Chapter 12: Nine O'Clock

By evening the snow had stopped, and the pines stood under it.

Ray split wood in the yard for an hour with a rusty axe he found in the shed.

He did not think about Vera while he did it.

He thought about the axe, and the cold, and the blisters coming up on his palms.

Nico watched from the porch with a mug of instant coffee and a blanket around his shoulders.

When Ray came in, Nico had a legal pad on the table and a pencil behind his ear.

"I made a list," he said.

"Of what?"

"Every place we've been since the first night. Who knew, and when."

He turned the pad around.

It was written in neat columns, the way Nico wrote everything.

Five places, five rows.

Joan was in some of them.

Vera was in every one, and in the tower she was the one who offered it.

Ray read down to the bottom.

"Add the booking page," Nico said. "Her company account, her name on the car."

"Vera told me about a man on the corner of Rogers Park."

"Yes. And then she moved us to a place where she knew exactly which door we'd walk through."

Ray put the pad down.

His hands were steady.

That surprised him.

He had expected to feel the floor go out from under him, and instead he felt very clear, and very tired.

"I thought it was me," he said. "For four years. I thought if I'd just run faster to that ramp."

"I know."

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