Most people think like victims. Grace Kamau has spent most of her life trying to think like a thief. Not because she admires thieves. Because she doesn’t trust surprises.

She grew up on a farm. “My father bought Greyhounds.” The dogs were poisoned anyway. The police came later with notebooks and questions. Which fence did they jump? Which window? What time? Everybody was always reconstructing yesterday.

“I found that exhausting.” She was more interested in tomorrow.

As a girl she wanted to become an investigative journalist because she loved asking why. Why this? Why now? What did everybody else miss? Life eventually edited her script. Instead, she joined Securex and has spent the last two decades there.

Sometimes people think security is about alarms. “I think it’s about imagination. You have to become the person who wants to break in. You have to stand in somebody else’s darkness long enough to predict where they’ll step next.”

It’s an odd way to make a living.

But after twenty years, she still walks into every room asking herself the same question she asked as a little girl.

“What is everybody else failing to see?”