‘Same here,’ I say. ‘And, thanks!’ I’m trying to sound friendly, but it’s hard. Nine is clearly fine with this guy knowing his comings and goings, noticing his absence, setting up a lie it might be hard to back up later on. But I hear Henri’s voice in my head, warning me this is the exact opposite of what we should be doing. I try to shake off the nerves making my stomach do flips. Second-guessing things won’t help.

We make our way to a small elevator bank and Nine presses a number. The light above one of the sets of elevator doors brightens with a big arrow pointing up.

‘Oh, hey, Stanley?’ The security officer jogs over just as we are about to step through the elevator doors, his keys jingling on his belt.

I look at Nine with a smirk. ‘Stanley?’ I mouth. That’s worse than Donald!

‘Not now,’ he mumbles back.

‘I’ve got a bunch of packages for you. We’ve been holding them in storage. We didn’t know where you were and you didn’t leave a forwarding address. You want me to send them up?’

‘Give us an hour to settle in first, okay?’ Nine asks.

‘Absolutely, boss.’ The guard salutes as we step into the elevator.

Once the doors are closed, I feel Bernie Kosar crawl from one of my shoulders to the other, and back again. He tells me he’s tired of hiding. ‘Just a few more minutes,’ I say.

‘Yeah, BK ,’ Nine says. ‘We are just about home. Finally.’

‘How could you be so confident this place would be yours to come back to? I mean, you’ve been gone a really long time.’ There seems to be no situation, no idea that makes Nine second-guess what he believes. I wish I could be like that. Even if he isn’t always right, it makes for a great team member and an even better warrior.

‘Sandor set everything up. Payments for this place are made automatically from his account. We always kept things pretty vague about what he did. And we referred to his “teaching gigs” the other times when we went away for months. Clearly, people bought it.’

Nine presses a series of numbers into a small keypad below the floor numbers and the elevator rockets upwards. The numbers increase so fast I barely have time to think about how high we’re going. We pass the eightieth floor and then start to slow down. We come to a stop and the doors open silently, and we step directly into an apartment. I look up at the huge crystal chandelier hanging above two couches in the living room. Everything seems to be bright white with gold trim.

‘This is your apartment? You can’t be serious,’ I say.

‘Yup, we’ve got our own private entrance,’ he says in response to my amazed look.