Cam meets the officers in the foyer. They introduce themselves as Steven Lambert and Emma Smith. They inform her about a hostage situation at a warehouse in Bermondsey, where Luke often writes in his co-working space. They believe Luke is the one who has taken the hostages.

Cam initially insists that the officers must be mistaken, but the officers show her a video of three people tied up with black cloth over their heads. A man walks in front of them, and Cam knows immediately that it’s Luke.

Lambert explains that they matched the image in the video with Luke’s driver’s license photo using facial recognition software. They also tracked his phone, which was at that location around five before it was shut off.

As the officers lead Cam outside, she hears her boss, Stuart, say her name from behind her but she “can’t seem to form any words at all” (21). She can’t stop herself from trembling.

Niall, a hostage negotiator with the police, feels unsatisfied with his job as there are few actual hostage situations in London. He and his wife, Viv, have been feuding recently because of the unpredictability of his work. When he gets the call about Luke Deschamps, he feels excited.

At the warehouse, the officer in charge on the scene, James Maidstone, briefs Niall on the case. Maidstone tells him that Luke won’t speak and has made no demands. The only footage they have is of him entering the warehouse.

Niall reviews the footage four times. Luke comes into frame, moves to a table, and ties each of the hostages to a chair. Maidstone tells Niall that they believe Luke only brought two of the hostages to the warehouse with him. The third hostage, Isabella Louis, owns the warehouse. Her husband, George, is a police officer.

The police set up their headquarters at a nearby pub. As Maidstone briefs the other officers on the situation, Niall sees Luke walk directly up to the camera and cover it with a piece of fabric before turning it off, leaving Niall with no visual or sound.

Niall tells Maidstone to bring in Luke’s wife, but Maidstone insists that he needs to talk with his superior and follow proper procedure. The two briefly butt heads over how to proceed, as Maidstone wants to treat Luke with hostility.

The police accompany Cam back to her home. While Smith searches their house, Lambert sits with Cam in their living room and asks her questions. He asks her if anything strange has happened recently, and she tells him that their house was broken into about six weeks ago, but nothing was taken.

As Lambert asks more questions, Cam begins to question whether she should even be helping the police. She repeatedly tells herself that Luke is a good person and must have a good reason for doing what he’s doing. She decides that she can’t lie outright but she also won’t tell them everything.

Cam thinks of strange moments with Luke over the last few weeks. Normally, he’s easy-going and deals with stress well. However, at one point, she saw him get extremely angry because the coffee machine was out of water. Another time, she came into the kitchen and saw him crying, but he insisted that he had just been cutting onions. Cam keeps these things from Lambert.

Smith comes back into the living room. Cam sees two receipts in her hands, both of which are for gas. Cam realizes how strange it is that the dates are only two days apart, even though they rarely drive anywhere that would require that much gas. Smith also has a bank statement, which shows Cam taking out a lot more money than usual. Cam decides not to point these things out to the police.

Smith asks if Cam knows why Luke wiped his computer that morning. Cam is shocked, realizing that—if Luke deleted all his writing—he must have had no intention of returning.

Lambert tells Cam that Luke has a gun, but they can’t find anything related to it—ammunition or a safe or license. Shocked by the revelation, Cam tells the officers that she would never allow her husband to bring a gun into the house.

Smith shows Cam a few app histories they were able to restore from Luke’s account. She looks at Uber Eats receipts, which are mostly Starbucks orders. On his Spotify, he was listening to music for help with anxiety, and his search history reveals sites with meditation techniques. Both things strike Cam as strange—as she never knew her husband to be anxious. She tells the police that having a newborn has been difficult.

On the last app, she sees a saved listing for a house in Lewisham. Cam hesitates, realizing that she needs to decide which side she wants to be on—helping the police or showing “loyalty and love” to her husband (53). She chooses to lie, telling the police that it’s a property they were considering buying. 

The police tell Cam that there’s no record of the robbery at her home. Cam insists that she heard Luke make the call, then remembers that he went outside to do it. She never actually heard who he called or what was said.

Libby shows up at the house. Cam hugs her and breaks down, begging Libby to “tell [her] what to do” (55). Libby promises to pick up Polly and stay with Cam at the house as long as she needs. Trying to pull herself together, Cam shows her where she keeps Polly’s things.

Maidstone and Niall discuss how strange it is that they can’t identify the other two hostages. A security guard leaked the video of the situation to the press, so everyone has seen Luke with the hostages but no one has called to even speculate that they might know one of the two men.

Niall wants to wait to do anything until he can talk to Cam and establish contact with Luke. Maidstone shows him that Luke is pacing around the room with his gun trained on the hostages. Niall’s “instinct” tells him that Luke is afraid and won’t shoot, so he asks for half an hour to establish contact.

Niall gets coffee for Luke and makes Maidstone promise that Luke will be completely safe if he comes out to get it. Niall wants to offer Luke something to prove to him that he can trust Niall. 

Niall speaks with tech and learns that on April 22 just after midnight, Luke turned off location tracking on his phone and hasn’t had it on since. CCTV picked up his license plate at several points on the night of April 21, but there was no record of his plate for two weeks after that.

