The fire department brought a roof ladder and two firefighters climbed up with Dana behind them. I stood in the driveway with Ruth, watching tools I didn't understand work on my own house.
Panel number six came up slowly. The frame was heavier than it looked β the firefighter at the top asked for a second pair of hands, and a third man went up.
When they lifted it clear, I saw the bracket first. A small black box sat on the mounting bracket where nothing should have been. It was no bigger than a paperback book. A tiny lens poked through the bracket's edge.
It was pointed at Grace's second-floor window.
Nobody spoke for a few seconds. Then Dana said, "Bag it," and one of the firefighters reached for it with gloved hands.
"Careful," Grace called from below. "It draws power from the array wiring."
Dana looked down at her. "How do you know that?"
"I traced the load," Grace said. "The draw doesn't match any inverter reading SunHarvest published."
The firefighter lifted the box. Underneath, wires ran into the panel frame and down toward the roof conduit.
"It's wired into the array," the firefighter said.
Dana photographed everything before the box was sealed in a clear evidence bag.
Down in the driveway, she held the bag up. Inside, besides the lens, I could see a small circuit board with an antenna β the cellular relay Grace had described, the one that woke every afternoon between three and five.
"There's more," the firefighter said from the roof. "A second cable. It doesn't go to the inverter."
He traced it with his hand along the roof line.
"It runs toward the house's main junction. It looks like a network cable."
Grace nodded like she'd already known. "Wi-Fi bridge," she said. "It joined your router, Daniel."
I thought about my router sitting on the kitchen counter. The password was taped underneath it because Mia kept forgetting. Anyone on my network could see everything.
Dana asked what the bridge had reached.
"I can tell you what it had the path to," Grace said. "The garage door. The alarm panel. Mia's laptop. The indoor camera facing your front hallway."
My hands felt cold. The hallway camera had been Carla's idea β she wanted to see who came to the door while she rested. It was still on.
Dana turned the bag over. A tiny light on the board stayed lit even though it was disconnected.
"It has a battery," she said.
"Approximately how long?" Ruth asked.
"Judging by the size β seventy-two hours, maybe."
Grace looked at me. "That's why I kept damaging the panels. Every time the array stopped, the battery countdown started. SunHarvest always came back before it reached zero."
She'd been racing a battery she couldn't see, with a ladder and roofing tar.
"And the red paint?" Dana asked.
"This time I used industrial marking paint," Grace said. "It contains a powder visible under ultraviolet light. Anyone who removes that device will carry traces on their hands and clothes."
Ruth stared at her. "You planned all of this?"
"I planned to make the removal visible," Grace said. "I didn't know when they'd come. I only knew they'd come fast."
She looked at Travis, who hadn't moved from beside his truck.
"I expected him," she said. "I wanted police present when he arrived."
Travis said, "You can't prove I knew anything."
Dana held up the evidence bag. "The lens is aimed at a sixteen-year-old's bedroom window. You don't need me to prove you knew. You need me to believe you didn't look."
The firefighters came down the ladder. One of them carried the panel itself, the glass still streaked with Grace's red paint. He set it gently on the grass like it might break further.
I looked at the paint. An hour ago it had been vandalism. Now it was the only reason a police officer, a cybercrimes investigator, and a fire crew were all standing in my driveway looking at a black box nobody was supposed to find.
Helen β Grace β had climbed my roof four times with tar, cutters, film, and paint. She'd risked a fall, an electrical burn, and arrest. She'd done it while I called her crazy behind her back and let her notes sit in a spam folder.
"Grace," I said.
She looked at me.
"Thank you," I said. It came out smaller than I meant.
She shook her head. "Don't thank me yet. They built the whole thing to survive losing one camera."
As if she'd called it, a second firefighter shouted from the roof. The replacement panel β Travis's pre-labeled panel six β was still sitting in the back of his truck.
And something inside it had just moved.