The yard camera saw everything the gate camera couldn't.
It was mounted high on the back wall of the house, wide-angled, taking in the whole garden: the raised beds in their neat rows, the path between them, the steel frame at the far end with the big rainwater tank on top, and the green folding chair sitting beside the middle bed where Daniel left it every evening. The footage was timestamped in the corner, white digits on the morning light.
At 7:19, Helen entered the frame from the left, walking with purpose along the fence line. She didn't look around. She didn't hesitate. She walked straight to the water tank, the way you walk to something you've already decided to do, and crouched down at the base of the steel support frame.
Megan made a small sound in her throat. Emily gripped the back of Daniel's chair.
Helen stayed crouched at the frame for a long time. The timestamp crawled: 7:20, 7:21, 7:22. Her hands moved at the base of the support — Daniel couldn't see exactly what she was doing, the angle was wrong, the frame itself blocked the view — but her shoulders worked with a steady, repetitive motion. Five minutes. She spent about five minutes down there, doing whatever she was doing to the steel.
"She's working on it," Daniel said. His voice sounded strange to him, flat and far away. "She's actually working on the frame."
At 7:24, Helen stood up. She brushed off her knees — Daniel would remember that detail later, the ordinary domestic gesture, like she'd been weeding — and then she did something that made all three of them go completely still.
She turned and looked at the green folding chair.
Not a glance. A study. She stared at Daniel's chair for a full ten seconds, her head tilted slightly, the way a carpenter sights along a board. Then she took two steps toward it. Stopped. Looked back at the tank. Looked at the chair again. And nodded once, to herself, a small satisfied dip of the chin, before turning and walking back the way she'd come, out of the frame toward the gate.
The timestamp read 7:25.
The three of them sat in silence. The monitor glowed. Somewhere in the house, the refrigerator hummed. Daniel became aware that he was holding his breath, and let it out slowly, and the sound seemed too loud in the quiet room.
"She looked at your chair," Emily said finally. Her voice was thin. "Why did she look at your chair, Dad?"
Daniel didn't have an answer. Not yet. He would have one soon — the hidden camera would give it to him — but in that moment, sitting at his desk in the dark, he only had the image burned into his mind: Helen Marsh, standing in his garden in her cardigan and floral blouse, studying his empty chair the way you'd study a target. The deliberateness of it was the worst part. This hadn't been rage. It hadn't been impulse. She had walked in, done her work at the frame, and then checked — checked — that the chair was where it needed to be. Whatever she had planned, the chair was part of it. His chair. His four o'clock. His life, measured out in afternoons, and she had stood there and taken its measure. He thought about her upstairs window again, the one with the view of his yard, and wondered how many evenings she'd spent up there in the dark, watching the empty garden, picturing the tank coming down, picturing him under it. The patience of it chilled him more than the sabotage itself. Anyone could lose their temper. This had taken weeks of quiet, careful wanting.
"She knew," Megan said quietly. "She knew you sit there. She knew your routine."
Daniel thought about all the afternoons. Four o'clock, the coffee, the gloves, the chair unfolding with its familiar creak. He thought about Helen's upstairs window, the one that overlooked his yard, and how many afternoons she must have spent watching him. Cataloging him. Learning the exact spot where he sat, the exact hour, the exact chair. The thought made his skin crawl — not just the sabotage, but the surveillance. The patience of it. The weeks or months of quiet observation, all leading to seven minutes on a Tuesday morning.
He exported the clip. Three copies, like the last one. He emailed it to Ruiz with the same spare message — "Yard camera, 7:19–7:25" — and set another envelope by the front door.
Then he went to the garage. Because there was a third camera, and he hadn't looked at it yet, and something told him the third camera was the one that mattered most.