‘What?’ Ted asks. He looks over his shoulder to where she’s staring.
‘That!’ she says, alarmed. She gets up and makes her way around the coffee table to the bookshelf. She peers closely. ‘What the fuck is that?’ she says, pointing right at it. It’s like a tiny glass eye, staring back at her.
Ted has leaped out of his chair and joined her at the bookshelf. He stares at where she’s pointing.
‘Is that a camera?’ she cries, her voice shrill.
He frantically pulls books from the shelf and they both see it. A very small pinhole lens at the end of a flat black wire, attached to some compact electronics.
Someone has been watching them.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘OH FUCK,’ JILLwhimpers, sinking to the floor, the floor that’s giving way beneath them. Someone has been watching them in this room, has heard everything they’ve said. They just talked about how they murdered Greg, left him to die. They’ve talked about it many times, in this very room. How long has that camera been there?
She turns on Ted, panicking. ‘You said there was no evidence! That we could never be caught! But someone has seen and heard everything we’ve said in this room! Someone KNOWS, Ted!’
His face is an awful shade. She has never seen him look like this. He rips the device from its hiding place and hurls it against the wall in a rage. It smashes against the wall and falls brokenly to the floor. She stares at it, frozen in fear.
They’ve been tricked, she thinks. And they’re going to have to pay. For the rest of their lives.
Ted is in shock; he can’t process this new reality. He was so sure they were safe. But they’re not safe at all. Someone knows. He picks up the tiny black bundle and takes it into the foyer and, in a rage, crushes it to bits on the marble floor beneath his heel. But it’s too late. They’ve already said too much, on numerous occasions. He wonders how long the camera has been there, tries to remember when the texts started. He stares at the tiny bits of debris on the floor, breathing heavily, his heart thudding in his ears. Then he glances up at Jill, who has the look of a condemned prisoner.
‘Who put it there?’ she cries. ‘Whoever put it there knows what we’ve done! What if they go to the police? We’ll go to prison!’
He turns to her, grabs her by her upper arms to steady her. He can’t have her going into hysterics. He needs to think. ‘It has to be whoever is sending those texts. They’re probably going to blackmail us,’ he says, thinking feverishly. ‘That’s what this is all about. Money. If they were going to go to the police, we would have been arrested by now.’
She begins pacing up and down the hall, while he slumps to the floor, his back against the wall. ‘Who could have gotten into the house to put the camera there?’ she asks.
He thinks about that. Nadya, obviously. Ramirez had spoken to her. Perhaps his questions had given her the idea.
‘Lara has a key,’ Jill says, turning to him. ‘To water the plants whenever we’re away, and she knows the security code to turn off the alarm.’
He looks at her. ‘Fuck, you’re right,’ he says.
‘She could have done it, she knows our schedule.’
‘Nadya has a key and knows the security code too,’ Ted points out. ‘She could have hidden the camera. Ramirez spoke toher, planted suspicion in her mind. She probably needs money. Would she do that?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about her!’ Jill wails.
He thinks about John Burnley. Could he have broken in without tripping the alarm? Maybe it’s possible, if you know how.
‘Maybe there are other cameras,’ he says suddenly, getting up. ‘We have to look.’
They begin to tear the house apart. They look everywhere, in light fixtures, in planters, behind books, but they find nothing. It feels like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Ted gets out his laptop and googles stores specializing in home security and counter surveillance. He finds one that is open late and leaves, telling Jill to keep searching. When he gets to the store, he purchases a small, handheld device that he is assured can detect hidden cameras anywhere. The saleswoman in the store– a brush cut and tattoos– shows him how to use it. All he has to do is hold it up with the LED light facing outward, place the viewfinder to his eye, and scan the room. She explains that it has a range of two to forty-five feet, and that he should see a bright flicker of light when the device detects the curvature of the lens of a hidden camera. She tells him to try it, see if he can find the hidden cameras they have set up around the store.
He is able to detect the hidden cameras in the store and pays for the device on the spot. He wants to be sure they don’t miss anything.
Now, as Jill watches, Ted moves through the house methodically, starting at the front door in the foyer, moving into the front room, then the dining room, up the staircase to the bedrooms and bathrooms, and then the top floor. It takes him a long timeto scan everywhere. He finds nothing. They leave the kitchen till last. There, with the help of the device, they find another tiny camera, hidden in a light fixture. A feeling of sickness washes over Ted as he pulls it from its hiding place. Jill watches, speechless. He grinds it to a pulp beneath his heel.
Ted tries to remember what they’ve said in the kitchen. He can’t recall. They have talked about what they’ve done all over the house. They felt safe here. And all along they have been giving themselves away, slitting their own throats.
It’s almost midnight, but they hear a ping from Jill’s cell phone lying face up on the kitchen island, and they both immediately turn to stare at it.
SO YOU FOUND THE CAMERAS. NOW YOU KNOW I’M NOT BLUFFING.