“Oh gawd,” Alison glared at the townhouse. “They have got to be kidding me!”

Jonah sighed as his partner launched into her well-worn tirade about their real estate agent. He glanced at the paperwork and then at the house. Paul was normally pretty reliable when it came to finding properties they could flip easily. The agent had promised them the dwelling was habitable and need only superficial remodeling. From the look of the crack in the foundation, remodeling was going to be the least of their worries. If they were going to bid on the house, they’d need a better inventory of the damage.

“Here,” he handed the inspection checklist to Allison, “you do the outside and I’ll take a look at the inside. Fair?”

“Why bother?” She fished a pen out of her shoulder bag. “It’ll be easier to bulldoze this place and start over!”

By the time she found a working pen, Jonah had vanished into the building. “Figures.” With a skill born of too much practice she circled the bricked exterior, noting cracked shingles, crumbling mortar, and missing shutters. “I’m gonna kill him. Just once, just once I wish we’d get an easy fix.” She stepped over what was left of the backyard fence. And froze. “Aw shit.”