Priya offered to handle client calls while I attended legal meetings.
I resisted because I did not want to burden her with my problems.
She reminded me that the firm belonged to everyone whose livelihood depended on it.
I finally let her take charge of the weekly schedule.
At home, I began sleeping in the guest room at Aaron’s house with a chair pushed against the door.
Jenna noticed and asked whether I thought Patricia would break in.
I admitted that I no longer knew which fears were reasonable.
She said I should not have to make that judgment alone.
She helped me find a counselor who worked with people recovering from stalking and privacy violations.
I resisted the idea at first because I thought counseling meant admitting defeat.
The counselor asked whether I would call a cracked foundation a moral weakness.
I said of course not.
She asked why I treated my own damaged sense of safety differently.
The question stayed with me longer than I expected.
That night, I slept without moving the chair.
The next morning, Aaron brought coffee and said the police had returned to Harbor Signal with a warrant.
He had seen the news alert while making breakfast.
I sat on the edge of the bed and waited for my hands to stop shaking.
Chapter 24: The Cabinet of Names
Investigators did not release the contents of the Harbor Signal search immediately.
Rumors spread anyway, and several residents claimed they had seen boxes of recordings carried out of the building.
Simone refused to rely on those accounts.
She waited for official disclosures and reminded me that evidence could be misidentified during a search.
A few days later, the association’s outside attorney sent residents a formal notice.
The review had found payments to Harbor Signal that lacked proper authorization under the association’s financial rules.
The board had frozen further payments and referred its findings to investigators.
The notice did not identify any resident whose home might have been recorded.
It instructed concerned homeowners to report specific observations without handling unfamiliar electronics unnecessarily.
Celia called to say she had never felt so relieved about refusing a free picture frame.
Leonard said he was embarrassed that his own complaints had once seemed more important than the inspection program.
I told him that none of us had known what we were dealing with.
Then Simone received a supplemental disclosure in our civil case.
It included a spreadsheet recovered from a business account associated with Harbor Signal.
The document listed installation codes, service dates, and equipment identifiers.
My house number appeared beside the words executive review.
