Allison leaned forward.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then Grant answered.
"Only if nobody sees us leave it."
Judith looked toward the side entrance.
She pointed at the dome camera.
For a moment, her expression changed.
Then she said something too softly for us to understand.
Grant glanced toward the device.
And both of them hurried away.
I stopped the recording.
My hands were trembling.
For months, Judith had described me as a troublemaker because I wanted reliable survey information.
Now I was watching footage that appeared to show her and a developer representative planting association property behind my garage.
Then discussing how its discovery could make me look like the thief.
Allison watched me carefully.
"Ryan?"
I looked toward her.
She continued.
"This is important evidence. We need to preserve the original file and provide it through the proper channels."
I nodded.
Then she added something that made me feel unexpectedly emotional.
"You were right to question those boundary notices."
I stared at the screen.
For a moment, I thought about Martha's threatened eighteen-thousand-dollar bill.
Thomas's old plat.
The orange flags.
And the terrifying possibility that Judith might have succeeded in discrediting me before anyone examined the actual land records.
I took a slow breath.
"I just wanted to know where my fence was supposed to be."
Allison nodded.
"I know."
The contents of the blue case raised another problem.
The investigators eventually confirmed that it contained documents resembling HOA archive records.
Several were copies of old meeting minutes.
Others appeared to be proposed easement agreements, homeowner consent forms, and an internal summary describing the planned boundary correction.
At first glance, the materials looked official.
They carried the association's name.
Dates.
Signatures.
And references to old decisions supposedly made long before Hannah and I purchased our house.
But when independent reviewers compared the documents with records from the county and the HOA's available archives, discrepancies emerged.
One purported consent had a signature attributed to a homeowner who died years before the document's listed date.
Another used an outdated association name that had already been changed.
And one set of meeting minutes described a vote that couldn't be reconciled with the association's surviving attendance records.
The discrepancies didn't establish who fabricated the documents.
That required additional investigation.
But they made one thing clear.
The case wasn't reliable proof that the proposed access rights already existed.
In fact, it raised serious questions about whether someone had been creating or assembling misleading paperwork to support the project.