It seemed like a reasonable division of labor, honestly. Nat was twice as efficient as Patrick and me put together at research and data-massaging. But she did seem to be getting increasingly frustrated. I decided we’d have to call a meeting about it, and soon.

Patrick already had his ladder set up at the first location and was mounting a webcam on the wall. Wiring it to the lights for power would take a few extra minutes. I grabbed my ladder and tools and moved to the next location.

“So if I wanted to get around this kind of setup,” Patrick said in a conversational tone, “I would either shoot out a light with a pellet gun, or sneak up during the day with a folding ladder and unscrew some bulbs, or just cut the power to the lights.”

I paused while I briefly considered how I’d go about getting around our security setup. “I wonder if the motion detectors will pick up someone who’s invisible,” I replied.

“Of course not,” Patrick replied, huffily. “I mean, why would you think otherwise?”

“It’s not that simple,” I said. “The motion detectors aren’t necessarily tripped by a change in the image. Otherwise they’d activate for the movement of trees in the wind.”

“They don’t?”

“Some do. The cheaper, passive ones. Some will only react to motion toward or away from the camera. Some use infrared images. Some use a sum of the infrared signature over a number of zones. Some are active rather than passive and use microwave or sound pulses as a sort of radar.”

Patrick stuck out his jaw, a sure sign he was getting stubborn. “I bet there are ways to fool them anyway.”

“On the internet? Bet on it. Some of those ways might even actually work.”

“What I’ll bet on is that we’ll get another visit tonight,” Patrick said. “The question is: what will we do about it? We’re not really set up as a high-security installation. No watchdogs, no guards, no guns.”

“We have the disruptors.”

“Who’s going to take the night shift? We all have day jobs.”

I sighed. “I think this whole thing is getting to all of us.”

“We need a council of war,” he said. “We need to get this done, Jack. Or hand it off to the government or something. We’ve got lives. We’re not set up for a long, drawn-out cold war.”

“Gotcha. Okay, let’s start by getting these cameras up, then we’ll talk this out.”

We were once again seated in our favorite chairs in the barn, drinks in hand.

“I get that you’re both getting frustrated.” I looked from Nat to Patrick. “So am I. We’re rearranging deck chairs here, and not making any real progress.”

“Although I fully admit it’s been fun, so far, mostly,” Patrick replied with a smile.