Always Home

The door opened at 4am. The app said it was locked. The footage showed nothing moved.

Nora Vass is an architect living alone in Adelaide in the smart home she designed, installed, and built from nothing after her marriage ended. She knows the network topology. She knows the firmware versions. She installed every device herself because she understood systems and wanted control.

Then the incidents begin. A door that opens without triggering its own log. A thermostat set to 4 degrees at 2am, the schedule showing a manual override from her own phone while she slept. Her own voice giving a command she did not give, from a room she was not in. Her sleeping face used to unlock her phone. Her bank account accessed six inches from her head.
Her ex-husband thinks she is relapsing. Her therapist begins documentation. Her best friend books her a psychiatric evaluation she did not request. The logs authenticate everything as hers. The system is not malfunctioning.

It is being operated. Nobody is in the house. Nobody was ever in the house. The attack runs entirely through the devices she chose, configured, and trusted.

For readers of Ruth Ware, B.A. Paris, and Shari Lapena.

The ALWAYS series is a three-book psychological suspense trilogy following Nora Vass and cybersecurity consultant Dan Cole as a digital methodology spreads beyond one attacker, one target, and one house.

Book 1: ALWAYS HOME
Book 2: ALWAYS WATCHING
Book 3: ALWAYS THERE

The technology in the books is real. The vulnerabilities are documented. The author spent ten years installing these systems in residential builds. D.J. Cole writes psychological suspense about surveillance, smart-home systems, and the moment trust becomes liability.

Read the series.