“I don’t like it.” Jude might be well over six feet tall now, a grown twenty-three-year-old man, but he’ll always be my little brother—and the thought of him confronting a possible peeping Tom on my watch makes me nauseous. “At the very least, we should have a weapon handy.”
“Need I remind you that I took jujitsu for six months?”
“Need I remind you that you only hung in there that long because you were waiting for the instructor to break up with his boyfriend?”
“They were clearly on the rocks.”
“I’m sure your dimples helped speed things along.”
“You’re right.” He gives me an intentionally creepy smile. “They are the true weapon.”
I shake my head at him, but thankfully the shivers are subsiding.
“All right.” He claps his hands together. “Let’s take a quick look and pray we don’t find a jar of fingernails or some shit.”
“Or a GoPro,” I mutter, bracing myself against the wall, hands covering my face. I watch through the cracks of my fingers as Jude slides into the closet, reaches up and eases aside the panel to reveal a small space. Very small. Immediately, however, daylight streams in through the two holes and it is impossible to ignore the fact that they are the exact width of an average set of eyes and they go straight through to the bedroom. Peepholes. One hundred percent. “Oh God. Yuck. Is there anything…or anyone up there?”
Jude grasps the edge of the crawl space and does a quick pull up. “Nope. Nothing.” He drops down. “A person would have to be tiny to fit up there. Or really flexible. So unless my powers of deduction fail me, the peeper is a gymnast.”
“Or a small woman?” We trade a skeptical look. “Yeah, that doesn’t really fit the peeper profile, does it?” I pull my towel up tighter beneath my armpits. “So what do we do?”
“Send me the contact info for the owner. I’ll give him a call.”
“Oh. No, I’ll do it. I don’t want this to disrupt your vacation time. Go take your nap.”
He’s already on his way back to the stairs. “Send me the info, T.”
For some reason, I still don’t want to be alone with the peepholes, so I scurry along after my brother in my towel. “Fine.” I chew my lip. “I think I’ll check the laundry room for a stepping stool and some tape to cover up the holes.”
He tosses a wink back at me. “In case the peeper is a ghost?”
“Oh, sure. It’s funny now, but as soon as it gets dark, a peeper ghost will become a totally realistic possibility.”
“Take the other room, if you want. I don’t mind being spied on by Casper.”
I’m laughing as we reach the bottom of the stairs, both of us hooking right into the kitchen where the door to the laundry room is located. “You’d probably enjoy it,” I say.
“Have you been reading my diary again?”
By the time I pull open the door to the laundry area, I’m having such a good time with my brother that I don’t believe what I’m seeing at first. It has to be a joke. Or a television screen playing a grisly reenactment from a Netflix true crime documentary. There cannot be a large, dead man stuffed in between the washer and dryer, face purple with bruises, eyes glassy and unseeing. And there in the center of his forehead is a neat, black-edged bullet hole. It simply cannot be happening. But the bile that spears up my throat is real. So is the ice that hardens me, head to toe, a scream freezing in my throat. No. No, no, no.
“Taylor?” Jude approaches, sounding concerned.
On instinct, I try to push him away. My little brother shouldn’t see things like this. I have to spare him from this. My hands prove ineffective unfortunately and before I can summon enough strength, enough wherewithal to prevent Jude from looking into the laundry room, he’s there beside me. And then he’s dragging me backwards several feet, yelling, “What the fuck?” An eerie buzzing silence descends. The image doesn’t go away. He’s still there. Still dead. There is something vaguely familiar about the man, but I’m shaking and trying not to vomit and that is garnering all of my concentration. Oh God, oh God, what is happening here? This isn’t a joke?
“Okay,” I whisper. “N-now I think we should call the police.”
Chapter 2
Taylor
* * *
I’m wrapped in a blanket, awash in the glow of flashing blue lights. This is not supposed to happen in real life. I’m trapped in an episode of Etched in Bone. I’m the innocent bystander who stumbled upon the macabre scene. Of course, the years of therapy I will need to recover won’t even be mentioned in the show notes. The pithy hosts won’t pronounce my name correctly. But me? I doubt I’ll ever forget the sight of that murdered man as long as I live.