If Baxter were here, he’d be going ballistic. Gibson doesn’t like to be squeezed.

Sebastian holds the animal in front of his face. “Hey there, gorilla. You got any nanny cams in that big fat belly of yours?” He gives it a good shake, then tosses it to the floor.

I stare at Gibson, wedged between the table and the carpet by my feet, and try to breathe.

Sebastian steps to the center of the room, rotating in a slow circle. “Though, if I were going to install nanny cams in my house, I sure as heck wouldn’t put them in something as cliché as a stuffed animal. I’d be a little more creative, maybe hide them in a plant—” he steps to the coffee table and rifles through the fern directly in front of me, shrugging when he finds nothing but fronds and dirt “—or a picture frame. Books. You’ve got a bunch of books over there on the shelves. Any of them contain cameras you forgot to tell me about?”

I shake my head, but I’m not very convincing. The strips of tape dangling from the console, the insistence I move to the far chair. He’s all but forgotten that plan now, but I can’t shake the feeling that something’s off. That this is all an act.

It’s certainly possible he’s seen the nanny cams on my phone. He’s had plenty of time to look, moments when I was tied to the blue chair and wouldn’t have seen him nosing through my phone. This is a test, he said the first time he asked me about the cameras. This could be one big ruse to watch me paint myself in a corner.

One by one, he inspects the possibilities in the room. He runs a gloved finger down the book spines, bends to study the bowls and vases on the console, pulls the paintings away from the walls and peers behind the frames. He takes his time, moving around the room so slowly, so leisurely, I begin to think he’s running down the clock, dragging the drama out on purpose.

He parks his feet in front of the shelves, standing dangerously close to where two cameras are hidden—one in a speaker high on the wall and the other in the ugly mantel clock. Above my head, about five feet to my left, the third camera provides a birds-eye view from what looks exactly like a fire alarm.

Nobody will ever know the difference, the installer assured me as he screwed it into the plaster. Not unless they sell fire alarms for a living.

Now Sebastian extends a long finger at the ceiling, and my heart stops. “What about that thing?” He points to the motion sensor, its light flickering red in a corner of the ceiling.

It takes me a second or two to find my voice. “Just another Santa cam.”