The second visit came on a Friday night, just after eleven, when Willow Creek was quiet and most of the porch lights were off.
Ethan was in his living room, reading a manual for the new camera system, when his phone buzzed on the coffee table. The screen lit up with a single line: Motion detected — Backyard camera.
He set the manual down and opened the app. The backyard feed filled the screen. At first, he saw only the yard, the fence, and the shed, washed in the pale green of night vision. Then he saw them.
Two figures in dark hoodies were walking across the yard toward the shed. They moved quickly, heads down, hands in pockets. They were not the same men who had come on Saturday morning. Those men had been older, broader, and had worn polo shirts with a logo. These men were younger, thinner, and they moved like they did not want to be seen. They did not carry a clipboard. They carried something else.
Ethan did not go outside. He had decided after the first visit that he would not confront anyone alone at night.
He called the police non-emergency line. His voice was steady, the way it had been when he called in problems on construction sites. He gave his name, his address, and a description of what he saw. He stayed on the phone while the dispatcher typed.
On the screen, the two figures reached the shed. One tried the handle. It was locked.
The other figure pulled something from his pocket. In the night-vision image, it looked like a flat bar of metal. Ethan realized it was a crowbar. The man slid the end of the crowbar into the gap between the shed door and the frame and leaned on it. The door groaned. The frame flexed. For a second, Ethan thought it would break.
He gripped his phone tighter. "They're trying to break into my shed," he told the dispatcher.
The dispatcher asked if he was safe, if his doors were locked, if he could stay inside. Ethan said yes to all three. He kept watching.
The two men worked on the door for about a minute. They pried, they kicked, they whispered to each other. The shed door held. Ethan had built it himself, with heavy hinges and a solid deadbolt, and it held. The men stepped back. One of them kicked the door once, hard, in frustration. The other grabbed his arm and pointed toward the house.
Then the man who had held the crowbar turned and looked directly at the camera on the back porch. He stared into the lens for a long moment. He raised his hand and made an obscene gesture, slow and deliberate. It was not the gesture of someone who was afraid of being seen. It was the gesture of someone who wanted Ethan to know he had been seen, and that it did not matter.
The two figures walked back toward the street, cutting through the side yard. They disappeared behind the fence. A few seconds later, Ethan heard a car door close, then an engine start, then tires on asphalt, fading away.
Ethan stayed on the phone until the police arrived twenty minutes later. Two officers examined the shed door, photographed the scratches where the crowbar had bitten into the wood, and watched the video on Ethan's phone.
"Do you recognize them?" one officer asked.
"No," Ethan said. "They're not the men from Saturday. Those men were older. These men are younger."
The officers wrote down the time, the description, and the fact that a crowbar had been used. They said they would increase patrols in the area. They said, without saying it directly, that without a license plate or a clear face, there was not much more they could do that night.
After they left, Ethan walked around the shed with his flashlight. He saw the scratches on the frame. He saw a footprint in the soft dirt near the back gate. He photographed both. He saved the video in three places: on his phone, on his computer, and in the cloud. He also sent a copy to Tom, with a short message: Second visit. 11:04 p.m. Shed door held.
Tom replied within a minute: Coming over in the morning. Don't go out tonight.
Ethan did not go out. He locked every door. He checked every window. He sat in his living room for a long time, looking at the backyard feed on his phone. The yard was empty. The shed was dark. The camera was still recording.
In the morning, he found a note taped to his front door. It was not on letterhead. It was handwritten, in block letters, on a torn piece of notebook paper: TAKE DOWN THE SHED OR ELSE.
Ethan did not touch it with his bare hands. He put on gloves, photographed it, and slipped it into a plastic bag. He added it to his folder, next to the fake violation letter, Priya's statement, and his timeline.
He stood on his porch, looking at the street. It was an ordinary Saturday morning, except someone had tried to break into his shed and left a threat on his door.
Ethan was no longer dealing with a paperwork dispute. He was dealing with intimidation. He understood that now, clearly.
He called Sarah Kim, the lawyer he had been considering hiring, and left a message. He called Officer Patel's office and asked for a follow-up. He called Ruth and told her to be careful, to lock her doors, to call him if anyone came to her house.
Then he went to the shed and repaired the door frame. He replaced the bent deadbolt with a heavier one. He added a second lock, higher up. He worked slowly, carefully, the way he had worked when he built the shed. His hands were steady. His mind was clear.
When he finished, he stood back and looked at the shed. It was still square and solid. It had a few new scratches, but it was still his.
He was not going to take it down.