She stopped at the mailbox cluster.
She spoke with another homeowner.
She stood near the sidewalk with her phone in her hand.
Sometimes she wasn't even looking toward his house.
But the timing was too consistent.
Marcus sat at his workbench and rewound one particular clip.
Patricia walked past at 9:17 a.m.
Three minutes later, her phone came up.
She took a picture.
Marcus froze the frame.
The image was grainy, but the direction of her phone was unmistakable.
She was photographing his house.
He leaned back.
“Why?”
That question stayed with him.
It was the same question that had bothered him ever since the Maybach incident.
Why his garage?
Why his property?
Why him?
At first, Marcus had assumed Patricia simply wanted to humiliate him.
Maybe she had been trying to prove that she could get away with anything.
Maybe she had been angry because he refused to treat her like she was the queen of the neighborhood.
But there was another possibility.
Maybe the garage had never been the real target.
Maybe Marcus had been.
He opened the folder containing the property records.
The folder was thick now.
Deed.
Survey.
HOA documents.
Meeting minutes.
Emails.
Security footage.
Police report.
Attorney correspondence.
Everything had been carefully organized.
Marcus flipped through the pages.
Then he stopped.
A document from eighteen months earlier caught his attention.
It was an old development proposal.
He had seen it before.
At the time, he had barely paid attention.
The proposal concerned a large parcel of land beyond the neighborhood's eastern boundary.
The property had been vacant for years.
According to the document, a private development company wanted to construct a mixed-use complex there.
Retail.
Luxury apartments.
A small hotel.
Private parking.
New access roads.
Marcus frowned.
He remembered the name.
Crestline Development Group.
He had heard neighbors mention it before.
But then something else caught his attention.
The proposed access road appeared to run along the eastern edge of the neighborhood.
Marcus pulled out the property survey.
His finger followed the boundary.
Then he stopped.
The road couldn't be built as shown.
Not without crossing a narrow strip of land that belonged to one of the homeowners.
Marcus checked the name.
His name.
He stared at the paper.
“No.”
He looked again.
The strip was only eighteen feet wide.
It was an awkward piece of property that ran behind several houses and ended near the drainage easement.
Most people would never notice it.
But without that strip, the proposed access road would need to be redesigned.
Marcus suddenly understood why Patricia had been so interested in his property.
He sat very still.
The garage.
The camera.
The complaints.
The Maybach.
The sudden concern about his welding equipment.
The accusations that his garage was unsafe.
The repeated attempts to establish that he was somehow violating HOA rules.
None of it had been random.
They were building a paper trail.
Marcus slowly closed the folder.
Then his phone rang.
It was his attorney.
“Marcus?”
“Yeah.”
“I need you to sit down.”
Marcus glanced at the chair beside him.
“I am sitting.”
“Good.”
There was a pause.
“We found something.”
Marcus's expression changed.
“What?”