Chapter 22: The Watching

They did not arrive with noise.

They arrived with patterns.

Ty noticed it first the way he noticed most things—out of rhythm. A drone that passed over the tree line twice in one afternoon. A man at the county clerk’s office who asked too many questions about a trust that didn’t advertise itself. A woman who showed up at the shelter with brochures for an international relief organization no one on staff had heard of.

None of it was illegal.

That was what made it unsettling.

Ann felt it in different ways. Not in machines or paperwork—but in people. A young man who volunteered twice in one week, asking careful questions about who ran the land outside town. A woman who brought donations and lingered too long in conversation, her concern practiced, her curiosity precise.