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The next morning, we arrange everything. The bombs that will go off in all different sections of the house. The balcony we will jump from. The net that will catch us. The steel safe in which we will bury ourselves alive with the laser cutter that we will use to cut our way out.

It’s not a completely foolproof plan, but it’s hard to come up with a plan under pressure. I’m sure that tomorrow morning I will wake up—if I wake up—with a better plan. It’s easy to come up with a perfect plan once it’s too late.

It was Jonathan’s idea to bury ourselves alive. We’ve tried to arrange the explosions to minimize the amount of debris that will fall over us, but there’s a chance we won’t be able to escape.

Jonathan seems to think this is a good thing. “We have to get as close to dying as possible,” he says, “to make it believable that we have.” I think he’s a little too jazzed by the possibility that we will actually die.

“Sure,” I say, trying not to think about being trapped inside the steel safe, for however long we decide to wait, not knowing if we’ll be able to get out.

Jonathan calls Alfie at five fifty-three a.m. We’re both terrified, but we’re also both good at pulling the trigger.

On the third ring, he picks up. Jonathan puts him on speaker. We can hear breathing down the line. The breath crackles.

“Alfie?” Jonathan says.

“Alfie can’t come to the phone right now,” a tech-warped voice says.

“Where is he?” Jonathan asks like he knows the answer. I know the answer, too.

“We took care of him,” the voice says. “We thought you would take care of him for us, but you really don’t like to work for free.”

“We want out. We just want to quit our jobs. That’s all.” Jonathan looks at me. It was worth a shot.

“That’s not how it works. Blaye,” the voice says. Blaye is a commune outside Bordeaux, not far from us.

“We just want to walk away,” Jonathan says.

“No, you don’t,” the voice says. “You want us to come to you. You’re setting a trap. At the Chateau du Cap. Oh. This is interesting.” They are clearly typing as they talk, like most techies. “The owner of the chateau is a doctor in Paris. Masood Ahmed.”

Jonathan goes pale as paper. I lose my breath. How did we not see this coming? We thought we were so much smarter than them, but we just seemed smart because we were their pawns. Neither of us says anything, because neither of us knows what to say, and this reveals everything.

“He has a wife,” the voice says. “Oh. His wife is pregnant.”

“What do you want?” Jonathan says. His voice is hoarse.

“I’m offering you a double hit,” the voice says. “I hope you’ll take the job. The marks are both of you. The payment is Masood Ahmed’s life. You have an hour. Even you can’t get to Paris that fast.”

“Wait—”

“And just so we’re clear: I want bodies. Not bones or ashes or broken pieces. I want you, dead.”

The call ends. The clock starts now.