Blindside: A Novel

"Here it is," he called. "Zero two twenty-one. Someone breached the perimeter."

"Someone? Or something?" I walked over to him and set a mug of black coffee on the side table. It was a reasonable question. The AI in the system was supposed to screen out animals, but it wasn't perfect, and the deer messed with the sensors almost as much as they messed with my garden. I hate deer. They're basically giant rats with better PR. I'd asked Mac if we could set the system up to terminate them on site, but he'd said no. Sure. He picks that to show self-restraint about. That was fine. I'd been joking about it anyway.

Mostly.

Mac sat back so I could see the screen. A dark figure stood in the trees, clearly silhouetted from a streetlight in the distance behind them. Not a deer. "Definitely someone," he said, emphasizing what I could already see for myself.

"He... they..." I corrected myself. It was too dark to determine gender. "They came in from the front? How much did video capture?"

"Running that now." It would take a few seconds, because the system would pull from all thirty-five cameras and piece together the entire incursion.

I let out a sigh. Just what I needed. While the intruder might not have meant me harm, we absolutely had to treat it like they did, which would be a giant pain in the ass. I didn't even have to watch the video to know that much.

"Here we go." Mac stood so we could both get a good view of the screen at the same time.

The dark figure entered the tree line about thirty meters west of the driveway. It was difficult to judge height or weight without something to compare it to, but the system would produce that as well, so I didn't worry about it. A brief moment of light caught their face, hidden by a dark facemask—the kind that people use in the winter. Winter was around the corner, but the weather last night hadn't been nearly cold enough to merit a face covering. They walked mostly straight toward the house, only varying course to pick their way around trees and the small bits of brush that had grown back since the last time I had it cleared. They stopped between two larger trees and stood there for at least a minute, not advancing any farther, which would have triggered more active defense measures—not just sensors and cameras. I couldn't say for sure, but they seemed to be staring at the house. At least in that direction. After a bit, they turned and left the same way they'd come in.

Once it finished, we stood there for a few seconds in silence before Mac reached forward and shut the screen off. We weren't done with it, but we didn't need it for the moment.

 

"What do you make of it?" I asked. "Could just be someone who got lost."

 

"Dressed like that?" asked Mac. He was right, of course. "What worries me is that they seemed to know your system. Knew how far they could come in without triggering active countermeasures."

"That might be a stretch," I said. "We can't say that for sure."

"No," Mac allowed. "Not for sure."

But, again, his assertion felt correct. "So what's the point of it?"

"They could be casing your place. Evaluating your defenses for a later attack."

"If so, why show themselves so blatantly? It just gives us warning. It looked like they almost wanted to be seen. They didn't do anything to try to avoid the cameras."

"They didn't," Mac said. "Maybe they were tracking them—figuring out where the cameras are so they could avoid them in the future."

"But you're going to move them," I said.

Mac shrugged and nodded. "True." He moved them regularly even without a specific reason.

"Which any pro would know, so either they're a total amateur, which makes them less of a threat, or they've got a different purpose."

"Sending a message?" asked Mac, more to himself than to me.

"What's the message?"

He ignored my question. "Maybe they dropped something out there. We'll know more once we comb the area."

I nodded. I didn't want to make a big deal of this, but no chance Mac would let it go, so I might as well ride with it. "You going to bring in help?"

"Yeah. I'll call Castellano. Maybe another guy. Get them to help me go through the woods and see if the visitor left anything behind."