Chapter 7 — My Father’s System

Here is what Derek did not know, and what his mother did not know, and what cost them both everything.

The camera he had crushed under his heel had never stored its footage locally.

It had never kept anything inside itself to destroy.

My father had installed the whole security system two years earlier, after someone broke into his backyard woodworking shop and stole a lifetime of tools.

He was not a wealthy man, or a technical one, but he was a careful one, and being robbed had frightened him in a way that stayed with him, and so he had done his research and built something better than a man like him was expected to understand.