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The other guests were all wide open and living online. It had taken under an hour for him to learn pretty much everything he wanted to know about them. Hannah, wife and mom; that was her center. Cricket, the single party girl with big aspirations. Mako, the tech mogul with the huge Twitter following. Liza, the yoga influencer, with a popular YouTube channel. Bruce kept a lower profile, just a ConnectIn account listing his professional accomplishments, résumé, glowing reviews from former employers, as well as from clients of his company. No personal social media at all for Bruce. He was all business.
Bracken knew where they each went to school, who their friends were, where they shopped. He knew what they did on the weekends. He knew what was important to each of them, because people telegraphed so much about themselves without even realizing it. (He’d even taken one of Liza’s online yoga classes; it helped his back quite a bit.) Hannah: home, motherhood, family. Liza: mindfulness, the environment, wellness. Mako: fame, success, wealth. Cricket: beauty, enjoyment, partying but really looking for love. Bruce: work.
People told all in this confessional culture, showing one thing, and revealing so much more, maybe not even knowing about the kind of people out there, watching. Lucky for them, Bracken had their best interests at heart.
But Joshua Miller, there was nothing on him. In the rental application, Bracken required all the names of the guests staying at the house. And in the decade he’d been doing this, no one yet had balked at giving that information; it was a man’s right, wasn’t it, to know who was staying in his rental property?
But when he’d entered Joshua’s name into his search engine, there was only a little information. Just his name and picture on a bare-bones website for some tech company. Joshua was the head of security for a place called Razor. But there was almost nothing about the company, what they did; it wasn’t publicly traded, and there were no news items about it.
The site was very vague: systems consulting, some business-speak about helping companies to maximize the efficiency of their processes. What the hell did that mean? Joshua Miller had no social media. Or more accurately, there were so many Joshua Millers on social media that it was like a swamp of uninteresting people he’d have to wade through.
Bracken ran a simple background check on the name; he didn’t have access to a social security number and he really couldn’t ask for that. It would seem like an unusual request on an application for a rental. Maybe for the person paying, but not for each guest in the house, especially in this climate when people worried about identity theft. Which was funny—because they allowed themselves to be tracked by their phones, and broadcast every intimate detail of their lives online. But ask for those numbers and people got very careful.
Again, there were too many Joshua Millers and nothing leapt out when he scrolled through the items that came up on the online background check service for which he paid monthly. Not a crime to keep a low profile. Bracken had his bio on his vacation rental website, and that was the extent of his own online presence.
Where did you go, Joshua Miller?he wondered now.
And Bruce, Hannah’s husband. He was a bit of mystery as well. No social media presence except as he appeared in Hannah’s feed. Pieces of him—his arms holding the baby, a profile, smiling at the sunset, their hands clasped, rings glinting. There was a raft of wedding pictures, family shots at the baby’s “spiritual, not religious” blessing ceremony. He owned his own company, a consulting firm that “develops tailored business systems,” and “troubleshoots broken code.” But the language on his site was esoteric, clearly designed for a certain group who knew about things like “debugging” and “stack trace.” Bracken had him pegged as a standard nerd who found more to interest him on a screen than in the real world—like his beautiful wife in the hot tub downstairs.
Blink and you’ll miss it. You’ll miss everything, he wanted to tell Bruce. Whatever drama you have going on—another woman, some kind of business crisis—just let it go and be here now.
May turned in the bed; he heard her sigh, the mattress squeak, from the other room. He felt a tug back to her, but instead he pulled on his boots. Outside, the sky lightened briefly and a few seconds later he heard the distant rumble of thunder.
The storm was barreling toward the coast, picking up speed in the warm water. It might never make it this far. But even the outer bands of a hurricane could do damage. He had work to do before it hit—securing woodpiles, bringing in outdoor furniture, planters. He was the steward of the homes he owned, and the people who stayed there.
Might be time to pay his guests at Overlook a visit.
20
Hannah
Don’t do it, Hannah admonished herself.Just let it go.
She was still tipsy but less so. Fatigue was tugging at her—her horrible night’s sleep, the long drive. But she knew Cricket would be waiting for her downstairs looking for some hot tub time.
She and Bruce had come up to the room to change into their swimsuits and of course Bruce had immediately opened his laptop to “check on a few things.” He sat at the desk now, chin on hand, staring at something on the screen. She was about to remind him about his promise to unplug—or try to. Maybe she should press him about Mako. But instead she held her tongue. She was still glowing from their stolen moments.
Hannah slipped into her black one-piece and then grabbed one of the luxuriously plush robes that hung in the bathroom. It was heavenly, soft and smelling lightly of lavender detergent as she shouldered it on. She stood in front of the big mirror in the bathroom, brushed, then put up her hair, which looked full and soft.
“Just go downstairs and enjoy yourself,” she whispered to her reflection. Hot tub. A joint.
Let itall go.
“What’s that?” asked Bruce.
“Nothing,” she said, stepping back into the bedroom. “You won’t be long, will you?”
“No,” he said, but he already had that distant tone, that blankness to his stare. “Not long.”
But she could tell by the set of his jaw that Bruce was in the zone. Hours could pass, the whole place could burn down, and he wouldn’t notice.
She took the phone from her pocket, hesitated. Finally, she couldn’t help it. She sank down onto the sofa and opened the internet browser, typed in: family murdered Sleepy Ridge.
It was all right there, multiple articles about the Anderson family. More than thirty years ago, a local cop with a history of domestic violence killed his wife and two children, then set his house on fire before killing himself with a gunshot to the head.
She flipped through news stories, images of the family—so young looking, smiling and the very picture of “normal.” Churchgoers, kids in Little League. Him, virile and dark, in his uniform. Her, delicate and fair. The children cherub-faced towheads. All beloved in the community, never a hint that anything was wrong between them.
An image of the girl in the arms of her mother brought tears to Hannah’s eyes. How the young woman smiled, the child’s head rested against her chest—it was so tender, so lovely. Hannah felt a hard ache for Gigi as she scrolled through article after article detailing the horror story. Hidden violence at home. A woman who tried to flee with her children. A brutal struggle ending with an entire family destroyed. She sat a moment, feeling her skin tingle. Right here on this property. She kept reading.
