Ellen's Arc

Chapter 11 of 45

The last woman vanished into the flats. Ellen turned back toward the hotel and saw the wrong lights. Not the three guards chasing her fire. These came from the north, fast, a line of torches on horseback. Brennan's men. The blaze had called them, and they rode straight for the tunnel door. For Cade. Ellen ran. The women were safe on the plain now. But Cade held the door alone, and eight guns were closing. She reached the rear corridor and heard him inside, working the lever of his rifle. She pushed through. Cade crouched at the tunnel mouth, coat dark with sweat, both pistols laid out beside him on the floor. "They're coming here," Ellen said. "All of them. The fire brought them." "I know." Cade did not look up. He counted the shells in his hand. "Get out the drain. Follow the women." "Not without you." "I can't hold eight," Cade said. Flat. He had known it since he set the guns down. A fist hit the front door. Then a shoulder. Wood cracked. A voice came through, low and certain. "Cade. Come out." Ellen knew the name behind that voice. Marcus Brennan. The man who burned Cade's town and hunted him across the plain with seven others. He spoke like he was reading a fact off a page. "You've got one door and one hole," Brennan said. "We're on both." Cade met Ellen's eyes. "He's right. They've got the outlet too." Ellen's plan had opened the tunnel and pulled the guards. It had also lit a beacon for the worst men on Ashplain. The escape route was a trap now, sealed at both ends. She had six women out and one man cornered, and no move left that didn't cost. She grabbed Cade's shotgun off the table. "Then we don't run. We make them choose." She looked at the tunnel. "They want you in a box. So give them the box. You go down the drain. Loud. They'll chase into the dark, one at a time. A tunnel's a tight room. Your weapon." Cade stared at the black tunnel mouth. Then he took the shotgun from her hands. "Tight room. More than one man." A small nod. "That's mine." The front door burst. Ellen shoved the crate against the corridor and lit the last oil rag, filling the hall with smoke and orange light so Brennan's men could not see the drain. Cade dropped into the tunnel and was gone. Brennan came through the smoke first. He saw the empty room, the open drain, and understood. He did not shout. He got quieter. "Down," he told his men. "Single file." They went into the dark after Cade. Ellen slipped out the rear alone. The women were safe. Cade had drawn all eight guns underground, into the one place he could fight them. But she had traded her only ally into a hole she could not follow.