Centuria Books · Behind Closed Screens: A Techno-legal Thriller
Behind Closed Screens: A Techno-legal Thriller — Read the First Chapter
The house knew she was coming home before she did—and so did the man who built it to watch her.
Chapter 1: The Connected House
The house knew Jenna was coming home before she did.
As her Lyft navigated the winding residential streets of the North Queen Anne neighborhood, Jenna felt the familiar tension building in her shoulders. Nestled atop one of Seattle’s steepest hills, their home commanded sweeping views of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains beyond—when the notorious Pacific Northwest weather permitted such luxuries.
Tonight, a fine mist blanketed the city, transforming streetlights into hazy orbs and slicking the narrow roads with a treacherous sheen. Her driver, a middle-aged man with graying temples and a Seahawks air freshener dangling from his rearview mirror, hunched forward over the steering wheel.
“Getting pretty nasty out there,” he commented, windshield wipers beating a steady rhythm against the increasing drizzle.
Jenna made a noncommittal sound, attention fixed on her phone as she tracked their approach to home. Three days at the Vancouver Digital Ethics Conference had left her drained, her social battery depleted from moderating panels and networking with tech industry figures who alternated between dismissing her concerns about algorithmic bias and asking for selfies with “the famous Jenna Davis.”
The car rounded the final bend, and there it was—their house, a modernist structure of angular glass and recycled steel perched on the hillside like an alien vessel that had chosen this precise spot to make first contact. As they crossed some invisible digital perimeter, the exterior lighting system activated in perfect sequence—soft amber fixtures illuminating the architectural features Dean had specifically selected to be highlighted after dark.
The garage door rolled upward with silent precision, its motion triggered not by a remote in their vehicle, but by the GPS location of her smartphone. Jenna hadn’t pressed a button or made a call. The house simply knew.
“Nice place,” the driver said, craning his neck to take in the full spectacle of their award-winning smart home. “One of those internet-of-things setups?”
Jenna smiled reflexively, having fielded variations of this question since the Seattle Modern Architecture tour had featured their residence last spring. “Something like that.”
“My brother-in-law got some of those smart bulbs for Christmas,” he continued, pulling into their driveway. “Half the time they turn on in the middle of the night or won’t respond to his app. Drives him crazy.”
“That’s the problem with consumer-grade systems,” Jenna replied automatically. “They’re not designed for true integration.”
Inside the house, invisible machinery was already humming to life. The temperature, which Dean programmed to drop three degrees during vacancy for energy efficiency, would now be climbing back to her preferred 68 degrees. The electric kettle would be heating water for the chamomile tea Jenna typically drank after traveling. The ambient lighting would be shifting to the warmer color temperature she preferred after sunset—”Jenna mode,” Dean called it, one of his many customizations designed specifically for her comfort.
“Must be nice having everything just work,” the driver said, popping the trunk and retrieving her sleek carry-on suitcase.
“Most days,” Jenna replied, already calculating the appropriate tip on the app. “Though sometimes I miss the satisfaction of flipping an actual light switch.”
He laughed as if Jenna had made a joke, accepted her digital five-star rating with a nod, and was soon backing down their steep driveway, taillights disappearing into the thickening mist.
Jenna wheeled her suitcase through the garage, past Dean’s meticulously organized workbench where tools hung in perfect alignment on a pegboard wall. His collection of specialized cybersecurity hardware occupied labeled bins, each containing components that he described to her once as “the kind of stuff that makes the NSA nervous.” Next to his workstation sat the gleaming midnight blue Tesla he’d purchased last spring—a splurge after his consulting firm landed a major contract with a healthcare conglomerate.
The door leading from the garage into their home opened automatically as Jenna approached, responding to the proximity sensor in her phone. The house continued its choreographed welcome: hallway lights illuminating her path, the faint hum of their hospital-grade air purification system adjusting to compensate for the garage door’s momentary breach of their sealed environment.
“Welcome home, Jenna,” said the house in its deliberately non-anthropomorphized voice—pleasant but unmistakably artificial. Dean had programmed it himself after a lengthy rant about the “psychological manipulation” built into commercial systems that mimicked human speech patterns too closely. “Current time is 7:42 PM. Internal temperature is 68 degrees. Dean is in his office.”
Of course he was. Three days away, and her homecoming warranted less attention than whatever code currently demanded his focus. Jenna tried to suppress the twinge of disappointment. This was Dean—brilliant, obsessive, capable of such intense concentration that fire alarms could sound without breaking his flow state. It was what had drawn her to him initially: his ability to solve problems no one else could crack, to see patterns in digital chaos that remained invisible to ordinary minds.
