“And don't tell her we were here.”
“What is this about?”
She looked toward the pool.
“We don't know yet.”
Then she paused.
“But someone clearly wants you to believe the glass is the main problem.”
I frowned.
“What do you mean?”
She looked directly into my eyes.
“The glass may be a distraction.”
After she left, I couldn't sleep.
At sunrise, I walked into the backyard.
The pool was still.
A few pieces of glass glittered beneath the water.
I suddenly realized something.
The glass had never injured anyone.
Not once.
That was strange.
If Victoria wanted to create a safety scandal, why had nobody been hurt?
Why had she been careful enough to avoid the shallow shelf where children would step?
Why did she always put the glass in the deepest part?
I called Daniel.
“I think we misunderstood.”
“About what?”
“The glass.”
He was silent.
“She isn't trying to hurt anyone,” I said.
“Then what is she doing?”
“I don't know.”
We examined every piece of glass.
Daniel brought specialized equipment.
Some pieces contained microscopic residue.
He sent samples to a laboratory.
Three days later, we got the results.
The glass had come from industrial containers.
Not drinking glasses.
Not bottles.
Industrial laboratory glass.
That was when everything changed.
Victoria wasn't dumping random broken glass into my pool.
She was dumping something else.
And the glass itself might be carrying information.
I contacted Agent Mitchell.
She asked me to meet her at a federal building.
The conversation lasted twenty minutes.
Then she showed me a photograph.
I recognized it immediately.
It was a warehouse.
A large industrial facility outside the city.
“This company,” she said, “was investigated two years ago for moving restricted technology.”
I looked at the picture.
“What does that have to do with my pool?”
“We don't know.”
She placed another photograph on the table.
Victoria Langley.
Standing beside a man I didn't recognize.
“Who is he?”
“Ethan Voss.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Agent Mitchell continued.
“He owns the security company your HOA has been paying.”
My stomach dropped.
“You're kidding.”
“No.”
She placed a file in front of me.
“Three months ago, federal investigators began tracking a network of shell companies.”
She opened the file.
“One of them received payments from the HOA.”
“Victoria?”
“Indirectly.”
“How?”
“The HOA paid a company owned by her brother. That company transferred funds to another company. That company purchased equipment from a third company.”
“And?”
“The final company is connected to Ethan Voss.”
I leaned back.
“So the HOA money isn't just being stolen.”
“No.”
“What is it funding?”
Agent Mitchell looked at me.
“That is what we're trying to determine.”
I thought about the alarm.
The glass.
The cameras.
Victoria filming my house.
Everything suddenly seemed connected.
“Why my property?”
She didn't answer immediately.
Then she said:
“Because your house may contain something someone has been looking for.”
I laughed nervously.
“My house?”
“Yes.”
“I don't have anything.”
“Maybe you don't know that you do.”
That night, I searched every room in the house.
I checked the attic.
The basement.
The garage.
The walls.
Nothing.
Then I remembered something my father had told me before he died.
He had once said:
“If anyone ever asks about the old basement cabinet, tell them you don't know what they're talking about.”
At the time, I thought it was one of his strange jokes.
Now I went downstairs.
There was an old wooden cabinet behind the furnace.
I had never opened it.
I moved it.
Behind it was a steel panel.
My heart began pounding.
I found a key taped beneath the cabinet.
The key fit.
The panel opened.
Inside was a narrow compartment.
There was a small black case.
And inside that case was a handwritten note.
I recognized my father's handwriting.
It said:
“Marcus, if this is open, then they finally found you.”
I sat on the basement floor.
For several minutes, I couldn't breathe.
Then I opened the second compartment.
Inside was a USB drive.
And a photograph of my father standing beside a man wearing a federal badge.
On the back of the photograph were five words.
“Trust no one at Crestmont.”
I looked at the USB drive.
Suddenly, the broken glass in my pool no longer seemed like harassment.
It seemed like a warning.
And Victoria Langley was not the person controlling this game.
She was only one of the players.
My father had been dead for six years.
Until that night, I had never questioned the official explanation.
Heart attack.
Sixty-three years old.
Unexpected.
Sad, but simple.
Now I wondered whether anything about his death had been simple.
I didn't open the USB drive immediately.
Agent Mitchell had told me not to access unknown digital devices connected to a federal investigation.
So I called her.
She arrived with another agent the next morning.
When I showed her the hidden compartment, she stared at the photograph for a long time.
“Do you recognize this man?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Not personally.”
“He's wearing a federal badge.”
“That doesn't necessarily mean he's FBI.”
“What does it mean?”
“It could be several agencies.”
She picked up the USB drive.
“Where did you find this?”
“My father left it.”
“Did you know he worked for the government?”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“My father was an electrical engineer.”
“That doesn't answer the question.”
I realized she was right.
My father had always been private.
He traveled frequently.
He had strange clients.
He sometimes worked late at night.
When I was a child, I thought he was simply successful.
Maybe he had been something else.
Agent Mitchell took the USB drive.
“We'll examine it.”
“What about Victoria?”
“She doesn't know about this yet.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she's still trying to scare you away from the property.”
“What does that mean?”
“If she knew what was in that basement, she wouldn't be dumping glass into your pool.”
I thought about that.
“So the glass is meant to make me sell?”
“Possibly.”
“And why would she want my house?”
Agent Mitchell looked at the floor.
“Because Crestmont Ridge wasn't always a neighborhood.”
I stared at her.
“What was it?”
“Federal research property.”
The words made no sense.
She explained that twenty years earlier, the land had been owned by a private technology contractor working on secure communications systems.
The project had been shut down.
The land was sold.
Houses were built.
A neighborhood appeared.
But the original underground infrastructure had not been completely removed.
“There are tunnels beneath parts of Crestmont Ridge,” she said.
I laughed.
“You're serious.”