Chapter 15: The Boathouse

"What safe?" I said.

Ragna smiled with no lipstick to hold it up.

"Bottom of the stairs," she said. "His father's. Now his."

One of the wolves took her elbow.

She shook him off and walked out through the gate by herself, the suitcase bumping her leg.

She didn't look back once.

I stood in the courtyard in his flannel and thought about the cliff.

I could go up three flights and ask him.

He'd look me in the eye and tell me something calm and steady.

He'd practiced on me once already, on that bench.

So I didn't ask.

At nine the eleven Alphas sat down to a farewell breakfast in the great hall, and the King had to sit with them.

I went out the kitchen door in my boots and down the cliff path.

The stairs started behind a split-rail fence at the edge of the birches.

A hundred and forty wooden steps, switchbacking down the rock face, slick with spray and moss.

The boathouse sat at the bottom on stone pilings over the water.

It was old and gray, with a green tin roof and a big double door on the land side.

The padlock hung open on its hasp.

I noticed that.

Inside it smelled of lake and old varnish.

A long wooden boat sat in the slip under a tarp, rocking on the black water.

At the far end, the slip ran out under a wooden water door to the lake.

Stairs went up to a loft with one window.

The safe was up there, an old black iron box on the floor, with a brass dial worn shiny by thumbs.

I knelt in front of it.

I knew exactly one number that mattered to him.

Ten. Thirty.

The dial clicked.

The handle turned.

Inside, on a stack of old deeds, was a leather journal so worn its corners had gone round.

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