The porch gave me what the study couldn't: air, and one more bar.
I set the laptop on the railing, turned on my phone's hotspot, and held the phone above my shoulder like the Statue of Liberty until the screen showed two bars. The connection appeared. Then it vanished. I swore, walked three steps toward the driveway, and watched the bars climb back.
Two bars. It would have to be enough.
I put the phone on the hood of my truck, balanced the laptop on the toolbox beside it, and clicked the secure link Samuel had sent me a week ago. The county hearing page loaded the way cold honey pours β slowly, in fits. 9:57. Three minutes until the hearing.
Samuel Carter's face appeared in the first square, and the relief nearly knocked me sideways. He was in his office, tie knotted, a stack of folders at his elbow. Then a second square filled: Denise Park, the clerk, headset on, typing at something off-camera. Two more squares stayed dark, labeled with Meridian's counsel and a corporate representative, cameras off.
Samuel leaned toward his camera. "Daniel, where are you?"
"My home service was cut," I said. My voice sounded thin through the truck-hood acoustics. "By whom?"
"My neighbor."
Before he could respond, Denise stopped typing.
"Judge," she said, "we have two participants identified as Daniel Foster."
Everyone went still.
A fifth square had appeared on the screen while I was talking. It was black β no video, audio only. The name beneath it read: DANIEL FOSTER β HOME CONNECTION.
I looked at my own label underneath my square. It read: DANIEL FOSTER β MOBILE GUEST.
Denise addressed the black square. "Mr. Foster, please activate your camera."
A man's voice answered. "My camera is having trouble."
My skin went cold from the scalp down.
The voice sounded like me. Not perfectly β a little flatter, a little too careful β but close enough to fool anyone who didn't know me well. It had my rhythm. My pauses. Even the slight roughness at the edges of my words, the one left over from a throat injury twenty years ago that made me sound like I'd just woken up.
Judge Maria Delgado entered at 9:59, robes on, reading glasses already halfway down her nose. She looked at the grid of squares, then at Denise, and her eyebrows rose a fraction β the only surprise she would allow herself all morning.
"Explain."
Denise spoke quickly, but I barely heard her, because the black square had started to bother me in a way I couldn't name yet. It wasn't just the voice. It was the stillness of it. A real person on a bad connection fidgets, breathes, shifts. The square gave nothing. It was a voice without a body, wearing my name like a borrowed coat, and every second it sat there made my hands colder.
Denise spoke quickly. "We have two participants under the same name, Judge. One on video as a mobile guest, one audio-only on what appears to be the registered home connection."
The judge looked straight into her camera β straight at me, it felt like. "Mr. Foster, which participant are you?"
I stepped closer to the laptop, close enough that my breath fogged the edge of the screen. "I'm standing in my driveway, Judge, because someone cut every line into my house eighteen minutes before this hearing. The man on the black square is not me."
The black square spoke. "This person has been interfering with my property case for months."
I stared at the laptop. The voice used my cadence the way a musician uses someone else's song β technically right, spiritually wrong. It even cleared its throat the way I do. A perfect stranger would never have noticed.
A neighbor's sprinkler ticked on across the street. A crow shouted from the maple. I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears, and underneath it, from the black square, nothing at all.
Samuel leaned so far toward his camera I could see the grain of his desk. "Judge, my client is the participant on video. I have met with him in person repeatedly. I know his face."
The black square responded without a pause. "I terminated Mr. Carter last week."
Samuel's face changed the way a man's face changes when someone tells him he's dead. "No," he said quietly. "You did not."
Judge Delgado raised one hand, and the silence that followed had weight to it.
"Both participants will stop speaking," she said. "Ms. Park, verify the connection records."
Denise typed. The clicking of her keys came through sharp and fast.
"The audio-only participant," she said slowly, "entered using Mr. Foster's registered residential internet service and the callback number listed in the case file."
I looked toward the utility box. The cut cables lay in the grass where Vera had left them, bright ends catching the morning sun.
The hidden person wasn't merely using my name. They appeared to be calling from my home.