45
Peeking out the living room window, Sydney watches her husband walk toward the winery shed, then continue toward the back fence line.
He glances briefly over his shoulder to see if she’s watching, so she ducks her head out of view.
Curtis is moving toward the secluded area behind the big oak tree, with its tall grass and thick brush.
It’s the spot where the farmer had been smoking.
If it had been a farmer. Sydney doesn’t trust Damian’s assurances anymore.
Curtis clearly wants privacy. He must be making a phone call.
Syd is desperate to know who her husband is calling and what he’s saying, but there’s no way she can approach him without being noticed.
There’s nowhere for her to hide and eavesdrop.
So she will take advantage of her time alone in the house.
She will find out who Bianca and Damian really are.
Despite her solitude, Syd finds herself tiptoeing down the tiled hallway, holding her breath as she opens the door to the guest bedroom.
She exhales in a puff of disgust as she takes in the mess.
Clothes are tossed carelessly on the floor.
The bedside table is littered with bottles of sunscreen, tubes of lip balm, crumb-coated plates, and half-empty water glasses.
A cup of coffee perches on the dresser, growing scum on its surface.
And there’s a discarded beer bottle tossed in a corner, as if their beautiful home is a frat house.
Syd feels a surge of anger at the lack of respect, but she channels it into determination.
She enters the room, closing the door behind her.
Sydney rifles through the drawers of the nightstand and dresser, but she finds nothing of interest. Dropping to her knees, she digs through the duffel bags on the floor.
Damian’s contains only clothes—a mix of dirty and clean—that she would rather not touch.
She moves on to Bianca’s bag, sorting through her bikinis and T-shirts, her tiny shorts and a couple of sundresses.
At the bottom of the sack, Syd finds a packet of birth control pills and a small box of tampons.
She tips the box upside down, the tampons falling out onto the floor.
She hears the clink of metal hitting the tile.
It’s a single key on a ring. Picking it up, Syd reads the tag.
It’s the name of a secondhand car dealership in Barcelona.
She’s found the key to the van. Inside that vehicle, she will find all of Damian and Bianca’s secrets.
Syd stuffs the tampons back into the box and shoves it into the duffel bag.
Clutching the key in her hand, she hurries outside.
The air is still and quiet as she crunches across the gravel toward the van.
Thankfully, there’s no sign of her husband or of the guests returning in the Citroen.
Sticking the key into the lock of the van’s panel door, Syd slides it open and climbs inside.
It’s oppressively hot in the vehicle, almost airless, but she closes the door behind her.
If Damian and Bianca return, she doesn’t want to be discovered.
And she doesn’t want to explain her sleuthing to Curtis either.
In contrast to the guest room, the van is tidy.
The couple spends very little time in here, and it’s their space.
They treat it with respect, unlike Sydney’s house.
She starts by opening the top storage bin and finds it largely empty except for a few camping staples: matches, bug spray, and a small Swiss Army knife.
It’s not nearly the supply one would expect for a couple who’s been living in their van for over a month.
Taking the lid off the next bin, she inhales sharply.
Inside is a coil of yellow rope, a roll of electrical tape, and a small hammer.
Damian is a builder. Owning these items is far from suspicious.
He could have bought them for the winery or another building project.
Or he could be planning to beat Curtis to death with the hammer, tie up Sydney with the rope, and tape her mouth shut so she can’t scream.
Perhaps she’s overreacting, but she no longer trusts Damian and his partner.
Her head swims, and she feels nauseated in the stifling heat.
The final storage bin contains a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of drugstore perfume, and a pair of leather work gloves.
Sydney recognizes the gloves instantly. They were hidden behind the oak tree next to the machete.
So it was Damian sneaking cigarettes out there, not some creepy stranger.
He must have been hiding his habit from Bianca, because of her asthma.
But where is the machete Sydney had found?
Dropping to all fours, Sydney digs under the camping bed.
There’s nothing there but dust bunnies and sand.
She moves to a kneeling position and lifts the mattress, steeling herself to find sex toys or condoms or dirty tissues, but there’s nothing there.
She’s about to lower the mattress when something catches her eye in the far corner.
Passports.
Sydney reaches for the dark blue booklets. A lot of countries issue passports in this color, and Australia could very well be one of them. But before she even looks at the front cover she knows. The words, embossed in gold, validate her suspicions.
Passport
United States of America
Opening the first one, she looks at Damian’s photo. His hair is shorter, his expression serious. His full name is Damian Iain Walsh, born in Everett, Washington, in 1997. Bianca Leigh Muller was born in Indiana later that year. The pair has been lying about their provenance. Why?
It could have been a game. Sydney can see the fun in pretending to be someone else, talking with a foreign accent.
It’s a little immature, but Damian and Bianca are younger.
Or does this couple have a reason to hide the fact that they’re American?
Do they know Curtis and Syd from back home?
Damian and Bianca were born in states that Sydney has never even visited, but it doesn’t mean they still live there.
They could live in New York. They could have some connection to Curtis and Syd.
In Syd’s former career, she’d made plenty of enemies.
Normally, she’d assume the couple were here because of her.
But Curtis has been acting so strange, keeping secrets, making surreptitious phone calls.
She’d given him a chance to come clean this morning and he’d refused it.
All his talk in therapy about honesty and transparency had been bullshit. He’s hiding something. But what?
She sifts through a few empty cubbyholes before climbing into the van’s cab.
Opening the glove box, she rifles through the insurance papers, the registration, some napkins from a café.
She pulls out a small square device that resembles an electrical plug.
At first, she thinks it’s an electrical adapter, transforming American voltage to European, but upon further inspection she realizes it’s a part for a car.
She hurriedly snaps some photos before returning it and slams the glove compartment closed.
Back in the house, she returns the key to the tampon box, then moves into the living room.
On the sofa, she uploads the photos to her new favorite tool, Google Lens.
The pluglike device she found is a fuel pump relay.
When removed, the fuel pump won’t work, rendering a vehicle useless.
So Bianca and Damian had broken down on purpose.
By installing that relay, their van is fully operational.
The discovery is not unsurprising. The couple is here for a reason.
Setting her phone aside, Syd feels regret and shame press down on her like a landslide.
Her chest is weighted, her breath trapped in shriveled lungs.
She’d been so lonely in her pain, so desperate for company, that she’d invited the couple to stay.
She’d flirted with them, and kissed them, and now the remembrance turns her stomach.
It’s more than just “the ick.” This pair could be dangerous, and she wants them gone. But now Curtis won’t let them leave.
She considers going to her husband, telling him everything she knows. She could demand the truth, insist on the transparency he’s always promised her. But she realizes that would be pointless. Everyone has been lying to her, including Curtis. She can’t believe anything he says.
Sydney needs to find out what the hell they’re hiding from her before someone gets hurt.
Or worse.