Chapter 21 · Someone Else's Clock

"It's not turning." Calder's knuckles were white on the wheel valve. "Somebody welded this shut."

"From the outside." My voice cracked on the last word. "You said this was your safehouse."

"It is my safehouse."

"Then why does it feel like a coffin?"

He didn't answer that. He put his shoulder into the valve instead, and the metal groaned but didn't give, and I stood there with a dead woman's paperwork — my paperwork — folded wrong in my fist because my hands wouldn't work right. He tried again, whole weight into it, boots skidding on the wet floor plate, and the wheel didn't move a millimeter. Not stuck. Sealed. There's a difference and my body knew it before my head did.

"Give me that." He held his palm out for the certificate.

"No."

"Ira."

"You made this." I shook the paper at him. "Blank cause of death. Blank date. You just fill in whichever one Dez picks for me?"

"I told you why."

"You told me half." My chest was doing that thing, the tight thing, the thing that meant I had maybe six good breaths left before the wheeze turned into something worse. "Where's my inhaler."

"Later."

"Calder."