His body betrayed him. That’s what panic does—it takes over. Blood flow was rerouted. Pupils dilated. The heart and lungs accelerated. Saliva and tears dried up. Archie tried to think about this now, to abstract what he was feeling so he could put it aside and function. He looked at his hands. They were trembling. Don’t be weak, he told himself. Stay in control. He stared at his fingers, forcing them to steady, and then returned his eyes to the screen as a new sentence appeared one letter at a time until they formed three more words. This time, it was an instruction.

Wait

for

me.

Archie went to the mail table by the door, got his gun, and returned to the counter. He made sure there was a cartridge in the chamber and then tucked the gun back in the holster and clipped the holster to the waist of his pants, leaving it unsnapped.

He had to make himself breathe. He had to place his hands on the bar in front of him and stare at them, willing them to stop trembling. He had to collect himself. After a few moments, he could feel the panic begin to bleed away, replaced by a stillness and a chilling calm.

His bedroom door opened behind him and he composed his expression and turned around to face Rachel. Her hair was wet and combed back flat against her head and her face was clean of makeup. She had put on a pair of gray yoga pants and a white tank top that she kept in a drawer in his bedroom, and she was carrying his handcuffs.

He was certain now that she had adjusted the laptop when she’d turned on the music, angling it so that it provided the camera with the perfect view. She’d known exactly what she was doing. She had set him up.

Now she moved toward him, smiling, her bare feet soundless on the wood floor. He could see her black bra under the ribbed white fabric of the tank, the black thong under the yoga pants. As she got close he smelled the familiar scent of his own shampoo. When she reached him, she laid the handcuffs gently in his hand.

Archie’s fingers tightened around them. “You’re good with these,” he said. “A lot of people get tripped up by the locking mechanism.”

She winked at him. “Thanks.”

“Good, for an amateur,” he said. He reached behind her and easily snapped a cuff around one of her wrists. She looked startled, and he moved quickly, walking her backward to the chair and sitting her down before she had time to process what was happening. Then he threaded the cuffs under the bottom slat of the chair back and snapped the other cuff around her free wrist. “You always want to anchor the cuffs if you can,” he said. “That way the suspect can’t move.”