I monitored the MLS portal on a tablet. As the police took control of the office network, the For Sale By Owner listing for my father’s house blinked, refreshed, and disappeared.

The transaction was blocked.

Rodney slumped in his chair, openly weeping as he watched his empire of fraud dismantled in real time. With the devices in our possession, every financial movement and every falsified signature was under government control.

But I still needed the smoking gun on the assault.

Back at the forensic lab, Chandra tore into the seized devices. Cooling fans hummed while she extracted network activity logs from the recovered router, hunting for handshake requests inside the home network during the week of the incident.

Her fingers flew. Then she stopped and spun her chair toward me.