Quinn's Story
Copyright© 2026 by writer 406
Chapter 3
“Gunny,” the Colonel said. “Take him back to Millhaven, if you please.”
The big man opened the library and stood waiting for Quinn.
Quinn looked at the Colonel. He had a list of questions running in his head that had been building he got in the car. How did you know about me? What are the tests for? What did you mean by something different? What would be asked of me? But he was the opposite of impulsive, had learned not to blurt out questions.
But he hadn’t expected the interview to end without him getting even one of them answered.
He got to his feet and walked to the door.
“Quinn,” the Colonel said.
Quinn turned back to face the man.
The old man opened his book. “It may be that we’ll see each other again.”
It was not quite a promise and not quite nothing. And another question piled on his list.
He turned and followed Sullivan out of the library.
The Bentley smelled like leather and something faintly chemical. Quinn sat in the back seat. The door locked again. He watched the mansion recede through the rear window. The fountain caught the last of the afternoon sun and threw it in every direction. The iron gates swung open automatically as they approached, then closed behind them with a solidity that Quinn felt rather than heard.
Sullivan drove in silence.
He thought about the library. He thought about the ladder on the brass railing, the way it would feel to push off from one shelf and glide along the curved track to another, the room’s full circumference available to you, every book on every wall within reach if you were willing to climb. He thought about books and the particular quality of them, leather bindings and gilt-edged pages.
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