I groaned. "Please don't do that."
"Oh, and the Facebook group," he went on, oblivious to my pain. "You're a legend! You're like the folk hero who took down the evil queen. There's a... there's a movement. They want to nominate you for the now-vacant position of HOA president."
A chill went down my spine. That was my actual, literal nightmare: being in charge of approving mailbox colors and mediating disputes over lawn height.
"Miller, I need you to do me a favor. If anyone asks, tell them I'm moving to Antarctica."
Before he could respond, my doorbell rang.
"Got to go, Miller. Good luck with all that."
I hung up and went to the door. Standing on my porch were two men. They were both in their forties, both wearing identical, nondescript dark suits that screamed "federal agents" louder than a bald eagle holding a copy of the Constitution. They did not look happy.
"Alex Evans?" the one on the left asked. He had a sharp, angular face and tired eyes.
"That's me," I said, leaning against the doorframe. "Let me guess: you're not here to sell me cookies."
"I'm Agent Foster, FBI," said the one on the left. "This is Agent Cardenas, Department of Homeland Security."
"DHS," I said with a nod. "Big fan of your work. Your satellite network has fantastic uptime. A little bit of latency on the uplink, but the bandwidth is solid."
Cardenas, the DHS agent, did not smile. "Mr. Evans, your access logs from yesterday afternoon lit up about a dozen threat matrices we have running in Quantico. We thought a foreign state actor was attempting to hijack a municipal communications hub for a denial-of-service attack."
"Then we cross-referenced the source IP with ISP records," Foster added, his voice a low monotone. "And we saw it came from a residential address in this subdivision. We were confused. You bypassed three layers of security protocols that my department was assured were rock-solid."