“She’s in there,” Harris said, pointing directly at the door I was leaning against.

“But we need to make sure she doesn’t try to break the window or scream.”

“The walls are insulated,” Julian said.

“Nobody can hear her over the thunder anyway.”

I stood frozen in the dark pantry, the cold metal of the shelves cutting into my back.

They were going to blow up the house with me inside it.

I reached slowly into the pocket of my linen trousers.

My fingers brushed against the cool glass of my phone.

I pulled it out, keeping the screen pressed against my stomach to block the light.

I tilted the screen upward just enough to see.

The battery was at fifteen percent.

The signal indicator in the top corner showed only a single, blinking bar of cellular data.

It was a weak, unstable connection, but the data icon was barely pulsing.

I opened the browser app, my thumb trembling on the glass.

I navigated to the dashboard of my culinary blog.

My latest post—the one I had frantically updated with the strange, scrambled measurements—was still live.