"After Hannah died," Grace said, "Peter went looking for the driver."
We had moved back up to the kitchen table β Grace, Simone, and me β because the basement air was getting to Ruth's lungs and the officers needed the space. Sophie stayed on the sidewalk with the officer. Peter was still in my attic, on the tablet feed, cutting drywall under Victor Kane's orders.
Grace told the story in the flat tone she used for technical explanations. But her hands kept moving β folding a napkin, unfolding it, folding it again.
Hannah had been killed in a hit-and-run nine years ago. The other driver fled. No arrest was ever made.
"Peter became consumed with finding the vehicle," Grace said. "He had the camera network by then. He used it to track license plates. No warrants. No public authorization."
"Did he find the driver?" Simone asked.
"He identified him." Grace's voice dropped. "The man was connected to a burglary crew that was already purchasing household data from a Sentinel employee."
She looked at me. "Do you understand what that means? Peter went looking for the man who killed his wife, and what he found was the company he worked for."
I sat back. The kitchen table felt like the only solid thing in the room. "So he had a motive to burn the whole thing down. And instead he joined it."
"And then?" I asked.
"He confronted the executives."
The napkin tore along its fold. Grace set it down carefully and started on another.
"They offered him a choice," she said. "Expose the illegal network β and admit he had also used it unlawfully. Or help them formalize the system under a private-security division."
"They blackmailed him with his own crime," Ruth said.
"Yes." Grace smoothed the napkin flat. "Peter chose to remain. For the next year, he designed stronger access tools. He told himself he was building evidence against the people who protected Hannah's killer."
"Was he?" I asked.
"At first, perhaps." Grace's hands went still. "But the network expanded. People were robbed. Families were watched. And Peter kept collecting proof, and never once delivered it."
I thought about the attic feed β Peter in my house, kneeling beside a black case, the photographs inside. My daughter's photograph with a time under it. 9:30 TONIGHT.
"Why didn't he leave?" I asked. "If he had the proof?"
"He told himself that staying inside allowed him to collect evidence," Grace said. "And during those same years, families were robbed using systems he maintained."
"Did he know about the burglaries?"
"He knew more than he admitted." She said it without bitterness β just as a fact, the way she had said it about the node. "That was the sentence he carried, Daniel. Not what they did to him. What he knew and kept knowing."
I thought about the three houses on Travis's list. About alarms that failed and doors that opened themselves. "While other families paid for it," I said.
Simone was typing steadily. "Did he ever try to get out?"
"Once." Grace stood and went to the window above the sink. From here you could see my roof β the red paint bright even at this distance. "Three years ago he called me late at night. He said he was thinking of resigning. I asked him what was wrong. He said he couldn't tell me on the phone. I told him to come over."
She turned around. "He never came."
"Why not?"
"The next morning he sent a text. Said everything was fine. Said he had been tired." Her eyes met mine. "I never asked again. I told myself a grown man gets to change his mind."
Ruth shifted in her chair. "And the network kept growing."
"Yes. Thirty-one installations with hidden cameras or bridges, according to what your investigator will find." Grace looked at Simone. "Fourteen homes in the Cedar Falls relay alone. And at the center of it, Peter's old emergency system β the thing he built to keep old people safe in their homes."
She walked back to the table and sat down heavily.
"Do you know what the cruelest part is?" she said. "The original idea was good. A network that checked on people who lived alone. That was a kind idea. Someone took his kind idea and taught it to watch instead of protect, and he stayed and helped them do it, because the moment he walked away, everything he had built would be used against him β and he knew it."
"And Sophie?" I asked. "Where did she fit?"
Grace's face changed. The technical flatness cracked.
"That," she said, "is the part I am still angry about."