56

Sierra’s POV

They fixed the cameras. They put in a whole new system. Big guys in suits walked around our house all day, checking everything.

It was supposed to make me feel safe. It didn’t.

I felt like a bug in a jar. Everyone could see me. The good guys and the bad guys.

Katie knew something was wrong. “Why are there more helpers, Mommy?” she asked.

“They’re just… checking the TV,” I said. It was a dumb lie.

“Our TV is broken?”

“Sort of.”

Louis was like a robot. He moved around, talking in a low voice on his phone. He didn’t sleep. He just drank coffee and stared at screens.

I tried to be normal. I made pancakes. I helped Katie with her glitter glue project. But my ears were always listening. For a weird sound. For a voice on a monitor that wasn’t there anymore.

Three days after the singing, I found something.

I was in the laundry room. Katie’s favorite pink sock was missing. I was looking for it, checking under the big laundry table. And I saw it.

A little black box. Stuck under the table with tape. It had a tiny red light on it. It wasn’t blinking. It was just on.

I didn’t touch it. I just stared. My heart went *thump-thump-thump* so loud.

I backed out of the room and ran to find Louis. He was in his office.

“Louis.”

He looked up. He saw my face.

“In the laundry room. Under the table. A box.”

He was up so fast his chair fell over. He didn’t even pick it up. He ran. I followed him.

He knelt down and looked. His whole body got stiff.

“Is it… listening?” I whispered.

“Yeah,” he said. His voice was flat. “It’s a bug. A listening device.”

“How long has it been there?”

He looked at the dust around the tape. “A while.”

I thought of all the things we said in the kitchen. Right next to the laundry room. We talked about the police. About Derek. About being scared. Someone heard all of it.

Louis took out his phone and took a picture of it. Then he carefully peeled off the tape. He put the little box in a plastic bag.

“We have to sweep the whole house again,” he said. “Top to bottom.”

“They were *listening*,” I said. I felt stupid. And violated. “They heard us planning. They heard… everything.”

“They heard enough,” Louis said. He looked at the bag in his hand. “This is how they knew when Katie had her therapy appointment. They heard us schedule it.”

It all made sense. The pictures at the therapist’s office weren’t from a spy. They were from someone who knew when to be there because they heard us say it.

“This is my fault,” I said. I felt tears in my eyes. “I talk in the kitchen all the time. To you. To Katie. To the nanny.”

“It’s not your fault,” Louis said. He came over and put his hands on my shoulders. “It’s mine. I should have swept for this weeks ago. After Victor. I got lazy.”

We stood there in the boring laundry room, surrounded by soap smells and clean clothes. Our safe place was never safe.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“First, we don’t talk about anything important inside the house. We go for a walk. Outside. Where they can’t plant bugs.”

“And then?”

“And then,” he said, his eyes getting that dark look, “we use it.”

“Use it?”

“They think we don’t know about the bug. So we can say things. Fake things. For them to hear. We can lead them into a trap.”

It was smart. And scary. It meant playing pretend right in our own home.

“Okay,” I said. I was tired of being scared. Being mad was better. “What’s the plan?”

Louis almost smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was a shark smile.

“We give them a show. We make them think we’re breaking. That we’re scared and making a dumb mistake. And when they come to catch us… we’ll be ready.”

That afternoon, we put on our act. In the kitchen, right next to the laundry room wall, I made my voice shaky.

“Louis, I can’t sleep. I keep hearing that singing.”

“We need to get away,” he said, loud and clear. “Just for a weekend. Somewhere no one knows us.”

“But where?”

“My friend has a cabin. Up in the mountains. It’s totally private. No internet. No people. We can go this Friday. Just us and Katie. To breathe.”

We said the name of a fake town. We gave a fake time. We sounded tired and desperate.

It was all a lie. A story for the little black box.

Later, we went to the park for real. We held hands and walked far away from anyone.

“Do you think they bought it?” I asked.

“If they’re listening, they heard it,” Louis said. “Now we see if they take the bait.”

Friday came. A big black car packed with our “stuff” left the house. The shades in our bedroom were down, but we weren’t in there.

We were in the safe room. A hidden room in the apartment that not even most of the staff knew about. It had a bed, water, and a wall of screens showing every camera in the house.

We watched. Katie was with my mom, far away and safe.

We watched the empty house. We watched the front gate.

We waited for the monsters to come to our fake mountain cabin.

We were the bait. And the trap.

And we were done being scared.