Realizing the game was up, Travis tried to push past the officers and walk toward the road. Simone Park blocked his path instantly.
“We haven’t finished searching the replacement panel yet,” Simone said calmly.
At first glance, the new panel in the back of the truck looked completely ordinary. But when firefighters lifted it out of the bed, something heavy shifted unnaturally inside the aluminum frame.
A hidden compartment built into the casing contained another high-definition camera and a sophisticated digital controller. The controller was already pre-programmed with Naomi’s address, alongside a master list of fourteen different homes in the neighborhood.
Beside each residential address was a detailed schedule: exactly when residents left for work, when children returned from school, which homes possessed guard dogs, which families owned firearms, and which front doors could be remotely unlocked via compromised smart-home systems.
This was far beyond illegal neighborhood surveillance. Someone was systematically mapping the properties and preparing them for coordinated, untraceable break-ins.
In fact, three homes on the list had already been burglarized over the past two months. In every single instance, the homeowners' security alarms had mysteriously failed, and there had been no signs of forced entry. BrightCurrent technicians had visited those exact homes the morning after each robbery, casually blaming random voltage fluctuations in the solar grid. The homeowners had never suspected their own eco-friendly solar systems.
I looked over at Travis as federal agents led him toward the back of a patrol car. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground, offering no words in defense.
I looked up at my roof, where the red paint still streaked across the glass, and then across the fence to Helen’s quiet blue house. My roof had been turned into a weapon against the people I cared about, but thanks to an observant retired technician and her stubborn refusal to look away, the dark network had finally been brought out into the light.