Malice House by Megan Shepherd

Author:Megan Shepherd [Shepherd, Megan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Book Group
Published: 2022-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

It was pouring when I pulled into Malice House’s gate. My umbrella and raincoat were inside, hanging on the hook by the kitchen door, so I dragged Kylie’s computer into my lap in the driver seat and connected to the house’s Wi-Fi while I waited out the weather. Her files were even more disorganized than my own. I had no idea how she found the documents she needed. Temporary downloads cluttered the home screen. It seemed she had a habit of screenshotting: snippets of text conversations, offensive tweets from celebrities, typewriters for sale on eBay. It would take me days to comb through every file. I scrolled through her applications list and stopped on Find My Phone.

The app had to update before it would open, and given how many programs Kylie had running, her computer was sluggish. I didn’t dare reboot the machine and lose the files she’d been working on, so I clicked on her photo album while I waited.

Most of her recent photos were shots of typewriters, books, and ballpoint pens for her online business. She had a few selfies that she’d taken on the Lundie Bay boardwalk, and a few more in what looked like her apartment’s bathroom, testing out different-colored lipsticks. I had to scroll back nine months even to see another person in a photo: a cute, twentysomething Southeast Asian guy with curly hair and two-day stubble. Their pose together implied they were more than friends, but seeing as he didn’t appear in any recent pictures, it wasn’t hard to guess that the relationship hadn’t worked out.

The rain finally let up. I left her laptop open so that it wouldn’t pause the application’s update-in-progress and jogged across the driveway with it to the front porch.

A black envelope was pinned under the knocker.

I glanced over my shoulder with a shiver.

Rafe’s house loomed on the far side of the privacy fence that separated our properties. I still hadn’t responded to his texts asking why I’d left so suddenly the week before. Whenever I thought of the dog collars, I felt ill. There was no ignoring those scorched silver tags and the owners who must be frantically wondering what happened to poor Tosca and Pepper and Zeus.

I grabbed the envelope while scanning the tree line. He still has a house key. Rafe had never told me how he’d gotten past the gate to leave the first envelope—probably climbed over with strength alone or used a ladder, as I’d used to get into the woods. It didn’t matter now. He had both the gate code and a front door key. He could traipse in whenever he liked.

I made a mental note to call the security company that installed the gate keypad. After Detective Rice had shown up unannounced, I’d fiddled with it, but it hadn’t been immediately apparent how to change the numbers. I suspected there was an instruction manual somewhere in the house, buried in my father’s labyrinthine files, but I’d yet to find it.

Inside, I set up

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