He’d chosen his words carefully, so that he’d remember his own intentions. He wasn’t waiting for her. He was waiting on her. That kind of waiting wasn’t impatient, didn’t sit there tapping its foot. That kind of waiting was service. Selfless. Unflagging.

She sat still for a long moment, searching his eyes. Probably trying to find the tell of a lie or guess at how patient he really meant to be. Then, with a deep breath and a slow move, she put her fingers in his.

With every gasping, painful breath Das Gespenst cursed this wretched island. The coughing fit finally subsided, but still the chill wracked him. And yet perspiration trickled down his back from the unexpected dash down the street. Hot and cold. Feverish, probably.

It had slowed him. He knew it had. He was lucky Elton had decided to chase Margot De Wilde instead of him, or this night would have ended far differently. He wouldn’t be hunkered in some random alleyway trying to quell a coughing fit. He’d have been caught, forced to draw his thirsty dagger without a careful plan—dangerous in itself. And then they just would have had to see whose weakened state inhibited him the least. Elton, with his bullet wound. Das Gespenst, with what he had to think was pneumonia.

After he’d managed to breathe without a new coughing fit for a few minutes, he pushed himself off the cold stones and stepped out on the street to get his bearings. He’d grown fairly well acquainted with the whole neighborhood that the Eltons and De Wildes both claimed as home. It took him only a few glances to realize that he’d ended up not far from the entrance to the park opposite the one the girl favored.

His chest ached as he walked, begging him to turn toward his flat instead of the Go board. But he didn’t want to leave it out all night. And he wasn’t altogether certain he’d be able to drag himself down here again tomorrow. He’d barely managed to convince himself to search her flat while she spent the previous night at the Old Building.

What he’d found had been interesting. What sort of secretary played at codebreaking? It was rudimentary, the code Elton wrote to her in, but still. His instincts must have been right—she must work near codes. She would be his way in, as soon as he had strength enough.

He approached the park carefully, moving from one tree’s shadow to the next until he could be certain they weren’t here. The wrought-iron table beckoned him forward. She couldn’t have been in any state to make a move, not given how upset she’d been when she flew so unexpectedly out of the Eltons’ building—she had never been there for less than an hour before.