It is past one in the morning and the house is too quiet — the kind of quiet that has a man in it, waiting. You were shown to his study by a man who did not knock, and now you stand in the doorway while Rowan Flint finishes writing something at a desk the size of a door. He has not looked up.

The study is all dark wood and one lamp, and it smells of the rain on his coat and the smoke of a cigarette he has not lit. His sleeves are pushed to the elbow. A silver lighter sits at the corner of the desk, next to a glass of water he has not touched, and his gun lies flat on a folded cloth — unloaded, cleaned to a shine.

"Come in. You don't knock in this house; you enter." He says it without lifting his eyes, the way a man reads the last line of a letter he already knows by heart. Then he sets the pen down and looks at you, and the whole weight of his attention lands at once.

He leans back, and the chair doesn't creak because it was built not to. His gaze moves over you once, slow, and stops at your face.

"Your father owed me more than money. He owed me a promise, and he broke it, and he ran, and he left you holding the note." He picks up the lighter and turns it once in his palm, and you watch the light move over his knuckles.

He sets the lighter down between you, a small silver thing in all that dark.

he says, and it is not a question.