On the tablet, Aaron β Peter β had stopped talking. Victor Kane was holding him by the collar of his jacket, and the hallway feed shook slightly with the movement.
"You were supposed to remove the relay before the police arrived," Victor said. His voice came through flat, like a man reading a task list.
"I told you Grace was monitoring the roof," Peter said.
"You told us an old woman was confused."
"She's the best signal technician in this county."
Victor shoved him a half step backward and pointed at Mia's bedroom door. "Open the wall."
"There is nothing in there."
"Then why did you schedule the property for tonight?"
Peter looked straight at the camera. "I didn't."
"Your code is on the order."
"My code was copied."
Victor smiled without warmth. "Convenient." He struck the side of the wall with his fist. The drywall gave a hollow thud that I recognized instantly. "Open it."
Simone had her own tablet out. She scrolled through the property files with quick fingers and turned the screen toward me.
One document showed a thermal image of my upstairs wall.
Behind Mia's closet was a clean rectangle, darker than the studs around it. A void. The size of a small bookcase.
"I remember the renovation," I said. "Two years ago. SunHarvest sent a crew to install a smart electrical monitor. They said the safest cable path ran through Mia's closet."
Simone kept her eyes on the image. "How long did it take?"
"Three hours longer than they quoted. Mia complained afterward that one wall sounded hollow. I told her they must have added a service panel."
I had told my daughter that. I remembered the exact evening β she knocked on the closet wall, it made that deep empty sound, and I waved it away like a man who understands houses better than he does.
Travis looked at the image for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was low.
"That isn't standard."
"What is it?" Ruth asked.
"A storage cavity."
"For what?"
He lowered his eyes. "Collected devices."
Simone translated before I could ask. "The network didn't send every recording immediately. Some files were stored locally inside relay houses. Your roof served as the neighborhood's central transmitter. Your home also contained its physical archive."
I stared at the rectangle on her screen. "My daughter's closet."
"If investigators found the cavity, they would recover years of surveillance," Simone said. "Burglary schedules. Access logs. Recordings of technicians entering homes. Evidence linking SunHarvest to Sentinel."
"My house had been chosen because I worked nights, trusted the company, and rarely entered the attic," I said slowly, putting it together out loud. "Mia's room had become the hiding place because no adult slept there."
Simone nodded once. She did not soften it.
On the feed, Victor was pulling something from a bag I hadn't noticed β a flat tool, maybe a saw. He held it up where Peter could see it.
"Cut here," he said.
"You're going to expose the archive to take the archive," Peter said. "Do you understand what that sounds like?"
"I understand that your mother destroyed my schedule. Now move."
Peter knelt beside the closet wall with obvious reluctance. He looked back at the camera once. His face was unreadable.
"Wait," I said to Simone. "The label on Mia's photograph. 9:30 tonight. I thought it meant a burglary."
"It didn't," Simone said.
"What did it mark?"
"The clearing of your archive. They planned to remove every drive before any investigation could find them." She paused. "Mia was supposed to be home at 9:30. They knew that."
"She's at a friend's house," I said, and the relief of it hit me a second time, harder than the first.
"And RELOCATE?" I asked, though I already dreaded the answer.
Travis looked toward Grace, then quickly away. "It is what they call moving a witness."
Grace's face hardened. "Moving where?"
"I never handled relocation orders."
"But you installed the cameras."
"Yes."
"You replaced them every time I cut the power."
"Yes."
"You watched my granddaughter receive that link."
"I didn't send it."
"You kept the lens pointed at her window."
Travis said nothing. The silence did the work of an answer.
On the tablet, Peter had begun cutting along the edge of the closet wall. Victor stood behind him, arms crossed, watching like a supervisor at a construction site.
Except nothing about this was construction. It was the last half hour of a plan four years in the making, and it was happening inside my daughter's bedroom while my daughter's pajamas sat folded on the bed three feet away.
Grace leaned close to me. Her voice was barely above a breath.
"Whatever happens next, Daniel, you stay behind the officers. Promise me."
"Graceβ"
"Promise me."
I looked at her. Seventy-one years old, hands steady, the woman who had climbed my roof with a can of paint and been right about everything.
"I promise," I said.