Chapter 14: The Guarantee

Donovan's POV

My father caught me in the hall of the Lakeshore house at six on Sunday evening.

I had gone back for a suitcase and my passport.

"Where are you going?" he said.

"Out."

"Monday at nine, we void that card and this ends. You will sit next to me in court and look worried."

"And if it voids?"

"Then she has nothing, and she comes home."

He laid his hand on my sleeve, the way he had done since I was a boy.

It was warm, and it was heavy, and it said stay.

I took hold of his wrist with my bandaged hand and lifted it off my arm.

It hurt my knuckles.

He looked at his own hand, hanging in the air between us.

"Donovan."

"She was not a formality, Dad," I said. "She was a person, and you sold her."

I left him standing there.

That was the only easy part of the night.

The loading dock behind the old rail hotel was empty at ten, and it was raining again.

I stood under the light where I had stood for four hours on Friday, and I didn't know how to knock on a wall.

After ten minutes the steel door opened.

The man in the gray jacket looked at me without surprise.

"Mr. Rask."

"I want to see whoever keeps the book."

"The house is closed to guests."

"I'm not a guest," I said. "My name is already in the book."

He took me down.

The dealer was alone at the big table with a single lamp lit.

He stood when I came in, which I hadn't expected.

"Mr. Rask. Your wife left the house some days ago."

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