Chapter 11: The Spare Room

"She looked at your waist," Dashiell said, when the last director had gone.

"I know."

"She can't be sure. This room is scrubbed, and she only touched your hand."

"She doesn't need to be sure," I said. "She needs to wonder. Winifred only ever has to wonder."

He picked up Winifred's untouched lasagna and set it out in the corridor for the cleaners.

"You're not going back to that motel."

"How do you know where I live?"

He did not answer.

His phone buzzed, and he read a short message, and his jaw went hard.

"Two Howling Bay wolves were in the car park of your motel an hour ago," he said. "My men sent them away."

"Your men."

"Yes."

"The two men I've seen in a grey sedan outside my room every night this week?" I said. "I thought they were police."

For the first time since I had met him, Dashiell Crane looked embarrassed.

"They were not supposed to be seen."

"They were very bad at it."

"I'll tell them."

I laughed, and then I stopped, because it was the first time I had laughed in three weeks.

He took me down to the fifty-ninth floor that night, in his own elevator.

I had not known there was a fifty-ninth floor.

It was one long apartment with windows on three sides.

The kitchen had a stove that had never been used.

The guest room at the end of the corridor had a bed wide enough for four people.

"I'm across the hall," he said. "The lock is yours."

"Is this allowed? We've never met."

"I know," he said, deadpan. "I'm not a man who invites strangers to stay."

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