Jenna left her suitcase in the entryway and moved through their open-concept living space. The floors were polished concrete, warmed from beneath by a hydronic heating system Dean had insisted upon during the renovation. Strategic wood accents—reclaimed Douglas fir salvaged from a decommissioned warehouse in Tacoma—softened the industrial aesthetic. The north-facing wall was almost entirely glass, currently displaying Seattle’s twinkling skyline across the dark waters of Puget Sound.
Jenna paused at the expansive windows, watching ferry lights crawl across the black water. The view had sold her on this house despite its impractical distance from downtown, where she often needed to be for meetings and interviews. On clear days, the Olympic Mountains provided a snow-capped backdrop to the urban panorama. Tonight, they were hidden behind rain clouds, the city lights blurred like an impressionist painting.
Making her way down the hallway to Dean’s office, Jenna noticed the blue glow spilling from beneath his door, accompanied by the distinctive clickety-clack of his vintage IBM Model M keyboard—a relic from the early 90s that he claimed provided “tactile feedback superior to any contemporary input device.” The rhythmic sound increased in tempo, suggesting he was deep in a coding session.
Jenna knocked lightly on the partially open door. No response. She pushed it open wider and stood watching him for a moment, unseen.
Dean’s tall frame was hunched over his workstation, his dark hair falling across his forehead in the way that had made her stomach flutter when they first met at a cybersecurity conference five years ago. Jenna had been there researching an article on digital privacy; he’d been a featured speaker on endpoint protection. His presentation had cut through the technical jargon with unexpected clarity and humor, and she had approached him afterward with questions that turned into coffee, then dinner, then a weekend that stretched into a life together.
Now, at forty, Dean Harmon was considered something of a rock star in information security circles—the guy companies called when their sensitive systems were compromised, the expert who found vulnerabilities before the black-hat hackers could exploit them. His focus when working was absolute, a quality Jenna had found intensely attractive in the beginning. His ability to shut out distractions and dive deep into complex problems had seemed like a superpower.
Now, Jenna sometimes wondered if she had been included in what gets filtered out.
Jenna knocked again, louder. “Hey, stranger.”
Dean swiveled, his concentration breaking into a wide smile that transformed his intense features and creased the corners of his blue eyes. “There she is.” He pushed back from his desk and stood, unfolding his lanky frame. He still moved with the casual grace of the rock climber he’d been when they met, his lean body maintained by predawn workouts in their home gym. “Conference run long?”
“Flight delayed. Weather in Vancouver.” Jenna stepped into his arms, inhaling the familiar scent of him—sandalwood soap and that indefinable male smell that her brain still categorized as home, as safety. His embrace tightened, lifting her slightly.
“Missed you,” he murmured against her hair.
Jenna allowed herself to melt against him momentarily, her body recognizing the contours of his before her mind registered the three monitors behind him. Each displayed dense blocks of code, intricate digital architectures that she could recognize but not comprehend. One screen showed what appeared to be a network diagram, red lines connecting multiple nodes.
“Did you eat?” Jenna asked, noticing the absence of dishes in his typically tidy workspace. Dean was almost pathologically neat in his professional environment, a trait that didn’t always extend to their shared spaces.
“Got lost in this security audit for NeuroSync. Their new implantable tech has more vulnerabilities than Swiss cheese.” He released her but kept one arm around her waist. “How was the keynote?”
“Standing room only. I think my take on algorithmic discrimination actually made a few developers uncomfortable, which was the point.” Jenna glanced at his screens again, noting how quickly he reached over to minimize one of the windows. “The panel on predictive policing went viral on Twitter. Apparently, suggesting that surveillance technology might have inherent bias is still controversial in 2022.”
“That’s my girl.” He kissed her forehead. “Changing the world one guilt-inducing presentation at a time.”
Jenna rolled her eyes but couldn’t help smiling. “I recorded it for you. Though I’m sure watching your wife lecture about the ethical implications of predictive technology is low on your entertainment list.”
“Are you kidding? It’s exactly my kind of foreplay.” His hand slipped lower on her hip, suggestive. “Nothing sexier than watching you make tech bros squirm in their ergonomic chairs.”
Her body responded automatically to his touch, leaning into him even as her mind calculated that Jenna hadn’t showered since morning, hadn’t eaten since the airport salad five hours ago, and was still processing the email she had received just before landing—an anonymous tip about a private forum where security experts allegedly shared techniques for monitoring their wives and girlfriends.
