“Pup, give me the gun,” Lacey said to Robert, her palm out, her gaze locked on Mia still. Mia’s heartbeat tripped, that panic she’d just reined in snapping at its restraints, begging to be let free.

She eyed the door. Too far. The table would provide some cover if she could be quick about it, but it would be a risk.

“Please don’t think I won’t shoot if you so much as breathe wrong, Detective.”

Dead if she did, dead if she didn’t. At least Mia could try. Go down with a fight. Her thighs tensed, and she shifted her weight to one hip, ready to fling herself sideways.

“Oh, calm down, I’m just going to have pup here tie you up,” Lacey said, waving toward Robert. He took his cue and crossed the room, his eyes on the floor.

Mia gauged his slender frame. She could take him, but a hostage was only as valuable as their worth to whoever had the gun. Mia guessed Lacey would shoot through his body to get to her. She held her hands out.

Robert slipped a zip tie over her wrists, and Mia thanked God for small favors. As long as she was standing, the plastic was easy enough to overcome. But then he bent and began tying a rope around her ankle, to the base of the heavy bench of the kitchen table.

Lacey watched, patient and assessing, until he stepped back. Then she held out the gun for Robert to take, crossed the room in three long strides, and slapped Mia so hard she ended up on the floor, with nothing to break her fall. Her elbow caught most of her weight. Spiky, white flashes of pain radiated out from her arm, her nerve endings begging for relief that didn’t come.

When Mia was finally able to blink her eyes open, Lacey was hovering over her, gripping her chin. Mia tried to pull away, but Lacey held firm.

“Everyone does what I tell them,” Lacey said, her voice disturbing in its calmness, a stark contrast to the violence of her handprint on Mia’s cheek.

It was a remarkable study in Lacey’s tight control of her own anger. Mia had provoked her over Cash so long ago, and yet she’d sat, unperturbed, through Robert’s fumbling attempts to bind Mia. Only when it was safe to act did Lacey let loose her rage.

Mia didn’t move, her eyes slipping over each of Lacey’s features, cataloging the twist of her lips, the sigh that escaped when she sat back on her heels.

“Asher wouldn’t have hurt me,” Mia said, taking advantage of being so close to Lacey. Without her constant fidgeting, she was so much easier to read. Before, her tells got lost in a constant barrage of little movements. Now they were amplified by her stillness.

Lacey was thinking about lying.