er looked like a sleeping giant, dark except

draped it over her shoulders without a word in the car, and she had been too nervous to protest. Beneath it she wore plain dark clothing, sof

Yuhan murmur

brea

e holdi

night guard walks the lobby every twenty minutes," he said, checking his watch. "The cameras on the ser

you know

o this building for three years." He pushe

otsteps hushed, the only sound the slow drip of a pipe somewhere in the dark. Floor twenty. Flo

a door banged

ind a stack of folded scaffolding. A flashlight beam swept down the stairwel

back to the beam, one arm braced against the wall beside her head, shielding her with his body. She could feel

ross his shoulder.

she thoug

st the pipes again." The light swung away. The whi

his coat. He did not move away. For one suspended moment, n

able. "Four more floors," he said, and hi

nd floor was si

f the Lin family, the founder, his son, her grandfather as a young man with a fierce, ho

ed. Her knees

ter, while her grandfather pretended to be a bear. She had sat on the floor beneath his desk and drawn crayon horses on t

ice tape crossed the doors, and

id quietly. "Jiahao's d

we get

lock, and ran two fingers over the w

ver noticed it as a girl, a crane in flight spread its wings across both panels, neck stretched

ut the chain, and the little brass key s

hispered. "This is w

ely steady the key. She guided it into th

n holding its breath for three years. And then the padlock, which

ung inward on

l reached

andfather's study, so exact and so sudden that it hit her like a physical blo

as exactly as

ghts. His reading glasses still lay folded on top of an open volume, as if he had stepped out for a moment and meant to come right back.

enormous and uncontrollable, and she bit the inside of he

ndfa

shaking fingers. A tiny girl, perhaps three years old, in a yellow dress, squinting into the sun, perched on a man's broad shoulde

glass. Then another. S

d not say a word. He only stood there, solid and silent,

red, wiping her eyes. "W

need." His voice

and made herself look at the room the way she had been t

k her s

dust," she

ent stil

amp, the floor near the door, all of it was thick with a pale, undisturbed blanket. But on the desk, there was a clean pat

been sittin

ame. Her grandfather and Uncle Wei had played it every Sunday for forty years. The board had

black knight

ight had been on the other side of the board when she was a girl. In a

board sat a smal

palm just above the rim. A fai

," she

e finger, and his expression changed. "Still warm," he said, ve

whispered. "Beh

the great painted crane, and found a small steel door set into

mp

gular pale patch on the steel floor, where something flat an

" she said hollow

narrow trail of footprints that led from the safe to the desk to the door. "Look at the prints

n cold. "What

ever was here tonight did not

nswer, a sound drif

electro

ele

of the fifty-second floor, they heard the doors slide open, and then, slow and

s returning