Chapter 2

The gate was black iron, set into a stone wall that ran the length of the block and then kept going. The man had been silent during the half-hour drive. Quinn spent the time watching the city change around him.

Then this place.

Quinn kept quiet. He was not a kid who said things just to fill silence. His face pressed against the window.

Huge. That was the first word that surfaced. The green grass lawn rolled out from the main house in every direction — wide lawns so green they looked fake, flower beds full of bright flowers laid out with sharp precision, ancient oak trees casting broad shadows over stone pathways. There were hedges cut into clean geometric shapes, and further back, what looked like an orchard. There was even a fountain at the center of the main drive, sparkling as the water caught the light. Jennings Park down the street from Millhaven could have fit inside the front lawn ten times, with room left over.

The car pulled up to the red brick house, gravel crunching under the tires. The big man parked in front.

“Out.”

The entrance hall had a floor made of cream-colored marble. It was cool inside and smelled of furniture polish. Quinn’s ragged sneakers squeaked on the shiny floor.

A woman appeared from a side hallway with the quiet efficiency of someone who had been expecting them since before they arrived. She had pure white hair pinned back and ana white apron over a dark dress. She carried herself with a self-contained dignity.

“Ms. O’Toole,” Sullivan said, and there was respect in his voice. “This is the boy. Quinn Norman.”

Ms. O’Toole looked at Quinn with clear gray eyes that were neither warm nor cold.

“You’ll want to wash your hands first before you see the Colonel. I’ll tell him you’re here,” she said, not unkindly. “Down the hall, second door.”

Quinn used the toilet and washed his hands. He looked at himself in the mirror above the sink and thought he looked exactly like what he was: a scrawny thirteen-year-old in a secondhand flannel shirt. A kid who had no more business in this mansion than a fly. He dried his hands, tucked in his shirt, and went back to the hallway.

The big man was waiting. He handed Quinn a cold can of Coke without comment, which was so unexpected that Quinn almost said something. He took the Coke and followed him.

They passed through a sitting room and a second hallway lined with framed photographs—men in military uniforms, formal group portraits, a few landscape pictures of mountains and lakes. They came to a tall double door.

The big man rapped twice and they went in.

The library stopped Quinn cold.

He had been in libraries before—school ones, a public branch he’d visited a hundred times during the year he’d lived on the streets because they were warm and nobody bothered you if you were quiet. He thought he understood what a library was. He did not understand this one. The room had every single wall from floor to ceiling filled with books. Thousands of books. Tens of thousands maybe, their spines forming a kind of wallpaper, every color and width and age. And running along the shelves at the upper level, a wooden ladder mounted on a brass railing that curved all the way around the room, so that you could slide yourself to any point and climb to the top shelf, which was high off the ground.