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Cassie felt her eyes watering as she let the bad memories in, the thoughts she usually kept locked away. She turned from the view and walked along the window, watching the room, the other tourists wide-eyed and excited, the staff going about their business. Izzy walked beside her.
“He was in so much pain at the end,” Cassie said. “Days of agony in his bedroom. In the dark, sweating, coughing blood.”
Cassie shuddered, trying to throw off bad memories like a dog shaking off water.
“You know he never got to do anything with his life?” she said, looking at Izzy. “He raised his daughter and then his wife died. And then his daughter died. And then he had to raise me. And all the while he just kept working, giving me a happy childhood. He always wanted to travel, but I don’t think he ever even left the state, not in the time I was with him. And what does he get for it? A horrible, painful death before the age of sixty.” Cassie shook her head. “It’s not right.”
“No,” Izzy agreed.
“This world is awful and mean and I hate it... but books have always been a place I can go. When I was young and when my grandpa was dying. I prefer books to the real world.”
“I get it,” Izzy said. “Life sucks.”
“And now I have this,” Cassie said, lifting the Book of Doors from her pocket, holding it in front of her. “I don’t know why it was given to me, but it was. And Mr. Webber was a nice man. A man who loved books. So I refuse to believe it is anything bad. I have to believe it was given to me so I can live the life my grandpa never got to live. I can do it for him.”
Izzy contemplated that. “I get it,” she said again.
They stood at the window, looking toward the sun.
“Can we go home, please?” Izzy asked.
“Yeah,” Cassie said. “I mean, we can come back whenever we want, with the book.”
“Yeah,” Izzy said, her voice a little flat.
“I’m hungry, shall we go to Ben’s?”
“Sure,” Izzy said.
They used the door to the women’s toilet at the edge of the observation deck and stepped into Ben’s Deli, back in New York. They walked through the store, nodding at the familiar faces behind the counter, and took seats at a table in the back. It was after midnight and the deli was mostly empty, only one other person there, but Cassie was in her seat before she realized it was the man she had seen before, on the hotel roof terrace, and then on the street a few days earlier. She gasped, even as the man raised his eyes and saw her, as realization flashed across his own face. He stood up quickly, as if he had something important to say, and walked over to their table.
“You’ve been following me,” Cassie said, and she was aware of Izzy’s head jerking up to look at her, and then at the man.
“No,” the man said. “I haven’t been following you, and I didn’t know you were going to be here. It’s just luck. But I’m glad you’re here. My name is Drummond Fox, and you are in incredible danger.”
A Stranger at Ben’s Deli
“Sorry, who are you?” Izzy asked, and Cassie could see her friend was immediately on the defensive, immediately protective of her.
The man pulled out a chair and moved it around to sit at the end of their table.
“Oh, feel free, take a seat,” Izzy said.
“Please indulge me,” the man said.
Before Izzy could answer one of the deli staff arrived, a young guy who flicked his chin at them to invite an order.
“Coffee, please,” Cassie said. “And give me a chocolate chip cookie as well.”
Izzy glanced at Cassie, as if perhaps surprised that she wasn’t put off by the man sitting at their table. “Coke,” she said. “And a grilled cheese sandwich. With pickles.”
The guy wandered away.
“You’ve got until the food comes to tell us who you are and why you’ve been following me,” Cassie said.
“I told you, I haven’t been following you.”
He looked tired, Cassie thought. His eyes were dark circles set in a gaunt face. He was dressed in the same black suit and white shirt that she had seen him wearing previously, the clothes of a banker or a lawyer, but there was something rumpled and disheveled about him, like hehad been fired from his job and hadn’t bothered changing his clothes since. He was older than them, perhaps in his forties, with short brown hair that was going gray at the edges. His body was as thin as his face, but there was a sense of physicality about him, like he was a man who spent more time walking than he did sitting in a car or behind a desk. As Cassie studied him, she decided he wasn’t an obviously handsome man—his face was all angles and corners—but there was something about those dark eyes that was interesting, something that made her want to keep looking at them.