Dean’s phone buzzed on his desk. He glanced at it, his expression shifting microscopically—a tightening around the eyes, a slight compression of his lips—before he tapped the screen to silence it.
“Work?” Jenna asked, trying to keep her tone casual.
“Nothing urgent.” He turned back to her, focus recalibrating with the seamless adjustment Jenna had observed countless times. “How about I close up shop and make you dinner? I got those scallops you like from Pike Place.”
The perfect husband. Remembering her favorite seafood. Planning ahead for her return.
“Sounds perfect. I’m going to shower off the travel grime.” Jenna disentangled herself from his embrace, suddenly aware of the recycled airplane air clinging to her skin and clothes.
“Take your time. I’ll open that Albariño we’ve been saving.”
Jenna kissed him lightly and headed to their bedroom, the motion sensors triggering lights along her path without requiring a single switch to be flipped. The bathroom fan automatically spun to life as she approached, the shower system beginning its warm-up cycle as she undressed. Everything seamless. Everything responsive. Everything working as designed.
Under the rainfall showerhead, hot water sluicing away airport bacteria and travel fatigue, Jenna closed her eyes and tried to pinpoint the source of the vague unease that had been growing inside her for months. Dean was attentive, successful, brilliant. Their home was the envy of her tech journalist colleagues—a showcase for integrated living that had been featured in Dwell, Architectural Digest, and a special issue of Wired focused on smart home innovation. Her career was thriving, with a book deal recently signed with MIT Press and speaking engagements booked six months out.
So why did Jenna sometimes feel like she was living inside a beautiful, comfortable prison?
Maybe it was the accumulation of small discordant notes. The location tracking notification that had popped up on her phone last month, showing that Dean had checked her whereabouts fourteen times in a single day. When questioned, he’d explained it away as a glitch in the family sharing settings—a plausible explanation from anyone other than a man who understood digital systems down to their machine code.
There were the emails in her “read” folder that Jenna had no memory of opening. The perfectly timed text messages that sometimes anticipated needs she hadn’t yet expressed. The targeted ads that reflected conversations she had had verbally in their kitchen, when no devices appeared to be actively listening.
Last week, her assistant had forwarded an email Jenna would supposedly sent at 3:17 AM, asking her to reschedule a meeting she had no intention of moving. The writing style was hers—or close enough—but she had been asleep at that hour, her phone in its charging station across the room.
Jenna turned off the water and reached for a towel, noting how it was perfectly warm—the heated towel rack another of Dean’s thoughtful additions to their renovated master bath. As she wiped condensation from the mirror, she studied her reflection: Jenna Davis, 35, respected technology ethicist with a growing public platform. Dark hair cut in a pragmatic bob that required minimal styling, green eyes that Dean once said reminded him of vintage circuit boards—”beautiful and complex,” he’d added, trailing his fingers along her bare shoulder.
What Jenna saw now was a woman starting to question whether convenience had become confinement. Whether all this technology designed to anticipate her needs was actually shaping them instead.
From the kitchen came the sounds of domestic harmony—the click of a gas burner igniting, the gentle thunk of a wine cork being extracted. Dean would be arranging ingredients with mathematical precision, his engineer’s mind approaching cooking with the same systematic attention he applied to code. He was a surprisingly good cook, another talent that had charmed her during their early dating phase.
Jenna slipped into comfortable clothes—soft leggings and an oversized sweater—and padded toward the kitchen. On impulse, she detoured through their shared home office to deposit her laptop. The room was immaculate, as always. Dean was pathologically tidy with work equipment, though he’d leave dirty coffee mugs scattered throughout the house. Her side of the desk held a slim MacBook and organized notepads. His side featured a high-performance desktop system with specialized security tools that he insisted on keeping separate from their home automation network—”air-gapped,” he called it, for maximum protection.
A blinking light on his external hard drive caught her attention. Not the steady pulse of normal operation, but an irregular pattern suggesting active data transfer. Odd, since his main workspace was in his private office.
Jenna moved closer, noting that the drive was connected to a small black box she didn’t recognize—something with no manufacturer logo, no identifying features beyond a single Ethernet port and power indicator. Before she could examine it further, she heard Dean’s voice.
“Jen?” he called from the kitchen. “Wine’s ready when you are.”
Jenna startled, feeling like she had been caught snooping, though this was her office too. “Coming,” she answered, turning away from the blinking light and the questions it raised.