Kevin McDougall wasn’t feeling particularly anxious and that was giving him anxiety.

He sat near the enormous windows of his guest coffee room, mixing his decaf cappuccino in a monotonous clockwise manner, eyes transfixed, unblinking, on a fly that was patrolling the windowpane. He had started mixing the drink two minutes ago and had not stopped mixing it as of yet.

“How long has it been since he last said anything?” Todd asked.

Farah made a vague hand gesture that translated roughly to “longer than I would have preferred”.

“Mr. McDougall?” she attempted.

The silence that followed was so profound, one could almost hear the fly take cautious steps across the windowsill on a brave and borderline suicidal mission to reach the half-finished biscuit on Kevin’s plate and give it a generous lick.

Todd sighed and decided to make himself and Farah some coffee. Kevin hadn’t offered, or, indeed, given any indication that he would be willing to offer at some point in the future, but somehow Todd had figured that he wouldn’t mind. Or notice.

“This machine has more buttons than a typewriter,” Todd muttered, examining the device that Kevin used when they first came in. “What do you press to get like a normal cup of coffee?”

“Let me.” Farah pushed him aside gently, then paused. “Right,” she said, squinting at the thing like one regards a child’s drawing while trying to make sense of what is drawn, what was meant to be drawn, and how to compliment it in a way that a child will understand.

“I’ll get the mugs,” Todd said, and reached for the cabinet filled with dozens of delicate porcelain cups.

“Aha!” Meanwhile, Kevin had chosen this moment precisely to jump up from his chair, nearly spluttering his coffee in the process. “There’s a squirrel in the backyard!”

Farah gave Todd a meaningful look and went to check. Upon reaching the window, she discovered that there really was a squirrel under a massive oak tree that grew in backyard number four.

“It’s up to no good, I can tell,” Kevin explained, trying to incinerate the poor creature with his gaze. “Investigate it!”

“Mr McDougall, sir,” Farah said. “You’re paying us a very big salary so technically I would be willing to investigate a squirrel, but please, look into your heart and ask yourself, is that really the best use of our resources?”

The man looked almost on the verge of tears.

“I swear I am not insane,” he responded. “Listen,” he said, breathing heavily. “I’m not stupid, okay? I went to Harvard. I write articles about fine arts for the Metropolitan journal. I donate to STEM research. I don’t actually believe in all that voodoo nonsense crap! And…”

“Mr McDougall,” Farah tried, but he wasn’t finished.

“And I’m not usually paranoid either!” he yelled, and Todd had to look away to hide the expression of utter bemusement and slight concern on his face. “I have a psychotherapist. I see him regularly. Also!” he said, and did something that Farah and Todd weren’t expecting even after the passionate tirade - took off his half-buttoned shirt, and then the t-shirt underneath to reveal a hairless chest with a several inch long red scar running in between his ribs.

“I have a heart condition.” He pointed in the general direction of the scar. “I’ve had open heart surgery twice. I’m on beta-blockers,” he almost whispered. “I should be calmer than an elephant, so, why am I so freaking anxious all the damn time?!” he screamed, and covered his face by the lump of his clothes.

Todd approached him, awkwardly, and made an even more awkward attempt at placing his palm on the man’s naked shoulder, but changed his ming last second.

“It’s okay,” Todd said. “We believe you.”

“You do?” Kevin mumbled, removing just the edge of lump of shirts that was obscuring his vision to see Todd’s face and scan it for sincerity.

“Yeah.” Todd nodded. “I, uh,” he wanted to mention pararibulitis, but decided that would be even more personal than patting a half-naked man on the back, “well, I’ve seen things way weirder than invisible assassins. If you say someone’s watching you, someone’s watching you.”

“How and when does it happen, exactly?” Farah asked helpfully. “The feeling of being watched.”

“Every day,” Kevin said, now actually approaching calmness. “At the same time. Every. Day.” He took a deep breath in and put his t-shirt back on to the relief of Todd, who had caught himself staring at the outline of the man’s abs and had to push away a thought of such kind for the third time that week. “Starts at 9 AM. Ends at 5 PM.”

“Can you feel it now?” Farah continued.

“No.” He shook his head in confusion. “Maybe I’m in the wrong room? Come, I’ll go to the rooms where I usually am.”

What followed was a half an hour long sequence of the three of them going from room to room and standing there in silence for about five minutes, after which Kevin would declare that he can’t feel a thing and they would move on to the next one.

“I give up,” he proclaimed after his list of potential hotspots had been exhausted. “Did I make this up? Am I actually going mad?” And he sat down on the floor, hugging his knees.

“Listen, uh, Kevin,” Todd said, sitting down near him. “Can I call you Kevin?” The man didn’t reply. “Your house, it’s a bit big, if I’m being honest. Hard to keep an eye on everything in here. Maybe it would help if you moved to a smaller, less, well, visible place?”

“Are you inviting me to stay over with you?” Kevin blinked.

That is not what Todd was doing, but now Kevin could not be stopped.

“Where do you live?” He looked at Farah with round puppy eyes of a man who was desperate enough to live in a barn by now, though his understanding of what a barn looked like was limited to his childhood memories of nativity plays.

“Washington street,” Farah replied before she could process the question.

“Excellent!” Kevin was on his feet again. “That’s even closer to my tower than this place!”

