Page 37 of The Woman in the Hollow
With that in mind, I dropped down behind the counter, opened a browser, and searched for realistic human props.
I got lost in that vortex for well over an hour, scouring every retail and specialty website I came across.
Apparently, what people thought of as ‘realistic’ varied a lot.
I did eventually find my way onto a site that sold props specifically for horror films and carnivals.
The thing was, even though these were dummies, you had to pay nearly ten grand each for them, and they looked incredibly realistic, they weren’t unique. There were roughly twenty different people you could get with various levels of gore. But none of them matched the guy in the woods.
None of them, I noted, were anywhere near as large. And, as I dug into the nitty-gritty product details, I understood why. Even the smallest woman dummy was extremely heavy. Part of that was because of the realism factor, and part of it was to ensure that no one could easily steal such an expensive prop.
To get a guy as large as the man in the woods (both in height and in weight), it would probably weigh as much as a human body would.
If the guy had been a prop, how could Dante’s cousin even have moved him all the way out into the woods?
Sure, his family was fit. But Dante himself was the fittest of the bunch, and he said he’d had Domenico’s help to move the ‘prop.’
I was about to check out another website when I heard the chime on the shop door.
I plastered on a customer service smile, ready to make some kind of sale, when my gaze landed on Dante.
“I thought I saw a light in here when I was passing,” he said, sauntering in wearing fresh gym clothes that left a lot less to the imagination than his usual suits did.
His arms were bare, big biceps making all sorts of fantasies about being picked up, carried, and thrown around by him swarm my very confused mind.
And the way his shirt was cut allowed me to see the outlines of abdominal muscles when he walked.
I wouldn’t even let my gaze slip lower than his stomach, though. Because I had a feeling those thin workout pants of his would confirm the ideas I’d conjured up about a very specific part of his anatomy.
“What do you mean?” I asked, slow-blinking at him as I tried to think past the fog of desire taking over my system.
Dante’s head cocked to the side, brows scrunching as he looked at me. His hand lifted, waving around the shop.
Sure enough, when I glanced around, the shop was dark, save for the blue glow coming from the computer screen.
The computer screen.
I needed to minimize the windows before Dante saw them.
“Oh, sorry. I guess I forgot to turn on the light.” I hoped we hadn’t lost customers.
“Hazel, it’s almost eleven.”
Eleven?
My gaze shot down to the computer to check the time. Which conveniently allowed me to covertly minimize the internet browser.
“Oh.”
“You didn’t notice everyone leaving?”
“I… no.”
How had I missed that?
Especially with how anxious I’d been around the place lately.
With how the shop was situated, I should have seen all the taillights and headlights as the staff pulled out of their spots for the night. Had I really been that distracted by my research?
