Chapter 17: Tuesday, Room 214

The Cimarron Inn had a green neon sign and a dozen rooms facing a parking lot.

I had never seen it.

I had only read its name on a receipt, eleven times.

Tawny went to the front desk and asked for the key Gus had arranged, and a man in a lanyard handed her a brass key to Room 214 without a question.

Boone and I followed her up the outdoor stairs.

He stood very still in front of the door.

"You don't have to go in," I said.

"Yes, I do."

I unlocked it myself.

It was a plain room with a double bed, a brown spread, a print of a sailboat and a window onto the lot.

I stood in the middle of it.

This was where he had been on Tuesdays.

This was the bed.

I had told myself I was past being hurt by it, and I was wrong, and it was a relief to be wrong where nobody could see.

"Hal," Boone said from the doorway.

"Don't talk. Stand over there."

He stood by the wall, and I sat on the foot of the bed and looked at the sailboat.

"It's an ugly room," I said.

"Yes."

"That's the worst part. I kept picturing something with taste."

His mouth twitched, and I nearly laughed, and then the door knocked twice.

Rook came in first.

He was leaner than I remembered from the gate, with his head shaved and a grey goatee, and he wore his Pale Ravens vest over a clean white shirt.

Four Ravens crowded the hall behind him.

He looked at Tawny, who had come back in and was holding the wall.

"You okay?" he asked her.

"Not really."

"Good. Means you're not lying."

He sat in the room's only chair and crossed his boots.

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