Chapter 12: The Boiler Room

The boiler room was four floors under the lobby.

Odile led us down a staircase I had never seen, behind the laundry chute, with a ring of brass keys in her good hand.

Enoch went first, with the pistol down along his leg.

I followed in the dress I'd dragged on, and my hair was still tangled from his bed.

The air grew hot and wet and smelled of coal dust and old iron.

At the bottom, a steel door stood behind a stack of pipe lagging.

Odile pushed the lagging aside and unlocked the door with a long key.

"Quietly," she said.

We stepped into a room full of iron.

Two big boilers ticked in the dark.

Between them, on a folding cot with a gray army blanket pulled up to his chin, lay a man.

He had gray hair and a rumpled shirt.

His chest was wrapped in white bandages, and his face was the color of candle wax.

I knew him.

I had last seen him folding against a corridor wall.

"It's him," I whispered. "He's alive."

"Barely." Odile put her keys on a hook.

"The bullet went through the meat under his collarbone and out. I found him on the carpet, still breathing."

"The porters moved him before the cleaners came."

"You said you'd tell me when you'd seen it."

"I wanted to see if he would live." She looked at Enoch. "I should have told you."

"Yes," Enoch said.

He crossed to the cot, and the man's eyes opened.

They were pale blue and clouded, and they went straight to Enoch's face.

"Hatherley," he whispered. "You came."

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