The blinking started as a faint itch in the corner of my wife’s eye. We were two nights into a quiet weekend getaway, half-asleep in a rental that smelled faintly of detergent and someone else’s cologne, when Pilar sat up and whispered, “Why is the smoke detector flashing?”
I climbed onto a chair, unscrewed the dome, and froze. A tiny lens was tucked inside.
We didn’t argue or investigate further. We packed our things as fast as we could—chargers yanked from outlets, clothes shoved into bags, toothbrushes still wet. Minutes later, we were sitting under the bright lights of a gas station, hands shaking around warm sodas because we needed something to hold.
I posted a review warning others about what we’d found. Ten minutes later, the host replied: “That’s part of a police operation. You’ve tampered with evidence.”
I wanted to laugh it off as a scare tactic, but the message came too quickly, too confidently. Pilar read it three times and whispered, “What if it’s real?”
We weren’t the type of people who dealt with law enforcement. I’m a middle school science teacher. Pilar works as a doula and makes pottery on weekends. The most serious thing I deal with is stopping eighth graders from arguing about the class pet.
An hour later, my rental account was suspended. A “case manager” called, claiming the device was part of an official investigation. When I asked who authorized it, she said she wasn’t allowed to share that information.
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