Dara's Arc

Chapter 4 of 10

The black smear on the tunnel floor would betray them. Dara pressed her back to the cold stone and listened. Boots moved above, but she could not count them. One set? Four? She could not tell how many Kessler had sent, or how close they were. Guess wrong, and she would crawl straight into their lamps. She needed his position, and she needed it now. Eli gripped the blueprints against his chest. "We can't move blind," he whispered. "We pick wrong, we die." Dara looked up at the vent slit. Sound came through it clean. She had heard Kessler's orders through that gap. If she could hear him, she could track him. She pressed her ear to the metal and held her breath. Kessler's voice dropped down, flat and clipped. "You. Shed. You two, the mouth." A pause. "I stay on the line." So he sent them in two directions. Not one search. Two. And the enforcer himself stayed above, near the tunnel entrance. Then the metal doors of the hall slammed shut somewhere behind him. Dara heard it clear. And she heard Kessler stop. A half breath. His voice cut off mid-word. She knew that flinch. She had watched him at the checkpoint, barking at the crowd, going still every time the doors banged. Half a second where he saw nothing. "He freezes," she breathed. "When the doors slam. Just for a moment." Eli stared at her. "You can't use that. You can't hear his doors from down here." "I can hear the guards' boots." She traced the two paths in her mind. One set moved toward the shed, right. One set moved toward the mouth, left. The mouth path crossed above the smear. "Two men going left. That's the direction we can't take." She pointed the other way, past the shed side. "We go where he sent one man, not two." She waited. The boots split. Two pairs faded left. One pair scraped toward the shed and stopped, searching a corner. That was the gap. Dara pulled Eli by the sleeve, low and fast, along the wall away from the mouth. They passed under the shed vent while the lone guard rattled the empty lamp hook above. They reached a bend the boots had not touched. Dara stopped and listened again. No lamp light spilled down. No shout came. She had counted them right. Three guards, split, and none in front of them now. But the bend did not open toward Kael. It curved back to the bolted grate, the same rusted grate that still stood locked between her and the musician. She had dodged the guards. She had not dodged the iron. Dara knelt at the grate and drew the slim lock pick from her sleeve. The guards were behind her now, moving the wrong way. She had bought minutes. She fit the hooked tip into the lock. This time nothing stood at her back.