Chapter 3
I looked at Patrick again.
He was pale beneath the weak kitchen light. His damaged hand rested against the table, the fingers drawn inward. The cold, the long conversation, and the fear had taken more from him than he wanted to admit.
He caught me watching.
“I’m not going to collapse,” he said.
“You nearly did ten minutes ago.”
“And you have always been irritatingly observant.”
For the first time that night, something familiar passed between us.
It was not trust.
But it was a doorway.
I folded the photograph and slipped it into my coat.
“We go now,” I said. “You tell me the rest when we are somewhere secure.”
Patrick’s expression hardened.
“Your version of secure or mine?”
“Tonight, we find out whether there is a difference.”
Beatrice closed the bag.
That answer seemed to satisfy neither of them, but it was enough to get us moving.
We left through the rear stairwell.
The building’s back corridor smelled of dust and damp concrete. A bare bulb flickered overhead while Beatrice led us through a narrow laundry room and out into an alley.
Snow had already covered our footprints from the front entrance.
My car was three blocks away.
Too far for Patrick in that weather.
“Stay here,” I said.
“No,” he replied immediately.
“I am getting the car.”
“And if someone is waiting beside it?”
“Then they will be disappointed.”
Beatrice gave me a look.
“You really do speak like that all the time.”
Patrick’s mouth twitched.
“He used to practice in mirrors.”
“I was fourteen.”
“You were dramatic at fourteen.”
“I was surrounded by terrible influences.”
May you like
For one brief second, the alley became something else.
Not a place of hiding.
