The next morning, Daniel stood by the wooden fence with a cup of black coffee, staring at the old storage shed. It was a dilapidated structure, built by the previous owner, Arthur Henderson, a quiet widower who had passed away six months ago. The house had gone into foreclosure, and Daniel had bought it from the bank at a suspiciously low price.
Javier dropped by to help Daniel clean up the yard. When Daniel showed him the security footage, Javier frowned.
"She wasn't checking for noise," Javier murmured, kneeling in the damp grass near the shed. "Look at this."
He brushed away a layer of dead leaves. Beneath them, someone had sprayed a faint, neon-orange line directly across Daniel's grass, cutting a perfect diagonal path from the fence to the base of the shed.
"Surveyor paint," Daniel whispered.
"Why is the HOA president marking your property line?" Javier asked.
Daniel spent the rest of the Sunday digging through the mountain of paperwork he had received at closing. According to the county maps, his lot was a perfect rectangle. But looking at the HOA boundary maps he had been handed by the real estate agent, there was a strange, shaded triangle right over the corner where the shed sat.
He texted Owen, who worked as a cybersecurity analyst and treated public records like personal puzzles. Look into Arthur Henderson and Patricia Hale. Something isn't right.
Monday morning, Daniel walked out to his car to head to work and found a bright yellow envelope taped to his windshield.
It was an official HOA citation.