“You fool,” the message began. “That wasn’t a camera. That was the transmitter for our private security system. Now you’ve broken it — and they’ll come looking for it.”
“They”?
That single word stopped me cold.
Who were they? And why would they be coming after us?
My hands trembled as I scrolled through the photos I had taken earlier of the rental. I wanted evidence, proof that I wasn’t imagining what I’d seen. That’s when I noticed something chilling in one of the images — a faint red dot reflected on the curtain.
Not from the smoke detector. Not from a battery light. But from what looked unmistakably like a laser.
It hit me then: this wasn’t just about a host spying on guests with a hidden surveillance device. Something much larger was happening inside that so-called “vacation home.”
The Airbnb That Wasn’t
The more I thought about it, the clearer it became. That property wasn’t a real vacation rental at all. It wasn’t a cozy home opened up to travelers for extra income.
It was a front.
A setup designed to watch, collect, and perhaps even track the people who stayed there. The “reviews” that had given us confidence were likely fabricated. The staged photos that had made us feel secure were carefully constructed illusions.
We weren’t just visitors in a stranger’s home. We were pawns in something we didn’t yet understand.
Breaking the Connection
We drove for hours that night, putting as much distance as possible between us and that house. By the time we reached a hotel in the next city, exhaustion had set in — but so had a new kind of fear.
