A tiny glass lens stared back at me through the branches.

Brad had put a motion camera right over my access trail without asking, aimed straight down the driveway path.

I went into the machine shed behind the house, took a pair of heavy wire snips off Arvid’s workbench, and marched straight back down the ridgeline.

I reached around behind the oak trunk, grabbed the black cable that ran from the camera box to its external battery pack, and squeezed the handles until the copper wire snapped in half.

By five thirty I was sitting in the corner office of Patricia Haugen’s law practice on Main Street in Menomonie.