He holds out his business card, and she plucks it from his fingers without touching them. “Hope to see you around, Allie Dawson,” he says. That was over a month ago. It seemed too good to be true, but Allie told herself to ignore the nagging feeling in her gut. That was her first mistake. She saw Laura Foster’s email welcoming her into a cohort of grant recipients, Allie literally jumped for joy. She was headed to Silicon Valley with a chance to bring her innovative product to market. She’s deaf with a cochlear implant, and she’s developed a screen that can clip onto eyeglasses and caption speech in real time.

But she had no idea how tight the rental market would be, or how cutthroat the competition is for everything from housing to venture capital. So, after a futile search to find a short-term apartment she could afford, she rented a guest house from a chummy real estate agent who approached her at a coffee shop.But it’s clear now that she should have trusted her instincts. Because there’s something off about her landlord. And his moody wife. And the cryptic Hungarian guy renting his master suite. Are they after her technology?

She knows what it feels like to see her life flash before her eyes, and she doesn't need that kind of stress right now.

So why is she still living there? And has she already seen too much?