Chapter 3

My eyes scanned the crowd, and my heart sank. I saw faces I recognized. Old Mrs. Gable, whose church bake sale I' d donated five thousand dollars to last month. I saw Tim, a kid I' d hired right out of high school, who I was training to be a lead technician. He was standing with his arms crossed, his face set in a sullen mask, mouthing the same angry words as everyone else. I saw the parents of kids who worked for me, people who had personally thanked me for giving their children a reason to stay in Harmony Springs instead of leaving forever.

They were all here, all of them, their gratitude forgotten, replaced by this ugly, hungry look. They had been my neighbors. Now they were a mob.

Chad kept talking, his voice a relentless hammer pounding away at their reason. "He complains about the electric bill! But did he tell you he gets a massive discount from the power company because he' s a 'green enterprise' ? That' s a subsidy that should belong to the town, not to him!"

Another lie. I had negotiated a bulk rate, just like any large business would. There was no subsidy. But it sounded plausible, and it fed their sense of victimhood.

"He' s stealing our power!" someone yelled.

I turned to Mayor Jenkins, my last hope for sanity. "Mayor, you know this is wrong. You saw my business plan. You know the margins are tight. You know I' ve put everything I have into this."

Mayor Jenkins wouldn't meet my eyes. He looked at the ground, at the sky, anywhere but at me. He was a weak man, a follower, and the crowd was a powerful force. Chad had promised him a piece of the pie, a cut of that imaginary "town fund." The mayor's personal gain was more important than the town's long-term survival.

"Ethan," he said, his voice trembling slightly. "The will of the people must be respected. The deal you got... it was too generous. We were naive. The town needs to correct that mistake. For the good of the community."

"The good of the community?" I shot back, my voice rising in disbelief. "You' re going to destroy the only new business this town has seen in thirty years for the 'good of the community' ? You' re letting this... this snake-oil salesman lead you all off a cliff!"

My words were lost in the roar. The crowd surged forward again, their anger escalating from shouts to threats.

"Sign the contract!"

"We' ll shut you down ourselves!"

"Get out of our town, you thief!"

They were so close now I could feel their body heat, see the spit flying from their mouths. This wasn't a negotiation. It was a lynching, and my business was the victim. I felt a shove from behind. Someone else pushed my shoulder.

I stood my ground, planting my feet firmly in the gravel. My idealism, my hope for this town, had evaporated, replaced by cold, hard resolve. They had mistaken my generosity for weakness. They were about to learn they were wrong.

"I' m not signing anything," I said, my voice cutting through the noise with a new edge. "I have a contract. It' s a legal document. If you have a problem with it, you can take it to a judge." My eyes found Chad' s again. "But you and I both know you wouldn' t have a case."

"We' re not going to a judge," Chad spat. "We' re the judge, jury, and executioner here."

The threat was no longer veiled. It was raw and immediate. The mob was a single organism, and its mind was set on destruction.