Exposure

Mark. He didn’t believe anyone hid inside the house. After all, she’d cried wolf four times before.

As her shaking hand lifted the house key, Mark stopped her. “When you got here, was this door locked?”

“Yes, and bolted. This key turns the bolt and opens the door, but the regular lock stays in position until I undo it from inside.”

Mark looked around. “See anything unusual out here?”

“No.”

“All right. Let’s go in.”

Kaycee slid her key into the lock. As she pushed open the door, panic overwhelmed her. She swallowed hard. “I’ll just . . . wait out here.”

He moved to go inside.

“Light switch is on your left, remember? And the camera’s across the kitchen, on the table.” A thought hit her. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

“I picked up the camera. I left fingerprints.”

“Okay.”

The overhead light flicked on. Kaycee’s heart cantered into double time. She pressed knuckles to her mouth.

Fight the fear, fight the fear.

Mark stepped into the kitchen.

That dead man’s face. It throbbed in her memory. The eyelids frozen half open. The gore. Who was he? Who killed him?

Who was watching her?

“Where’d you say the camera is?” Mark spoke over his shoulder.

“On the table.” She pointed, averting her gaze.

“Don’t see it. Is there some other table?”

“No. It’s right where you’re looking.”

“There’s nothing there.”

She stilled for a moment, then edged over the threshold to his side.

The table was empty.

Anger and fear and violation swelled within her. She stared at the blank spot, one hand thrust in her hair. “It was there, I swear it. It was there.”

“Okay, okay.“

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a two-year-old, Mark. I’m telling you I saw a camera on that table!”

“Maybe you — ”

“It took a picture of me.” Her voice rose. “I picked it up and saw the picture in its viewer. And then I clicked back one photo — and that’s when I saw the dead man. A close-up. And it wasn’t just any dead man. It was real dead. Like holes-in-his-head dead. And words were written right into the picture. They said, ‘We see you’ . . .”

Kaycee leaned against the counter and covered her eyes with her hand.

Awkward silence rolled off Mark.

“Tell you what.” He touched her on the arm. “Let’s walk through the house together, all right? Make sure everything’s clear.”

With unseen eyes watching? No way. She couldn’t walk through this house ever again.

Mark surveyed her. “You could stay here and wait if you want.”

By herself ? “No way. I’m coming.”

Muscles like taut rubber bands, she trailed him out of the kitchen.

FOUR

The longest day in Martin Giordano’s twenty-nine years had begun with a mouse in the toilet.

“Eeeeee!” his four-year-old daughter, Tammy, shrieked. “Daddy, get it out!”

Martin stood in his pajamas, surveying the gray creature swimming around the stained bowl. What to do? He couldn’t flush the thing. What if it backed up the pipes? But he wasn’t about to reach his hand in there and pull it out.

Lorraine hovered behind him, one hand to her mouth and the other gripping their little girl’s shoulder. Tammy’s frightened sobs quickly turned to heavy coughing. “Come on now, shh, shh.” Lorraine picked Tammy up and held her tight. “You don’t want to make the cough worse. Daddy will take care of the mouse.” Carrying Tammy from the bathroom, she looked over her shoulder. “Get my big ladle.”

Martin trotted to their cluttered kitchen and grabbed the utensil from its top drawer. Back in the bathroom he closed the door. In one fluid motion he dunked the large metal scoop into the toilet, jerked out the mouse, and flung it into the cracked bathtub. Water flew in all directions. The mouse landed with a wet thwap.

Before it could struggle to its feet, Martin beat it to death with the back of the ladle.

Breathing hard, he stared at the tiny body and shuddered. Corpses looked so cold.

With the ladle he scooped up the mouse and threw it in the waste paper basket. Sweat itched under Martin’s pajama top as he carried the trash into the kitchen and emptied it into the garbage can. The tainted ladle went into the sink.

From Tammy’s bedroom barked the sound of the cough she’d had for months now. The cough that remained undiagnosed, along with the paleness of Tammy’s skin and her constant tiredness.

Martin wrapped his fingers around the edge of the old Formica counter and rested his forehead against a cabinet. If only her sickness could be taken care of as easily as fishing a mouse from the toilet. All the money that surrounded him every workday, and he couldn’t even afford proper medical care for his only child.

Now, after hours at Atlantic City Trust Bank, Martin still heard that cough in his mind as he fought to reconcile his books. Left elbow pressed against his desk, right leg jiggling, he stared at the digits jumbling in his head. His fingers twitched against the calculator keys. To his right behind the teller counter, Shelley and Olga talked in low tones as they performed the workday’s final duties. Martin’s gaze slid in their direction. At twenty-four, the same age as Martin’s wife, soft-spoken Shelley stood tall and thin, a willow tree next to Olga’s stump of a figure. Olga was in her fifties, a no-nonsense, diligent worker who gushed constantly about her “blessed grandbabies.”

Guilt twinged in Martin’s stomach.

“Tammy’s too sick to go to preschool again,” Lorraine had told him as he left for work. “I’ll just keep her home with me.”

“Home” was a dingy two-bedroom apartment in an old building opposite two rows of storage units running parallel to each other. The living room window overlooked the units and their surrounding concrete. The view from the kitchen window on the opposite side was a rundown industrial street. Next door to the apartment lay the cramped office for the rentals, where Lorraine spent her days. The rental place ran the width of a block. It was gray and depressing, but the apartment came free along with a meager weekly paycheck for Lorraine’s management of the storage units. They could have lived in a much better place if it weren’t for Tammy’s sickness. Seemed like every other dollar went for doctor visits and cough syrup.

Martin glanced at the clock on the bank’s wall. His leg jiggled higher.

A faint sound from the rear door of the long bank made Martin’s head jerk. He stilled, listening. Both doors had been locked when the bank closed. Another noise, a metallic click. Martin swiveled in his chair. The door yanked open.

Four men wearing black ski masks over their heads burst inside, the first two with guns drawn. The second pair each carried four large duffel bags.