My Husband's Smart House Only Listens to Her novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Put Her Name

Brogan spread the plan out on the workbench with a coffee mug on each corner.

It was the ballroom's floor plan, printed from a venue site, with the model living room drawn in as a square at the center of the stage.

"Here's what Neil forgot," he said. "He didn't build the stage house a separate system. It would've taken three weeks and a budget."

"So what did he do?"

"He pointed it at the white house." Brogan tapped the square. "Same cloud account, same household, same list of people. The stage door is your front door, wearing a costume."

I looked at him.

"So if I'm the Owner of the house," I said slowly, "I'm the Owner on stage."

"Owner is Owner, everywhere. That's the one thing he designed well."

"And right now I'm a Guest."

"Right now you're a Guest because he deleted you. I can put you back." He rubbed the scar through his eyebrow. "It takes one minute. Your voice, your face, one sentence, and a lock on the profile so his admin screen can't remove it. All of the alerts go to the old service address."

"The one only you read."

"Only me."

"Do it," Colleen said from the stool by the heater, where she had been eating cold noodles out of a carton.

She had taken the day off to be underfoot, and she'd made it clear she wasn't leaving until Thursday.

"Not yet," Brogan said. "I want to do it last. The later it happens, the less time he has to notice."

"What if he notices anyway?"

"Then we're no worse off than we are tonight."

His phone buzzed on the bench.

He looked at the screen, and then he looked at me, and something moved in his face.

"Unknown number," he said. "It's a reporter."

"From where?"

"I don't know. Somebody sent my cell to her." He put it on speaker and set it between the mugs. "Hello?"

"Mr. Pellam?" It was a brisk, friendly woman's voice. "Sorry to call out of the blue. I'm writing a piece on Hearth for a Wednesday tech feature. I understand you're the original author of the voice engine?"

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