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Pullman, Washington

S he asks Bryan, her neighbor, to install a home surveillance system.

She’s noticed that her home in the Steptoe Village Apartments has been broken into, and various items were moved around (but nothing was stolen).

Bryan is always floating around the place—it’s where a lot of the graduate students live—and they’ve gotten friendly. And she knows he’s into tech, because he’s always talking about how good he is with computers. She can see him on his computer at his window late into the night.

So instead of going to the police, she goes to Bryan, who agrees to help place cameras around her home.

He could not be more helpful. And the new cameras work really well.

She’s grateful. Until… she looks at the cameras and at what she can see from her phone. There’s been a rumor that Bryan followed a woman student to her car. This technology is smart but so simple. Anyone with the password can log on and see inside her apartment.

Anyone… but there’s only one person other than her who knows the password: Bryan.

Her mind races. He’s seemed off lately. Strange. He asked her to go out for coffee and seemed mad when she said no.

Really mad.

She changes her password.

She has no idea that just two months after this, her brief encounters with Bryan will become a newspaper story that goes viral.

She has no idea that she will need to shield her identity, hide from the media and the public.

No idea that her experience will make her a potential witness in a murder trial.

That Chief Jenkins will say that investigators believe there was likely a connection between Bryan’s “work” on her security and what happened at 1122 King Road.

She has no idea of who the weird guy with the bulging eyes really is or of what is about to happen.