Her smile is fleeting, but it’s enough to encourage him to keep talking. When Mia was a toddler, Jack would wrestle with her in the living room. He would invent moves constantly, saying, “This is what I call . . . the spider monster,” and crawl his fingers up and down her tummy in a tickle. And “This is what I call . . . the backbreaker!” and pick her up quickly and bring her down slowly upon his knee, making a bone-crunching sound. She invented her own moves—the panda bop, the bitey thing—but Nora is the one who invented the family tower. She normally watched them from the kitchen while reading the newspaper or filling out a report, but one day she leaped up from her chair and smooshed herself on top of Jack and said, “This is what I call . . . the family tower!” She invited Mia to join in and the girl flopped onto them both with a roar and a giggle.

Later that night, when Jack and Nora were tangled up in bed, the door opened. A wedge of light from the hall fell over them, and Nora paused, panting over him. “Is it her? Tell me it’s not her,” she said. And he said, “It’s her.” The little footsteps padded across the floor, moving toward them, and her chirpy voice asked, “Whatcha guys doing?”

Jack pulled Nora down on top of him and yelled, “Family tower!”

Mia didn’t know any better, so she climbed up on the bed and jumped on top of them with a laugh that was soon followed by “I had a bad dream. Can you tuck me in again? And sing to me?”

“Sure, sweet pea,” Jack said, “let’s go.”

In the lab, Nora asks him why he brought it up as he goes to the window again to check on the sleeping guard. “Because,” he says, “we’ve used misdirection before. I say we use it again. And I say we do it now.”

“Now?”

“It’s night, right? I mean, I think it’s night. The brass is gone. The JV squad is working the late shift. Let’s make a move before they think we’re capable of it.”

“What’s the move?”

“This is what I call . . . the seizure!” With that he falls to the floor and begins to kick his legs and shudder his arms.

Nora rushes to the window and bangs on it, startling the guard awake. He looks around, bewildered, before settling his gaze on her. “Please,” she says. “My husband is having some sort of episode.”

Her husband? He continues to spasm his body even as he fights a smile, wondering if she even realized she said it.

The guard’s voice crackles through the overhead speakers. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but there’s nothing I can do.”

“He needs a doctor. Please.”

“I’m under orders. I’m not supposed to let anyone in or out.”