“Some mornings it has asked too much.” David finally looks at her. “I show up anyway. That’s the only difference between people who make it and people who don’t. Not talent.”
“Just showing up on the days it would be easier not to.” Something shifts in Harper’s face. Small and quiet, like a door opening a crack it hasn’t opened in years. That afternoon, Nia’s school lets out early for a teacher conference day. And David brings her along rather than leave her home alone.
She wanders the edge of the property while he works, careful to stay where he can see her, and stops near Harper’s garden, eyes wide at the rose of blooming color. “Your flowers are really pretty,” Nia says. Matter of fact, the way only a 10-year-old can be. “My mom used to grow flowers like that.” Harper crouches down to her eye level.
“Yeah? What kind?” “Sunflowers. Big ones.” “Daddy still keeps her seeds in a jar in the kitchen.” Harper glances toward David and, for the first time since he arrived at Ashwood Estate, she laughs.
A real one, short and surprised, like it caught her off guard as much as anyone else. David watches from a distance, hammer paused midair, something loosening in his chest at the sound. But peace doesn’t last long around this property. That evening, while replacing a bracket on the last damaged section, David’s fingers brush against something buried inside the hollow post. A thin cable, black, threaded carefully through the wood like it was placed there on purpose, not left by accident.
He pulls it free slowly, not electrical wire, something thinner, something with a small metal casing at the end, no bigger than a fingertip, fitted with a tiny lens. David turns it over in his palm, chest tightening as the pieces click into place. Somebody didn’t just sabotage this fence. Somebody’s been listening. David doesn’t move for a long moment.
The small device sitting cold in his palm like it’s still recording. He wraps it carefully in a cloth from his tool bag and carries it to the house. Footsteps quicker than usual, jaw set tight. Harper meets him on the porch, phone already halfway to her ear for another call she hasn’t made yet. She stops when she sees his face.
“What is it?” David holds out the cloth, unfolding it slow. “Found this hidden inside one of the damaged posts. It’s not wiring for anything electrical.” Harper takes it, turns it over, and her breath catches audibly. “That’s a camera or a microphone. Maybe both.”
Her hand trembles slightly as she holds it up to the porch light, studying the tiny lens like it might explain itself. “How long has this been here?” “No way to know for certain, but it was placed with care. Somebody wanted it hidden well.” Harper sits down slowly on the porch step, the device still in her palm, staring past it at nothing.
“Every conversation I’ve had out here, every call about the board, the investors, the lawyers.” Her voice drops lower. “Someone’s been listening to all of it.” “Who besides the people already on your list would have reason to plant something like this?” Harper doesn’t answer right away.
When she finally speaks, her voice carries something new underneath it. Not just fear, but a cold, quiet anger settling in beneath the surface. “I don’t know yet, but whoever it is knows this property, knows my schedule, knows exactly where I stand outside to take calls I don’t want overheard inside.” David studies the tree line beyond the fence. The shadows stretching longer now that evening settling in.
“You need to get this to someone who can trace it today, if possible.” “I know people,” Harper says. “Corporate security.” “But if I bring this to them and one of them planted it, then you’ll know who not to trust by how they react.” Harper looks up at him, something steadying behind her eyes despite everything unraveling around her.
“You think like someone who’s used to figuring things out with very little information.” “I fix things for a living,” David says. “Most of the time, the problem isn’t what people tell you it is. It’s what they don’t.” She almost smiles at that, tired but real. Then her phone rings again, and this time she doesn’t rush to answer it.
She stares at the screen a moment first, watching the name flash across it before finally lifting it to her ear. “Yes.” David watches her face change as she listens. Whatever’s being said on the other end drains the small warmth that had crept into her expression only moments earlier. Her knuckles whiten around the phone.
“When?” she asks. A pause. “Say that again.” David steps closer without meaning to, some instinct pulling him forward the way it did back at the fence line the very first morning. Harper lowers the phone slowly, her eyes finding his across the porch.
“That was security,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “Someone accessed the estate’s private server two hours ago from inside the building.” She swallows hard. “They downloaded everything, every file, every recording, every private conversation held on this property for the last six months.” The porch light flickers once behind her, and somewhere past the treeine, an engine turns over and pulls away into the dark.
David’s phone buzzes at 11 that night. An unknown number lighting up the screen the same way Harper’s call once had. He answers, expecting her voice. Instead, a stranger speaks, calm and rehearsed, like the words were practiced in front of a mirror. “Mr. Harrison, you don’t know me, but I know you’ve been asking questions you shouldn’t be asking.”
David sits up straight in the dark of his living room. Nia’s door closed down the hallway, her nightlight glowing faint under the crack. “Who is this?” “Someone who wants to make this easy for you. $75,000 cash.”
“All you have to do is forget what you found in that fence post and finish the job like none of it ever happened.” David’s grip tightens on the phone. $75,000 is more than he’s made in the last three years combined. It’s a new truck. It’s Nia’s braces.