I work at the ties and do the math. My watch says it’s a few minutes before 4:30—a little more than a half hour until the banks close and two and a half hours before Cam’s deadline. Whoever this man is across the hall, whatever he thinks he knows about my husband, I wonder what he knows about the restaurant business. Three-quarters of a million dollars is a lot to have just lying around, liquid cash Cam could stuff in a bag when his system is geared to cashless transactions, credit cards and Apple Pay and touchless payment apps. Even if Cam raided all the tip jars and valet stands, there’s no way he’d get anywhere close. He’s going to have to make a trip to the bank.

Questions beat through my mind like razor blades.

Who is this guy? A fired waiter? A bartender or chef? He’s stronger than me, faster, too. Even if I managed to wriggle myself loose from this chair, can I sneak across the hall and surprise him with the lucite bowl to the temple? Can I kick the gun from his hand and then use it to shoot him in the face?

And then, darker, more dangerous thoughts: three-quarters of a million dollars is a lot. What if Cam can’t get to the bank in time? What happens to us then?

For a bleak moment, I think about how the kids and I will end this day. How difficult Cam’s task is, how helpless and outmatched I am stuck to this damn chair. One false move, and the man could kill everyone in this house—bang bang bang—and still have bullets left over for Cam when he arrives. Maybe that’s been his plan all along, to kill us, then take the money and run. Maybe this whole afternoon is just part of his evil game.

By now my right wrist is slick with spit, and the knot has rotated a good inch. Only a half inch more and then—

Beatrix’s scream pierces the upstairs hallway.

S E B A S T I A N

4:27 p.m.

Confession time. This Beatrix kid is a pain in my ass.

Her little brother, Baxter, I can manage. That kid is just begging for some attention, which I pretend to give him while he rambles on about the pair of squirrels fighting over an acorn in the yard. Unsurprisingly, the big one won.

But Beatrix’s scream was meant to piss me off and blow out my eardrums. And what a scream it was, one of those top-of-the-lungs, glass-shattering shrieks made for a horror movie soundtrack, loud and high enough to echo around my skull. The dull throbbing behind my mask is just painful enough to be distracting.