Years earlier, a security technician named Ryan had installed part of the home’s surveillance system, after a string of break-ins in the neighborhood.

Marcus was not asking him, now, to hack into anyone’s private account or do anything improper.

He was simply asking to review the cloud backups linked to the home network that Marcus himself paid for, and owned, and managed.

It was his own system, recording his own home.

He had every right to look.

Ryan pulled up several older auto-saved files, and the first one seemed, at a glance, insignificant.

Sarah was in the kitchen, making breakfast, while Lily sat at the island.