I glance at the clock. I have six minutes left, when I’m more like seven or eight from home. I shouldn’t have pulled over to check my phone. I should have handed it to Nick, let him do it, but I was too stubborn, too much of a damn control freak. George and the others are right; I really am my own worst enemy.

“Tell them we’re going to be cutting it close, that they should wait for us in the backyard. He’s in the media room, so tell them to watch the window above the patio. And for God’s sake, no bullets. My wife and daughter are in there, too, and I can’t risk it, not even if it looks like a clean shot.”

I check the footage on my phone, balanced in a palm at the top of the steering wheel. I’ve been flipping between the three cameras, watching Jade park herself on the chair next to Beatrix and coax a conversation out of an unmasked Sebastian. Stalling.

“Let me help,” she says. “I want to help you and Gigi.”

Nick hangs up, shoves the phone back in a pocket. “This traffic is really jacking with our plan.”

I stare at the sea of brake lights and try not to puke because he’s right. This traffic is a problem, and so is the fact that Darius and Vance are about to beat us there. They need me to go in first, to turn off the alarm and unlock the back door, then flush Sebastian out of the playroom with the promise of money in the truck. As soon as I’ve lured him away from Jade and Beatrix, the bouncers and Nick will take Sebastian down, right before they disappear into the night.

But the timing is tight. I drift to the right, nudging the truck into the nonexistent shoulder, then jerk the tires back onto the road just in time. The bumper misses a stone mailbox by a hair.

“Isn’t there a shortcut?” Nick says. “Try a side street or something. There’s got to be another way in.”

“Shut up and let me drive.”

I ride a Buick’s bumper and swipe between cameras on my phone, checking in on every angle. I stop on the bird’s-eye view of the room and see Beatrix is getting restless in her chair. Her right hand is tugging at the bindings.

Nick grunts. “Maybe the others should go ahead and—”

“No. Not unless I give them the sign. Not until things go south.”

“Pretty sure things went south hours ago.”

I don’t respond, even though Nick is right. Again.

I white-knuckle the wheel and look past the Buick to a turnoff up ahead, marked with a stone pillar and a bright green street sign. Fifty yards. Only fifty yards of this deadlock to go.