Ruth ordered Travis to step away from the truck. He took one step back and stopped. His eyes stayed on the replacement panel.
"We haven't searched the panel," Dana said.
Travis said, "It's a sealed unit. Company property."
"The panel with my address on it," I said, "sitting in your truck fifteen minutes after the damage. It's going to get searched."
Dana nodded at the firefighters. "Lift it out. Set it on the ground. Nobody opens anything until I say."
Two firefighters carried the panel to the driveway. It looked ordinary β same size, same frame, same dark glass as the ones on my roof. But when they set it down, I heard it. A faint shift. Something sliding inside the frame.
Dana knelt. "Did you hear that?"
The firefighter nodded. He ran his fingers along the frame's edge and found a seam that shouldn't have been there β a hairline crack running along the back, too straight to be damage.
"There's a compartment," he said.
He worked a small tool into the seam. The back of the frame clicked and a panel within the panel swung open.
Inside sat a camera. Smaller than the first one. Beside it, a digital controller with a short screen, already lit.
Dana photographed it before touching anything. Then she tilted the screen toward the light.
The first line on the display was an address.
Sophie's address. Grace's house. Printed in the same clean type as the label on my panel.
"Don't move it," Dana said quietly.
The controller's menu showed a list. Fourteen entries. Each was a street address in Cedar Falls.
Dana scrolled. Beside each address was a schedule.
I read the one for the house two streets over. Weekdays, both adults gone by eight. Kids home at three-thirty. Dog in the yard until five. The next one: firearms listed in a bedroom closet. The next: front door lock β remote access available.
"These are burglary notes," Ruth said.
"Preparation," Dana corrected. "Someone was building a plan for each property."
She kept scrolling. My address appeared near the top. The notes beside it said: night shift twice weekly. House empty after nine-thirty. Teenage daughter home alone on those nights.
My stomach turned. I'd worked nights for years. Mia had been home alone on those nights for years.
The last three addresses on the list had a mark beside them. Dana tapped one.
"Do these mean what I think?"
Travis said nothing.
"Three homes on this list have already been robbed," Dana said. "Alarms failed. No forced entry. Your company sent technicians the next morning and blamed voltage fluctuations."
Ruth looked at me. "Did you know any of these people?"
I recognized one name from the neighborhood association emails. A couple whose house had been hit in the spring. Everyone had assumed they'd forgotten to set the alarm.
Grace spoke from where she sat on the curb, her hands still cuffed in front of her. The morning sun had risen enough to reach her face, and she looked older than seventy-one β like someone who had been carrying this alone for two months and could finally set it down.
"The network doesn't just watch," she said. "It prepares. That's why there are fourteen. One camera can't rob a house. But fourteen cameras can tell you exactly when to walk through an unlocked door."
Dana asked Travis who programmed the controller.
He said, "I only install equipment."
"You installed this?" Dana pointed at the hidden compartment.
"I deliver replacements."
"With cameras inside?"
He didn't answer.
Dana bagged the controller and the camera separately. She asked the firefighter to check the remaining panels in the truck β there was only one.
"You're carrying a single replacement," she said to Travis. "For the exact panel that had a camera under it. Before anyone called you."
Travis said the monitoring center sent an automatic alert.
"The inverter is still connected," Grace said. "The alert you received was the transmitter dying. You were waiting nearby because you knew someone would cut the power again. Because someone has cut it three times before."
Dana looked at Ruth. "I want him detained."
Ruth read Travis his rights. He stood very still while she did it, like a man listening to weather he couldn't change.
As Ruth led him toward her car, Travis finally spoke.
"You don't understand the scale," he said. "This panel is one box. There are dozens of houses."
"Then start talking," Dana said, "and the scale becomes your cooperation."
He looked at the evidence bags on the driveway β the cameras, the receivers, the memory cards, the controller with Sophie's address glowing on its little screen.
"I want a lawyer," he said.