Niall delivers the coffee to the door. He tries to talk to Luke several times, insisting that he can get the coffee and nothing will happen to him. As Niall goes to leave, he hears a quiet sound behind the door. He realizes that Luke is crying. He tries one more time, telling Luke that he knows he’s afraid.

Luke calls Niall’s name. He asks him to give a message to Cam—that he loves her. Niall agrees and waits for another half hour, but Luke doesn’t speak again.

When Niall returns to the pub, Maidstone accosts him about wanting to go into the warehouse. Niall argues, insisting that they need to bring in Cam. Maidstone shows him footage of Luke while Niall was waiting outside the warehouse—the entire time, Luke had his gun trained on the hostages, stopping only to wipe his tears. Niall knows it’s dangerous to leave the hostages inside, but his instincts tell him that Luke won’t shoot anyone.

Cam worries about the burglary Luke didn’t report, wondering if it was somehow a mistake with the police. More moments flash into her mind of times when Luke was quick to anger or struggled to sleep.

Niall meets Cam outside the rendezvous point and asks questions about Luke’s recent behavior, but Cam says things have been normal. He mentions her online search history about fighting with her spouse, but Cam insists it was just an issue over Polly not sleeping.

Niall tells Cam he wants her to try to talk to Luke on the warehouse’s landline. He walks Cam through what to say, warning her that she should never lie to Luke. He wants her to keep reminding him that, even if he is arrested, he hasn’t killed anyone and he will get to see Cam and Polly again.

When Cam calls, the phone rings several times. Finally, someone answers, but it isn’t Luke.

Niall hears a woman’s voice on the phone and knows it’s Isabella. He motions to the men to take Cam out of the room. He tries to talk to Isabella several times but hears no noise on the other end of the line. He tells her to tap the phone if she can hear him, and she does. He then tells her to tap if Luke is nearby, and she does again.

As Niall considers how to proceed, he sees commotion outside and hears Isabella’s husband, George, yelling. Two officers briefly detain him, but he manages to break free. He says he knows his wife is on the phone and yells to Luke that they are going to kill him.

Panicked, Niall turns toward the warehouse, knowing that Luke had to have heard George. He sees movement at the door, causing several armed police to train their guns on it. The door then slowly opens.

Isabella walks out of the warehouse with a bag over her head. She stumbles, and two officers move forward. They untie her hands, search her for a weapon, and remove the bag. 

Niall comforts Isabella as she sobs against his chest. She tells him that she was released because she wasn’t needed; she was only taken because she happened to be in the building. At that moment, Niall hears two gunshots within the warehouse.

Nearby, Cam sits with two police officers, running through happy moments with Luke in her mind. She hears the two gunshots, but the police insist they will tell her when they learn anything.

In the distance, Cam can see the roof of the warehouse. She sees lots of movement and several armed police officers. She thinks of how she now knows that Luke has been lying to her—he left her that morning and he “did all this” (89)—yet she still hopes that Luke somehow managed to escape.

As chaos erupts, Niall walks into the warehouse. He knows he shouldn’t—and that he could get in trouble for entering the scene—but he feels desperate to find Luke.

Niall follows several armed officers up the stairs to the roof. The roof is flat with a railing around it, with no fire escape or stairs on the side of the building. There are only two small fans. As the police frantically search, he hears over the radio that no one can find Luke.

Niall hears that the two bodies were found in the warehouse. Stunned, Niall cannot come to terms with the fact that his “instincts and experience” were both wrong about Luke (93). He also knows that there will be an inquiry and he will lose his job.

Maidstone calls Niall. He tells him that Luke escaped through a service elevator in the back of the warehouse that wasn’t on the building plans—even George didn’t know about it. Isabella says she told Luke about it so that he would agree to let her go.

Niall sees Cam off in the distance. He vows to find her husband, “bring him to justice. And make him pay” (94).

When Niall gets home that night, he finds that his wife has left a note saying that she can’t be with someone who puts work above everything else. In the postscript, she writes that it is her birthday.

Fifteen minutes go by as Cam continues to watch the roof. She sees crime scene officers and an ambulance arrive, but the ambulance is slow-moving and doesn’t have its lights on. She silently hopes that it’s not for Luke.

After hours of questioning, during which Cam keeps insisting that she told the police everything she knew, the officers finally let Cam go home. She tells them she prefers to walk but takes an Uber to the address from Luke’s app instead. She gets there just after three o’clock in the morning.

As Cam walks up to the door, a harsh motion-sensing light comes on. She sees a figure in the window of the home.

A man opens the window and yells at Cam from inside. He angrily tells her to leave. Cam apologizes, saying that she’s just looking for her husband, but the man slams the window. Embarrassed, Cam wonders why the man would be awake—or wake up so easily—so early in the morning.

At home, Cam shuts off all the lights. She sits for hours, thinking about what happened, wondering what she will do now. When she checks her phone, she sees dozens of messages from friends and colleagues. She checks the news and sees that they released Luke’s name. They also published his last note to her, which enrages her. After reading through comments on Twitter, she finally forces herself to put her phone away.

Upstairs, Cam checks on Polly. She picks her up, thinking how this will be even worse for Polly as she grows up. She goes to her room and lies down next to Libby.

Libby apologizes to Cam, unsure what to say, but Cam insists that there’s nothing to be said or done. Finally, she falls into a deep sleep.