Ernest finds a slip of paper in Bryce’s pocket with a potential safe combination: 29-39-34. After hiding the body, he is contacted on the police radio by Tobias, who has spotted movement on the roof. Using Bryce’s voice-changer, Ernest impersonates the thief and claims that the hostage Ernest is with him.

When Tobias sends a sniper to a nearby church tower for visual confirmation, Ernest must prove that both men are present. He speaks to Tobias as the Fencer, quickly sheds the disguise to appear as himself for the sniper, then puts the disguise back on. He rejects Tobias’s offer to release Cordelia in exchange for cooperation and repeats Bryce’s original demand for $1 from the vault.

Now, Ernest is trapped inside a safe and running out of air. He considers his options: shooting the lock is too dangerous, and he cannot produce oxygen through electrolysis (a process that uses an electrical current to split water into hydrogen and oxygen) because he lacks the salt needed to make water conductive. As a last resort, he uses a strong magnet to attempt to rearrange alphabet magnets on the safe’s exterior to spell “HELP.” He then realizes that urine is a salt solution. He drinks the jar of holy water so he can produce urine to use in the experiment and possibly gain a few more minutes of air.

Back in the earlier timeline, Ernest, still disguised as the Fencer, searches the executive offices for the vault code. He overhears Cordelia arguing with Laverna about stopping her medical treatment. After Laverna gives Cordelia the medication against her wishes, she explains her daughter’s condition to Ernest. He tries the combination from Bryce’s pocket on Winston’s safe, but it fails.

In Winston’s office, Ernest finds a bank statement for Remy. The statement shows a payment to “B & Q FREDERICKS,” a name apparently connected to Bryce Fredericks, with the memo “kill.” He also finds a scrap of black fabric caught in the door.

Still disguised as the Fencer, Ernest confronts the hostages to reassert control. His fiancée, Juliette, is defiant: Thinking he is the thief, she warns him that involving the famous detective Ernest Cunningham will ruin his plans. She also lists Ernest’s personal failings, to Ernest’s amusement.

To establish an alibi for himself and manage the group, Ernest announces that he is holding both Ernest and a teller named Milton in Winston’s locked office. In reality, he knows that Milton had escaped the bank when the robbery began, after the steel shutters blocked off the teller cages. He begins questioning the hostages about Bryce, and Cordelia identifies him as Bryce Fredericks.

Ernest forces Winston to reveal his safe combination, and Felix correctly works out that the combination is based on the atomic numbers for gold, silver, and copper.

Back in Winston’s office, Ernest tries the combination Winston provided (79-47-29), but it does not work. Ernest thinks that Winston may have lied. Before Ernest can respond, Winston knocks on the door. Believing he is speaking to the Fencer, Winston offers to help open the main vault if the Fencer will “get rid of” Ernest.

Ernest opens the door as himself and confronts Winston, who denies making the offer. During the exchange, Winston reveals that Gabriel has gambling debts. When the conversation turns to Remy’s film production, Winston confirms that he sold Remy an insurance policy for the movie. Ernest theorizes that Remy killed the lead actor to collect on the policy, but Winston then reveals the policy’s largest clause: a $25 million payout for Ernest’s own death.

Ernest realizes that he was Remy’s intended target in the insurance fraud. He confronts Remy, who tries to escape through a bathroom window and gets stuck. Hanging from the window, Remy confesses that the television show was a scheme built around insurance fraud. He had insured Ernest (as the writer) for $25 million, expecting that Ernest’s dangerous work would eventually get him killed. When Ernest kept surviving, the production ran out of money, and Remy, unable to raise more funds, was forced to tell the lead actor, Laurence Birch, about the scheme. Birch was enraged by the deception, walked into the road, and was struck and killed by a car.

The other hostages arrive, and Juliette notices that Remy is bleeding badly from glass shards, a wound Ernest had overlooked. Disgusted by his inattention, Juliette helps Remy away and tells Ernest that his behavior is unlike him.

Back in Winston’s office, Ernest examines a spectrometer report he took from Felix’s locker. The report, dated eight months prior, shows a sample composed mainly of iron, with small amounts of carbon, gold, and silicon. Ernest rules out the possibility that the bank’s large gold nugget is fake, since an iron core would be easily detectable with a magnet. He also concludes that the sample was not pyrite (fool’s gold) because it contained no sulfur.

Feeling trapped by his own escalating bad decisions, Ernest uses the voice-changer to radio the police negotiator, Tobias. He demands sleeping bags, a chemistry textbook, pizza, and bank statements for everyone in the building, including a man named Bryce Fredericks.

Tobias agrees to everything except the statements. He mentions a separate request for sunscreen that Ernest didn’t make, and he realizes that it must’ve been Bryce’s request. In exchange for the items, Ernest offers to release Remy. Tobias pressures him to release Cordelia because of her health condition, but Ernest remembers Bryce saying, “If she leaves the bank, she dies” (137). He is worried that if he lets any of the women go, they will die.

Ernest announces Remy’s release to the other hostages. He then notices a problem with his plan: When Remy gets outside, he will see Milton, the teller who Ernest has been claiming is in the office with Ernest and “the Fencer.” Remy’s surprise could inadvertently reveal that Milton was not a hostage. As Remy is led away, Ernest silently gestures for him to keep quiet.

While watching Remy’s release with Gabriel, Ernest learns about Cordelia’s heart condition. A year ago, Laverna had crashed their car while rushing to a hospital for a heart transplant, causing Cordelia to miss the important six-hour window for the donor heart. Overcome with guilt, Laverna had since been forcing Cordelia to undergo treatments.

Gabriel also confesses that his gambling debts are the reason Winston froze his credit line. During their conversation, Ernest notices a phrase Gabriel had written on his notepad, “2 EASY!,” and files it away as potentially significant. He tells Gabriel he knows the vault code.

They return to the atrium, where Juliett, Michelle, Felix, and Winston were talking. They showed him the most recent supplies from the police, including the chemistry textbook. Juliette tells Ernest her theory that Edward, inspired by a Sherlock Holmes story, tunneled into the bank vault from the vandalized mausoleum next door. Ernest dismisses her idea. He confronts Michelle, using an invoice he had found from a security consultancy called “Security Solutions” to accuse her of having robbed the bank two nights ago.