“We can talk about this later …”

“But I can’t imagine why you might think I’m upset. Why should it upset me that I can’t trust a damn thing anybody does or says right now?” I’m emotional and that’s the last thing I want to be. “How did you get in here? Did you take her Range Rover and not tell the police? Or maybe a fake IRS agent took it.”

“Her Range Rover?” Benton frowns.

“A red one that was here earlier and now is gone.” I feel tears touch my eyes and I fight them back. “But I don’t believe the recording device in the silver box is yours.” I realize how angry I am, and I need to back off before I lose control. “It was too sloppily done even for the FBI. That was a scare tactic. It’s psychological terrorism for us to be working a case like this and worry every second that we’re being spied on. You wouldn’t wind the clocks.”

“I wouldn’t do what?”

“Or leave candles. You wouldn’t play a game like that with me. Your colleagues might. But you wouldn’t and you also wouldn’t permit it.”

“What game, Kay?”

“There’s more than one, Benton.”

“I don’t know anything about a silver box.”

“I’m relieved to hear it.” I don’t care who else does.

“What candles?” Benton asks.

“You’d have to walk into the living room to notice the scent. I assume they’re still there unless they’ve vanished right under our noses the way the kitchen trash did. New white votive candles that I suspect were recently put there, possibly while we were on Lucy’s property, and the clocks were wound. Candles scented with my favorite fragrance, Benton. The one you always get for me on my birthday.”

“We didn’t do it. We haven’t been on this property until now.”

“And you would know that for a fact. You know everything your colleagues are doing. Well I could tell you a lot of things they might not know that go back a very long time. Dangerous things.”

He says nothing. He doesn’t ask me what dangerous things I might be referring to, and he watches me quietly and glances at his phone.

“I think I know what’s happened,” I say to him, and his silence is my answer.

He knows about the recordings. He’s seen them.

“Of course the FBI didn’t sneak in here and set up this place with me in mind, with me in mind personally, intimately.” I feel myself getting angrier as I get more rattled.

Benton, what have you done?

“Why would they go to all the trouble to find special Italian candles?” A current of fear runs through me. “They didn’t …”

“Kay?”