Anna saw it and went still. “No,” she whispered.

Elias laughed breathlessly, pinned half against the wall. “You should’ve let me leave.”

“What is that?” I asked.

He turned his head toward the window. Down below, far beyond the glass, in the private hotel garage, a car alarm began to wail.

Anna’s face collapsed. “My car,” she whispered. “My papers. Everything I had left.”

Then came the distant boom. The windows trembled. Sophia screamed.