My breath hitched in my throat.
“Julian,” I said, my voice dropping an octave, slipping into the cold, clinical register I used during pediatric arrests. “Get a pry bar and a flashlight. We need to open the drywall downstairs right now.”
“What is it?” His voice cracked. “What’s down there?”
“Someone put an active appliance inside your walls.”
Ten minutes later, we were in the hallway on the second floor. Clara stood at the end of the corridor, her hands pressed tightly against her mouth, her knuckles white, watching as Julian drove the flat edge of a utility bar into the pristine drywall between their children’s bedroom doors.
The plaster cracked with a sharp, sickening crunch. Julian pulled, his jaw clenched, tearing away an eighteen-inch square of Sheetrock.
White gypsum dust cascaded down, settling over his work boots.
Inside the wall cavity, revealed under the beam of the flashlight, was a system that had never appeared on any building plan, any home inspection, or any specialist’s differential diagnosis.
