The first time I noticed the blue light, I thought it came from the television.
It was eleven forty on a rainy Thursday night, and the screen had been dark for almost an hour.
I was standing barefoot in my living room with a glass of water when a tiny blue point flickered inside the wooden clock above the fireplace.
The clock had belonged to my father, and I knew every scratch on its walnut frame.
I also knew it had never contained a light.
I set down the glass and moved closer.
The blue point disappeared.
For a moment, I wondered whether exhaustion had finally caught up with me.
I had spent the previous three weeks trying to keep my architecture business alive after losing a municipal renovation contract.
I was thirty-eight years old, recently divorced, and living alone in a quiet subdivision outside Columbus, Ohio.
My name is Daniel Mercer, and I had moved to Briar Glen because I wanted the kind of peace that came with trimmed lawns and neighbors who waved from their driveways.
Instead, I had spent eight months arguing with the woman next door.
Her name was Patricia Voss.
She was sixty-two, wore expensive white sneakers even when gardening, and described herself as the unofficial guardian of neighborhood standards.
Patricia had complained about my porch light, my delivery trucks, the color of my mailbox, and the fact that I occasionally worked after nine at night.
Two weeks earlier, she had threatened to report me for operating an illegal business from my home.
I had assumed she was bluffing.
Then the clock blinked again.
I climbed onto the hearth and examined the small brass ornament at the center of its face.
Something round and black was hidden behind a hole no wider than a pencil lead.
I touched it with my fingernail and felt a hard plastic rim.
The clock was not just a clock anymore.
Someone had turned it into a camera.
I backed away so quickly that my heel struck the coffee table.
The sound echoed through the room, and I suddenly became conscious of every window around me.
The camera was pointed directly at the couch where I took confidential calls with clients.
It also faced the hallway leading to my bedroom.
I stared at it for several seconds before the anger arrived.
Then I pulled the clock from the wall and smashed it against the stone hearth.
Wood split across the floor.
The glass face shattered, and a tiny circuit board bounced under the coffee table.
A black memory card landed near my foot.
