smothered. Diane's eyes had flicked to Doug, then back.
"The board," she said carefully, "exercises its judgment in the community's
best interest. Competitive bidding is not required for renewals under our
covenants, as you would know if you'd read them as closely as you read our
invoices."
"I've read both," Tom said. "That's why I'm asking."
"Then let me be clear." She'd leaned forward, and the microphone had caught
the edge in her voice before she smoothed it. "The assessments funded the
drainage project, the clubhouse roof, and the entrance renovation — all
approved by member vote. GreenLine's pricing reflects rising costs across
9
the industry. There is no relationship between those facts beyond your
imagination." She'd looked around the room, reclaiming it. "Does anyone
else have questions? No? Wonderful. Moving on."
Afterward, in the parking lot, old Mrs. Gable had touched his sleeve. Her
hand was thin and cold.
"Young man," she'd whispered, glancing back at the clubhouse doors, "my
Harold asked about the assessments in '09. You know what happened? They
fined him for his mailbox. Three times. The mailbox hadn't changed in
eleven years." She'd patted his arm. "Don't. She remembers everything."
Like Diane was weather. Like Diane was something you dressed for and
endured.
Tom had driven home with the folder on the passenger seat and a feeling he
recognized from work — the feeling of having touched a live wire inside a
wall. He'd gone inside, kissed Chloe's forehead where she slept on the couch
with her camera in her lap, and backed up his camera footage to the cloud.
All four feeds. Ninety days' retention. He couldn't have said why, exactly.
Instinct, maybe — the same instinct that made him air-gap his backups at
work. Some people collected enemies the way other people collected stamps,
and Diane Holloway collected his the way she collected everything:
methodically, and with paperwork.
Tom had gone home and backed up his camera footage to the cloud. He
couldn't have said why, exactly. Instinct, maybe — the same instinct that
made him air-gap his backups at work. Some people collected enemies the
way other people collected stamps, and Diane Holloway collected his the
way she collected everything: methodically, and with paperwork.
Her husband, Paul, sold real estate and was mostly a rumor — a silver SUV
10
in the driveway, a wave from the golf course. Her brother Doug's GreenLine
trucks were everywhere in Oakmont Estates, mowing and edging and
blowing, and Tom had started keeping a spreadsheet. Dates. Amounts. The
assessment letters. He told himself it was just professional habit. Data
wanted to be collected. Patterns wanted to be found.
---
At 4:37, seventeen minutes into the best hour of his week, Tom's phone
buzzed on the patio table.
He almost ignored it. The phone sat beside his folded towel on the lounge
chair, screen-down the way he always left it, and the buzz was the particular
double-pulse he'd assigned to the camera app. Motion alert. Probably the
neighbor's cat again — the orange menace from number 18 had developed a
fondness for Tom's fence line, and Camera 3 flagged it two or three times a
week.
Tom lifted his head from the water and looked toward the house. The phone
buzzed again. Double-pulse. Then again.
Three alerts in ten seconds wasn't the cat.
He stood up in the shallow end, water sheeting off him, and crossed to the
lounge chair in three dripping strides. The notification on the lock screen
read:
Motion detected — Rear fence cam. 4:37 PM.
Below it, a thumbnail: a still frame, grainy in the bright light. Tom thumbed
it open, and the live feed filled the screen, and he went very still.
Two hands gripped the top of his seven-foot privacy fence.
Tom stared. The fence was cedar, installed by the previous owner, reinforced
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twice by Tom himself with steel brackets after a windstorm — seven feet of
vertical boards with a locked steel gate on the side, and somebody was
climbing it. A blonde head rose over the top edge, then a shoulder, then a
second hand finding purchase. Whoever it was moved carefully, pausing
every few seconds to scan the neighboring yards.
Tom knew that head. He knew the particular pale gold of that hair, and the
way it was pulled back, and the set of those shoulders. He had seen them
across a folding table at eleven HOA meetings.
Diane Holloway dropped onto his grass inside his locked backyard.
Every instinct Tom had said: get out, confront her now. But the other instinct
— the older one, the one from fifteen years of watching intruders trip over
their own footprints — said: wait. Watch. Let her show you what she came
for. An intruder who doesn't know she's seen will always tell you more than
one who does.
So Tom did the hardest thing he'd done all week: he set the phone down on
the lounge chair, screen still live, and he sank back into the water until only
his eyes cleared the surface, and he watched his own backyard like it was
somebody else's crime scene.
She wore a blue swimsuit. Her hair was tied loosely behind her head. She
had no shoes, no clipboard, no folder, none of the armor she wore to
meetings — no blazer, no statement necklace, no leather portfolio embossed
with the association's logo. Around her waist was a small black waterproof
pouch, the kind kayakers used for their phones.
Tom sank slowly back down until only his eyes and nose were above the
waterline, and watched.
Diane stood motionless for several seconds, scanning. First the back of
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Tom's house — the sliding door was closed, the kitchen dark, Chloe's
bedroom window upstairs curtained. Then the pool, her gaze passing over the
water without registering the man floating in it, which told Tom everything
about how little she expected to be observed. Then the neighboring
properties, left and right, checking. Satisfied, she moved — quickly, tensely,
shoulders hunched — toward the lounge chair.
Toward Tom's towel. Toward Tom's phone.
Tom's stomach dropped through the pool floor.