He stared at the tools for a moment, hugging himself, his hands tucked into his armpits for warmth. ¿De verdad, Ángel?

Yeah.

He selected the tools that seemed most likely to be useful—a small pry bar, two screwdrivers with different heads, two sizes of pliers, a hammer, some electrician’s tape—and closed the box. Stowing his treasurers in the capacious pockets of his coat—thank you, Lily Va—he walked back to the house and ran straight up to his room.

They would be watching this, of course.

Oberon. Would be watching.

Ángel shucked off his coat and laid out the tools tidily in a row on the bed. He removed his boots and climbed up onto the purple leather chair in the corner of his room. The crown molding was ornate, its whorls painted peacock-green. Concealed in the center of a stylized rose was a small hole. He examined it and spotted the shine of a camera lens. Anyone who might be watching was getting an excellent close-up of his face.

He used the pry bar to lever the molding off the wall, careful not to damage either it or the drywall. The camera had an attached microphone and was hardwired into the house’s electrical system. With a screwdriver, he unhoused the camera from its bracket, and then he used the wire cutter on the pliers to snip it free, his hands protected from shock by the rubberized grip.

The camera fell to the rug like a dead cockroach.

He took a moment to tape the ends of the wires. His father, along with being a Ponzi schemer, was an electrician, after all.

No one came in to stop him or shoot him or yell at him.

Encouraged, he pulled down all the crown molding, stowing it neatly against the wall behind the bed’s headboard. He found and disabled a second camera. Then he attacked the pink crown molding in his bathroom and found a third. This one was pointed at the shower. “Vete pa la pinga,” he gritted. His outrage probably showed on his face in the moments before he clipped its wires.

He put all three cameras on the bathroom counter and vengefully crushed them with the hammer, brushing the broken glass and plastic into the bathroom wastebasket.

Then he went to the security monitor and turned the feed to his own room. Blue screen of nothing. He turned up the volume and whistled, snapped his fingers. Nothing. He’d gotten the mikes too.

The alarm clock on the bedside table said it was seven thirty: dinnertime. He had to go down and face Oberon now.

They’d had a nice day, he and Oberon. Down in the wine cellar, eating sandwiches and chatting about the gull video. They’d talked about Mahler and Ella Fitzgerald. Vocal improvisation. “Angeleyes.” And Oberon had purred at him.

Now Oberon would be angry.