“Tower,” Todd repeated. “He has a… tower.”

“He means the office building of his company,” Farah explained.

“I will go pack at once,” Kevin announced. “Guard me please,” he commanded.

Farah rolled her eyes but followed him out of the room.

“I did not sign up for a crazy billionaire to be living with us.,” Todd muttered under his nose, and went to follow Farah as well.

*

The reason Kevin’s feeling of being watched did not activate that morning was simple - Orson had overslept. He rolled around in his hostel bed, smiling sweetly in his sleep. He was dreaming of a puppy licking his feet. In the waking world, his feet were dangling off the too short for him bed and touching the stone-cold floor.

Orson’s alarm clock did not go off because his phone had developed a glitch and suddenly decided that it belonged to an exhausted, terminally sleep deprived man who should be left to sleep for as long as he wants to - so it turned off the alarm clock and put itself into airplane mode for good measure. By the time Orson had woken up naturally, Kevin was already sitting in the passenger seat of his car, on his way to Farah’s apartment.

*

The car circled around the apartment block for fifteen minutes, trying to find a parking spot that Kevin’s driver deemed satisfactory. When they had parked at last, Kevin tried to persuade the driver to step outside first and check the premises for suspicious activity. The driver reminded that he was a driver, not a bodyguard, and Farah produced the most exasperated sigh that Todd had ever heard from her. She climbed over his seat, stepped out, and circled the building two more times on foot to “check the premises”.

The elevator in the building was perpetually broken, and Todd was given the honor of dragging half of Kevin’s suitcases up the stairs to the fifth floor. ‘Did he stash all of his gold into his socks, or am I out of shape?’, Todd wondered.

In reality, it was neither. Todd was actually quite in shape as the result of all the running around that he did on their cases, mostly to catch up with Dirk and Farah. And Kevin had no gold stashes; what he took with him, and what was giving Todd so much trouble, was a suitcase full of all the fancy food ingredients that Kevin had in his fridge. Were he to leave them in his house, they would inevitably expire.

“This one.” Farah pointed when they climbed all the way to the fifth floor. She fit the key into the lock with her right hand and held the door by the handle with her left. It was slightly wobbly and well overdue for maintenance. “Take off your shoes,” she told Kevin after stepping in and taking her own shoes as well.

“Why, have you got high quality carpets?” Kevin asked.

“No?” Farah raised an eyebrow at him. “Your shoes are dirty and I don’t want to wash the floor.”

“There’s no spare bedroom,” Todd said, dragging in the suitcase and locking the door behind him. “I’m afraid you’ll have to sleep on the couch.”

“That’s okay,” Kevin replied. “I’ve had worse.”

Kevin was lying. He had never slept on a couch before and believed that 31 was a tad late to start sleeping on couches, so he wasn’t particularly enthused about it.

“I’m not completely useless, you know,” he said, opening the suitcase. “I can cook lunch! I’m good at cooking,” he explained, extracting a jar of authentic Italian pesto sauce from the suitcase.

“All the dishes are dirty,” Farah told him.

“I’ll load the dishwasher,” he suggested. “See, I know how to do that too!”

“I don’t have a dishwasher,” Farah said.

“You don’t have a dishwasher?” Kevin seemed genuinely confused. “Then how do your dishes get clean?”

Farah blinked. Todd suppressed a laugh. Kevin had just realized that he was in for an interesting and educating stay.

*

By the time Orson reached the mansion premises at last, Kevin’s personal driver was standing outside, having just returned the car to the underground parking facility.

“Oh, hi Orson!” he greeted cheerily. “How are the birds today?”

Orson had told the locals that he was a professional bird scientist (he didn’t know the word ‘ornithologist’ so he used the term ‘bird scientist’) and that he was conducting field observations on a species of birds that was incredibly rare and going extinct and could be found there in the village of all places.

“No idea,” Orson responded. “I’ve only gotten here. Overslept.”

“Happens to everyone sometimes,” the driver assured him.

“How’s Anne?” Orson asked. “Is her hip any better?”

“A bit.” The driver nodded.

“I need to remember to return this to Mrs Sanchez,” Orson said, extracting an empty tupperware from his backpack. “She gave me sandwiches on Thursday, I keep forgetting to give it back.”

“I think she’s at home,” the driver said. “Well, uhm, good luck with the birds. I’m going home. Got relieved of duty early.”

“Really? How so?”

“Hell knows.” The driver shrugged. “Drove McDougall to some shabby apartment, with three suitcases and two new private detectives of his. It’s down at Washington’s,” he added. “Got stuck in traffic at M2, stood at one red light for a whole lifetime.”

“Washington’s?” Orson repeated. “Is it close to that new seafood restaurant?”

“That’s the one,” the driver confirmed.

“Have you been there with Anne?”

“Can’t. I’m allergic to seafood.”

“Well, maybe they have, well, good, uh,” Orson stuttered, “good bread sticks?”

There was an awkward pause of such volume and depth, you could probably stuff it like a bell pepper if you had the skill for it.

“I better return this to Mrs Sanchez,” Orson blurted out and left without saying goodbye.

“Change of locations then,” Orson thought on his way to Mrs Sancez’s house, and got out his malfunctioning smartphone to check the bus routes to Washington street.