Rick shook his head slowly. “I think you’re shittin’ me there, Zack. I don’t believe you did anything like that at all. But I think I’ll be able to get the truth out of you eventually. Sit down in that chair.”

He indicated the one across from Sarah. When I didn’t move right away, he took a step forward, waved the knife. “Chair! Now!”

I sat down. Rick tossed a roll of duct tape that he’d left sitting by the phone in my direction. “Gimme your cell phone. Wrap that around yourself so you’re tied into the chair,” he said.

“I’m telling you the truth,” I said, handing the phone over. “The ledger is with the police and—”

Rick suddenly waved his knife around Sarah. She tried to pull back into herself as he sliced through the air near her neck.

“Start taping yourself up,” he said to me.

I found the end of the roll, gave a tug, heard the familiar rip of duct tape separating from itself. I slapped one end onto my shirt, then pulled the roll around me, handing it off from one hand to the other behind my back, then again in front of me. I went around a couple of times and stopped.

“No, a little more,” Rick said.

“There’s no way I can get out,” I protested.

“Just do it.”

I did one more loop around myself, tore off the tape from the roll, and set the roll on the kitchen table.

“Now your ankles,” Rick said.

“I can’t do my ankles. I can’t bend over because I’ve got all this tape around my stomach.”

“Shit,” Rick said. Talk about a master plan falling apart. He set the knife down on the counter and approached me from behind.

Now or never, I figured.

I stood up and rushed backward. Sarah screamed. The chair came up at a forty-five-degree angle, my butt still attached to it, my body hunched over. The legs of the chair tangled with Rick’s, and the weight of my coming after him propelled him into the vertical blinds that hung over the sliding glass doors to the deck. Rick’s arms flailed, grabbing slats, ripping them from their moorings as I squeezed him against the door.

I took a step away, bound to the chair but my arms still free, and spun around. I threw myself into him, punching randomly. Except for Rick, a few hours earlier, I’d never hit anyone in my adult life. And the last time I’d hit him, I’d used a robot. This time, I was connecting with my hands, and the pain traveled straight up my arms and into my shoulders, which still hurt from dangling from that roof peak.