The Seventh Time novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Eighth Question

The snow came down in earnest on the second Friday of December, and it did not stop.

By four o'clock the Flats were white to the river, and the dock lights made orange circles in the dark.

The shift ended at five.

I came down to the warehouse in my work coat with something in my pocket.

My heart went on a bad string.

Pete saw me at the gate and went completely still.

"Is it today?"

"Don't tell anybody."

"I won't." He turned and shouted into the building. "Everybody to the windows!"

I could have killed him.

Killian came out of the dock door at five past, with snow on his shoulders and a pallet jack still in one hand.

He saw me and stopped.

Behind him, in every window along the long wall, forty faces pressed to the glass.

The old driver had her thermos up.

"Romy," he said.

"Leave the jack."

He leaned it against the wall, slowly.

I walked across the snow and stopped in front of him, close enough to see the flakes catching in his eyelashes.

His scar had gone white in the cold.

I took my hand out of my pocket.

I was holding a band of copper-wound wire, twisted once and soldered, no bigger than a thumb joint.

It was the lowest string off a baby grand that had been scrapped at the shop, and I had made it on Tuesday night.

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