The House at the End of the Road

The car left the city behind and climbed a winding road into the hills north of Manhattan, where the trees grew thick and the streetlights ended. Hannah watched the dark forest slide past her window. After twenty minutes, the car slowed in front of two enormous iron gates, tall as a church, with gold lions on top. They swung open by themselves with a deep, slow groan.

"Oh, well, that's excessive," Hannah murmured.

The driveway curved for half a mile between rows of lamps shaped like candle flames. At the end of it stood a house. No, not a house. A castle in a modern suit. It was built of pale stone and enormous panes of glass, three stories high, with every window lit gold. A fountain splashed in the front courtyard, and the water glittered under hidden lights like a handful of thrown diamonds. Two marble steps led up to a front door that looked as if it could stop a tank.

"Nice," she whispered, and then, because she was nervous, she said it again. "Nice."

Meanwhile, inside that glittering house, a different conversation was taking place in a dim, book-lined study. David Prescott stood at the fireplace with a glass of water in his hand. He had not touched it. Gregory stood in the doorway, brushing raindrops off his shoulders.

"Well," David said, without looking up, "has she said yes?"

"She said yes." Gregory paused. "She's nervous. They usually are."

"She wasn't like the others?"

"She wasn't like anyone." Gregory glanced at the clock above the mantel. "Sir, if you ever wanted to change your mind, this is the last moment to do it."

David stared at the little flames dancing in the fireplace—a log cracked. For a heartbeat he almost said yes, send her home, pay for the car, and forget it. Then a memory rose in his head, a girl in the rain chasing a stranger with a five-dollar bill. He set his glass down on the mantel.

"Bring her in."

At the front door, Gregory met Hannah on the steps, holding a black umbrella over her head. She stood very straight, with her grey jacket buttoned over her green dress, looking as if she were about to walk onto a stage in front of ten thousand strangers.

"You can still go home," Gregory said softly.

"And then what?" she asked.

"Exactly."

She gave a tiny, shaky laugh, and he held the door open. A warm light poured over her. She stepped inside, and her mouth fell open.

The entrance hall was bigger than her whole apartment building. A staircase of white marble curved up to a balcony, and from the high ceiling hung a chandelier made of thousands of crystal drops, each one catching light and throwing it back in tiny rainbows. The floor was so polished that she could see her own wide eyes in it. A vase of white roses stood on a table, as tall as a child. There were paintings on the walls, and not one of them looked like it had been bought for less than a car.

But what she noticed most was the silence. Her footsteps echoed down the empty hall, and every echo came back lonelier than the last.

"Does he live here alone?" she whispered.

"Yes."

"That's not lonely." Hannah looked up at the chandelier. "That's suspicious."

"Keep walking," Gregory said, a little too fast.

"You can still leave," Gregory said again, as they stopped in front of a tall wooden door at the end of the hall. "I'll tell him you declined."

"That's a much prettier word than 'ran away.'"

"I thought you'd like it."

He knocked twice, then opened the door without waiting.

The room beyond was long and dim, with warm firelight flickering on shelves of old books. A leather sofa faced the fireplace, and in front of it stood a tall man in a dark suit, with his back toward her. He didn't move at once. When he finally turned, the firelight caught the edge of his face, and Hannah forgot what she had planned to say.

He was younger than she'd expected. He was also much more tired. The magazine cover had shown a cold stone statue, but the man in front of her had shadows under his eyes and a crease between his eyebrows, as if he had been frowning for years and had forgotten how to stop.

"You're late," David said.

Hannah's chin came up. "Hello to you, too."

Something flickered in David's face, surprise or maybe amusement, gone before she could be sure. Gregory coughed into his fist and discovered an urgent need to be somewhere else. "I'll just be in the hall," he said, and the door clicked shut behind him.

For a long moment they simply looked at each other, the billionaire and the waitress, with the whole length of the room between them.

"You're not what I expected," David said at last.

"Good." Hannah took one careful step forward. "I wasn't trying."

"Why are you nervous?"

"Because your assistant picked me up in a car the size of a boat for a mysterious billionaire." She tried to smile, though her hands were trembling, and she pushed them into her jacket pockets so he couldn't see. "Apparently, that's supposed to be relaxing."

It wasn't quite a laugh that left his throat, more like a short breath through his nose. But it was the first one in three years, and the man himself looked a little startled by it.

"Do you want a drink?" he asked.

"Is it poisoned?"

"What?"

"Sorry." Her cheeks burned hot. "Nervous joke. Very bad. I make them when I'm scared. Water. Water's perfect."

David poured a glass from a crystal pitcher on the side table. He carried it across the room and held it out, and she took it carefully, making certain their fingers did not touch. The glass was cold and heavy in her hand. Over its rim, she studied him.

Hannah took a sip. The water tasted like nothing at all, and somehow it was the best thing she had ever drunk.

Behind the door, in the long empty hallway, Gregory Hale leaned against the wall with his arms folded and his eyes closed. He was grinning like a man who had just watched the first snowflake of winter.