Chapter 19: The Chain on the Door

Keaton's POV

At ten that night Claire slept in her own bed for the first time in nineteen days, and I lay awake across the hall listening for it.

I had taken the night off.

I told myself it was because I was tired.

I stood in my kitchen at half past ten drinking water I didn't want, with my front door cracked an inch.

The management office had sent her a new key at six o'clock, and I had watched her turn it in the lock of 1806 with both hands.

She'd laughed.

Then she'd stood in the doorway for a full minute and said, "It smells like him."

"Do you want me to come in?"

"No. I want to open every window."

I had gone back across the hall.

I wanted to be the one she called, and I wanted her to need nobody.

Both were true.

At eleven I heard the elevator.

It was too late for a delivery and too early for anyone coming home from a shift.

I put my water down.

Footsteps crossed the corridor, uneven and heavy.

A fist hit her door three times.

"Claire."

I knew the voice.

"Claire, open the door. I just want to say one thing."

I stepped into the corridor.

Grady Lindell stood in front of 1806 in the same suit from the morning with the tie gone and one sleeve torn.

He smelled like a bar from ten feet away.

"Mr. Lindell," I said. "Go home."

"I don't have one."

"Then go to a hotel."

"Stay out of it." He didn't look at me. "Claire. I know you can hear me."

The door opened as far as the chain would let it.

She'd put a sweater on over her nightgown.

Her face was pale and angry and composed.

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