With Baxter on my hip, we search every inch of the ground floor.

We start in the rooms where a man in a mask can move around freely without fear of being seen from the street: the master bedroom; the attached bathroom, after I’ve lowered the shades on the window looking out onto a neighbor’s guesthouse; the closet beyond with a long sheet of glass high up on a wall, a rectangular slice of trees and birds and sky. We check closets and peer under furniture, open chests and dump out drawers, shove clothing aside to poke a gun into the darkest corners. The whole time, I hold my breath and pray I won’t find my daughter.

But everywhere we look, there’s no Beatrix.

Which is more than a little surprising, since she’s never been the most original kid when it comes to hide-and-seek. The giggling lump behind a curtain or a half-closed door, or the body attached to the feet sticking out from under the bed. Wherever she is, she’s well hidden. I just pray to God she stays that way.

“Baby, I can’t hold you much longer,” I whisper to Baxter as we’re moving through the front rooms—the study and the dining room, the galley butler’s pantry lined on one side with windows. “I’m going to have to put you down, just for a minute.”

“Nooo.” Baxter clings tighter, wrapping his legs around me and clamping on with extraordinary strength. The kid’s always been an acrobat. He’s had a six-pack since he was two.

We’re both all too aware of the man. He sticks close, never letting us wander more than ten feet away, jabbing the air between us with the butt of his gun, urging me from room to room.

I jostle Baxter higher on my hip and keep moving.

We come around to the back of the house, where I jiggle the last door handle and tug on the last window, even though the red light on the alarm pad said the system was still armed. That means Beatrix is still in the house somewhere.

“These are locked, too,” I say. “Everything’s locked.”

He stands at the edge of the room, on the far side of the wall separating the living space from the kitchen. Anyone on the front doorstep right now might see the toes of his shoes, the muzzle of his gun, but the rest of him is well out of sight. Everything about the way he’s standing is intentional. It’s chilling how familiar he is with our home.

“Any other way out?”

I shake my head. “Not without tripping the alarm, no.”

“Does she know the code?”