Page 56

The space itself is barely bigger than my bedroom, all weathered timber and steel bolts.

There’s a narrow twin bed tucked against the corner of the walls, a taupe comforter and a single quilted throw on top. One pillow, slightly lumpy, pushed against the window where Knox is unloading his bag. Against the wall, a wooden table stands under a wide pane of glass—simple, solid, nicked from years of elbows, maps, binoculars, and coffee mugs. There’s a single chair pulled close and a lantern resting on one corner next to a water ring where someone left a glass sitting too long.

It’s kind of cute, actually. Cozy and charming and far from scary, beyond the fact that we’re nearly a hundred feet high in a swaying building.

I was right about the cold part, though; it’s just as freezing in here as it is outside. I eye the small black cast-iron fireplace and the cut wooden logs. If we were to throw one in, would the man at the bottom notice?

Knox rips out a blanket from his bag and takes two steps to me across the room.

“There we go.” He wraps the soft throw around my shoulders and it smells like him, all outdoorsy, woodsy with cinnamon apples. “That’s better, huh?”

It would be a lot sweeter if I didn’t immediately recognize the sweater-covered puppies printed on the blanket.

My brow raises at him. “Did you take this from my room?”

“Shh, don’t ruin it.”

“What about you? Aren’t you cold?”

“I only stole one blanket, but I’m still hot from running in here.”

“But—”

“It’s all good, Felicity.” He smiles, and I feel like this is the first time since this summer I’ve seen him this relaxed. Even when he’s laughing and doing everything he loves most, there’s still these small twinges of this feeling that something is off. Like he’s only 70 percent of my Knox, and the other 30 percent is off somewhere else that I can’t chase down. Right now, he’s a solid ninety, and I want to soak it in for myself to hold on to.

“Can you see him?” I ask as he turns around to the window.

“A little, but it’s hard to tell his features.”

“That picture is like twenty years old, to be fair, so if he doesn’t have the whole goatee anymore, that doesn’t mean it’s not him.”

“Even if it’s him, what are we going to do? Follow him back to town and interrogate him about whatever you’re trying to figure out?”

I tiptoe around the whole “figuring it out” topic. “Well, since Miller apparently secretly works for the CIA or something, we could still ask him to run the plate.”

He starts to answer, but then there’s a rattling of metal outside and I wonder if…

“Shoot, is he coming up—”

“Yeah, he is.” Knox rushes back to the bed and packs up our bags, half of his ending up in mine and mine in his. “We need to go unless you want to get caught.”

“It’s only one set of stairs. What are we supposed to do, jump off the side? I don’t know about your Mary Poppins bag, but I didn’t pack parachutes in mine.”

“No parachutes or jumping, smart-ass.” He jerks his chin to the corner just behind the tiny wood-burning fireplace where the smallest door I have ever seen sits. “Get in the closet.”

“What?”

“He’s probably just going to watch the sunrise up here and head back down. We’re going to slip in here until he leaves.”

“What?”

“Why do you keep saying ‘what’ when you clearly hear what I’m saying?”

“I’m not getting in the closet.”

“Fine, stay out here with the stranger you’re stalking and see how that goes.”

“Stalking is a stretch.”