Victor had called the police himself, an hour after he left me in the vault, to report that his pregnant wife had gone missing — and to suggest, helpfully, that a man named Marcus Vance had been stalking me for months and might have taken me.

He had, in other words, prepared to hand them my rescuer as my abductor.

And when I insisted that Victor had locked me in Vault 7, the detective laid a photograph on my bed: a timestamped security still from an upscale restaurant ten miles away, showing my husband raising a champagne glass at his parents’ anniversary dinner, surrounded by his family, at 8:41 that evening.

The vault door had locked at 8:43.