…”webcam. For at least three months. The camera light was disabled. You’d never have known.”
I put my hand over my mouth. Three months. Me in my kitchen. Me on work calls in a T-shirt. Me crying at my desk the night my grandmother died.
“Don’t go over there,” Greg said again. “Call the police. I’ll send them everything we have.”
I didn’t knock on 4B. I didn’t even look at the door. I grabbed my keys, walked out of the building, and called the police from a coffee shop down the street.
The detective who called me back that afternoon asked a question that made my stomach drop. “Has your neighbor ever been in your apartment?”
He had. Once. Back in the spring, when his Wi-Fi was down, I’d given him my password so he could send an important email. He’d thanked me with a bottle of wine. A week later, my printer stopped working, and he’d offered to come over and fix it. He was at my laptop for maybe ten minutes.
That was all he needed. Greg’s team found a remote access program buried in my system, installed the same day as the “printer fix.” Every night, he’d been opening my laptop from across the hall, through my own Wi-Fi.
Police executed a search warrant on 4B four days later. On his computer they found folders. Videos and screenshots of me. And folders for two other women in our building, labeled by apartment number.
He’s been charged with unlawful surveillance and computer intrusion. My company paid for a new laptop and a security consultant. I broke my lease, with the police report, and moved across town.
There’s a little piece of black tape over my new laptop’s camera. Greg mailed it to me with a sticky note. “Company policy, as of last week. Thanks to you.”
