Ellen's Arc

Chapter 8 of 45

The women reached the hotel by dark. Ellen led them through the rear corridor into the cellar. Six women, one lamp, walls of stone. She sealed the rear door and counted heads again. Safe, for now. But safety was a lie, and she knew it. Cade crouched at the front window, rifle across his knees, watching the plain. "Riders," Cade said. His voice was flat. "Two, on foot behind them. Following a trail." Ellen looked out. Torches bobbed across the dark plain, moving toward the hotel. She saw the boot prints in the dust beside the entrance. Her own. She had led the women straight here, and left a road for anyone to follow. "Vincent's men," she said. "Tracking me for the debt. If they reach us, they see the women. Then everyone knows this place is a shelter." Cade racked the rifle. "I can drop the first two." "And the next ten come faster." Ellen shook her head. Guns brought more guns. She needed the trail to end, not the men. She found the flint in her coat and the lamp oil in the cache. Then she moved. She soaked her old boot prints, poured a line of oil out the front door and away from the hotel, curving it east toward the barren flats. She struck sparks. Fire ran along the oil, a bright false trail leading away from the walls. Then she scuffed the real prints near the door into dust. The torches stopped. The men saw the burning line and turned to follow it east. Ellen watched them chase the fire away from the door. One torch did not turn. It came on, steady, straight for the entrance. A man stepped into the lamplight in a dark pinstriped suit, hat low, rings on his fingers. Vincent Marconi. He did not hurry. He never did. "Clever," Vincent said. He looked at the burning line, then at her. "My men will chase that an hour. I won't." Ellen stood in the doorway. Cade's rifle stayed on Vincent from the shadow. Vincent noticed and did not care. "You owe me water," Vincent said. "You owe me Cade. You gave me neither." His eyes moved past her, to the cellar stairs, to the women below. He read the whole thing in a breath. "So this is the roof you built." "They're mine to protect," Ellen said. "Not yours to sell." Vincent was quiet. Then he stated it flat, like a street fact. "The men after Cade don't know this place. Yet." He turned his hat in his hands. "Keep my secret about the ledger I'm hunting, and I keep yours. That's the new debt." He walked back into the dark, following his own men's torches. The false fire burned itself out on the flats. Ellen shut the door. The trail was dead. The shelter held. But Vincent owned her silence now, and one day he would spend it.