Chapter 5

The first thing he did after Sullivan showed him to his new room was check the window.

Not obviously, but he’d learned a long time ago about the importance of having a way out. So he crossed the room with what he hoped looked like the casual curiosity of a kid exploring his new surroundings, stopped at the window seat as though he simply wanted to look out at the garden. While he was looking, he found the latch with his fingers, unlocked it and tested the window.

It moved smoothly. No paint sealing it shut, no swollen wood, no lock that required a key from the inside. He pressed the lower sash up another inch, felt the cool air come through, and pressed it back down.

Good. That was good.

He stood at the window for a moment and looked out at the gardens; he allowed himself thirty seconds of looking before he went back to explore the rest of the room.

There was a fancy bathroom attached to the room. He palmed a thick bar of Irish Spring soap still in its green box wrapper. He took it back to the bed and found the sock he’d packed at the very top of his duffel specifically for this purpose, a thick wool sock. He put the bar of soap in the sock, knotted the end, and slid it under the pillow, within reach if you knew it was there, invisible if you didn’t.

He stood back and looked at the room.

It was the kind of room that would have been inconceivable to him two weeks ago. A little over a year ago he’d been sleeping in a dusty corner of the maintenance room of a parking garage with cardboard between him and the cold concrete floor.

The room was big, bigger than the living room at Millhaven. This one room was for only him and the things that had apparently been put here for him. The floor was dark wood, covered at the center by a rug that was thick enough to absorb the sound of footsteps, some pattern of deep blue and green that Quinn stood on and looked down at for a moment before continuing his assessment.

A desk and bookcases occupied the wall to his left — a proper desk, solid wood, with a surface large enough to actually spread work across rather than the narrow shelf-desks that had been provided in various group home rooms over the years. On it sat a laptop computer, silver with the Apple logo on the lid catching the light. Quinn had used computers in school and at the library but had never imagined he’d be in a position to have one of his own. He stared at it the way other people might look at a rare diamond necklace.

Beside the desk, the bookshelf. Nearly empty with just the one book, The Count of Monte Cristo. The same volume he’d stood reading in the library. Someone had brought it up here and put it on the shelf for him, which made it both a gift and a statement. Quinn stood looking at it for longer than he looked at anything else in the room. He reached out and touched the spine without taking it down.

In the far corner was a walk-in closet, genuinely a walk-in, fitted with dark wooden hangers on a chrome rail that ran the full depth and breadth of the space, with shelves along the top. The hangers hung in a neat row, waiting. The smell of cedar wafted from a block hanging in the corner. Quinn laughed as he looked at the empty hangers and empty shelves. He had nothing to hang, his stuff would easily fit on two feet of a shelf.

This bathroom had a vanity with a mirror above it with lights, a big bathtub with claw feet, snow-white porcelain, and a separate shower with a glass door. Cream colored tile covered the floor.

He opened the drawer under the vanity. A toothbrush still in its packaging, toothpaste, deodorant, a comb. More Irish Spring soap in the shower, shampoo, a second bar on the ledge of the tub. Somebody had thought about what he would need and provided it without being asked, which struck Quinn as the most quietly remarkable thing about a room full of remarkable things.