Chapter 10: The Gray Room

"I'm coming with you," Donovan said.

"No."

"Kate, it's two in the morning, and a stranger knows where you sleep."

"He found a lease," I said.

"That is worse."

The man in the gray jacket waited on the landing and said nothing.

"Wait at the curb," I told Donovan. "If I'm not out by four, you can come in."

"Four o'clock," Donovan said.

"Four o'clock."

He did not like it.

He put on his wet coat and went down the stairs ahead of us.

I heard him settle on the front step in the rain.

The lift took us down to the house again.

This time the man led me across the green carpet and past the dark glass wall.

At the far end he opened a plain door I had taken for part of the paneling.

It opened on a small gray room with one lamp.

There was a desk, two chairs, an oxygen tank on wheels and a rack of old ledgers.

Emmett Slade sat in the second chair with a clear tube running from the tank to his nose.

Up close he was thinner than he had looked behind the glass.

His white hair was combed straight back.

His eyes were pale and gray-green, and they stayed on my face.

"Sit down, Miss Marrin," he said.

His voice was the voice from the ceiling speaker, flat and tired and very quiet.

I sat.

"You sent me a king of hearts."

"I sent you the card my dealer folded on," Emmett said.

"He had two kings and two sevens. You had two fours and a nine."

"I know what I had."

"Then you know that you lost."

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