“GET OUT OF MY SWIMMING POOL! RIGHT NOW!”
Marcus Ellison's voice thundered across the backyard of his luxurious Scottsdale mansion, but the blonde woman floating beside the pool's turquoise-tiled edge merely turned toward him and laughed.
She was forty-eight years old, with an expensive chin-length blonde bob, sharp blue eyes, and the kind of confidence that came from spending years ordering people around without expecting anyone to challenge her. Her deep-magenta one-piece swimsuit gleamed beneath the Arizona sunshine, and her perfectly manicured fingers rested casually against the polished stone coping.
Her name was Vanessa Carlisle.
She was president of the Sonoran Crest Homeowners Association.
And she had just broken into a private swimming pool that its owner had closed for a reason she could not begin to understand.
“Stop being so dramatic, Marcus!” she shouted. “I've been swimming in this water for five minutes, and look at me. Perfectly fine!”
Marcus stood barefoot outside the enormous sliding glass doors, wearing a loose white bathrobe over his swimming trunks. He was forty-two, with deep-brown skin, broad muscular shoulders, short neatly faded black hair, and a carefully trimmed beard. Under ordinary circumstances, he carried himself with the quiet composure of a man accustomed to solving complicated problems without losing his temper.
But there was nothing ordinary about the scene before him.
His private gate stood open.
A wet inspection notice lay on the patio.
And the woman who had spent three weeks threatening him over his closed pool was now chest-deep in water that a certified environmental laboratory had identified as contaminated with dioxin-related compounds.
Marcus felt his stomach drop.
“Vanessa, listen carefully. You need to get out of the water.”
She smiled contemptuously.
“Why? Because I caught you lying?”
“Because the pool is contaminated.”
“Oh, please.”
She splashed water toward him.
Marcus instinctively stepped backward.
Vanessa laughed harder.
“You told the board this pool was unsafe. You told your neighbors some ridiculous story about toxic chemicals. Yet here I am, standing in perfectly clear water.”
Marcus glanced toward the nearby patio table.
A laboratory report lay beneath a transparent plastic folder, exactly where he'd left it after speaking with the environmental consultant that morning.
He hurried toward it.
Vanessa folded her arms against the pool's edge.
“You see? Nothing. No burning skin, no strange smell, no poisonous fumes. You're embarrassing yourself.”
Marcus seized the report.
He turned back toward her.
“Dioxin doesn't work the way you think it does.”
Her smile faltered slightly.
“What?”
He raised the document.
“Look at the heading.”
Vanessa squinted.