quit acting like you're some big shot."

When she got caught stealing the water, she actually brought people to trash my shop.

"Your water's poisoned. You can forget about staying open unless you pay up."

"Two hundred grand."

She leaked my personal information, splashed red paint on my place, and my dad got so worked up he ended up in the hospital.

I switched off my phone, opened my laptop, and started a folder:

Extortion and Theft.

What they didn't know was that I study law.

1

I'd set up a free charity water station right outside my little shop.

But lately, the free water kept getting carried off by the case.

I pulled up the security footage.

There was Anita Chavez from the convenience store next door, pushing a stroller up to the station.

She loaded the water straight onto her cart.

For a full week, five cases in one night at the most.

I posted a message in the residents' group chat:

"The charity water station runs on a limited budget. Please leave it for the people who really need it."

I'd set up the station because it had been so brutally hot.

I'd watched delivery drivers with their lips cracked open, and sanitation workers drinking somebody else's leftover bottled water.

They wouldn't spend money on water for themselves out there.

So I bought bottled water wholesale and stuck a piece of cardboard out front:

"Charity Water Station. Free. For the people who need it most."

But Anita ran her own store, packed wall to wall with drinks. What gave her the right to help herself like this?

The second Anita saw my message, she jumped in:

"Isn't the water free? What's the problem with taking some?"

Followed by a hand-over-mouth giggling emoji.

"If you can't afford to play saint, then don't. Just pull it, saves everyone the trouble."

"Cheap little penny-pincher. A college kid, acting like some big shot."

And a few neighbors who didn't know the whole story chimed in:

"Right, the sign says free, and now suddenly you can't spare it."

"A good deed's only good if you see it through. Playing the hero and then whining about it, aren't you embarrassed?"

These neighbors were the ones who'd grab a bottle from the station when they were thirsty on the way home from work, or on their way out to toss the trash.

I'd never once made a thing of it. But now, scared they'd lose the freebie down the line, they turned around and pinned it on me.

Kevin Finch, a neighbor who did delivery work, sent me a video privately.

It was Anita's store.

Anita ran a little convenience shop, stocked with all kinds of cheap off-brand drinks.

She'd chill them in the fridge and sell them at a markup to whoever wandered in.

But in the video, her store was now selling the charity water I'd bought wholesale.

Freshly stuck price tags. Two-fifty a bottle.

Kevin told me, furious:

"Somebody asked Anita if she'd gotten new stock, how come she wasn't selling the old water anymore."

"Anita just grinned and said she didn't need to stock up this year."

"Said some idiot was paying out of his own pocket this summer to hand out free water. Only a fool wouldn't take it."

I put down my phone and felt the anger climb.

Anita figured what I was doing was cutting into her drink business.

If everyone had free water, who was going to buy her overpriced off-brand stuff?

So she went all in, out to milk it on purpose.

She'd completely forgotten that when I first came here to start up my shop, somebody tried to rob her store, and I was the one who ran the thug off.

Back then she couldn't stop saying it, how a close neighbor beats a distant relative.

Now, over a little water, I was an eyesore.

Anita took me for some college kid working a summer job, with no one behind me.

What she didn't know was that I'm a law major.

I opened my laptop and started logging evidence.

The law runs on evidence.

My field had taught me one thing: people's mouths can say whatever they want, but the law doesn't play favorites.