Ellen's Arc

Chapter 9 of 45

Morning light crept under the cellar door. Ellen stood at the base of the stairs and counted the women again. Six. One lamp. One way in. She looked up the narrow steps to the only door, and the truth settled cold in her chest. If a hunter found that door, the women had nowhere to run. She needed a second way out, and she needed it before the next torch came. Cade crouched at the front window, rifle across his knees. He never stopped counting exits. He turned when she climbed the stairs. "One door," Ellen said. "That traps them." "Then we make another," Cade said. He stood. They searched the cellar wall by lamplight. The stone was old and dry. Ellen pressed her palm along the seams until she felt cold air. A draft. Behind a stack of rotted crates, a low arch had been bricked shut. She scraped the mortar with her knife. It crumbled like chalk. "Old drain," Cade said. He kicked a brick loose. Beyond it lay a tunnel, tight and black, sloping up toward the plain. "Comes out somewhere in the flats." They worked fast. Ellen pulled bricks. Cade widened the gap with the shotgun butt. Sweat ran down her arms. The women held the lamp and passed the loose stone back. By noon the hole was wide enough to crawl through. Then boots scraped the floor above them. Ellen froze. A shape filled the cellar stairs. A dark pinstriped suit, hat low, rings on his fingers. Vincent Marconi came down slow, the way he always moved. "You left the front door soft," Vincent said. He looked at the broken wall, the tunnel mouth, the women pressed against the stone. He read it all in one breath. "A back way out. Smart." "You said you'd keep our secret," Ellen said. "I did." Vincent turned his hat in his hands. "But my men found the drain outlet this morning. Out on the flats. They don't know it leads here." He let that sit. "Yet." Ellen's stomach dropped. The second way out was already known to the wrong men. "Then it's not an escape," she said. "It's a door they can come through." "Now you understand," Vincent said. "Cover it, or use it first." He climbed the stairs and was gone. Ellen stared at the black tunnel. She had built the exit she needed. But Vincent's men stood at the far end of it. The women were no longer trapped by one door. They were caught between two. Cade racked the shotgun. "We move them tonight," he said. "Through the flats. Before his men map the drain." Ellen nodded. The shelter had held for a week. It would not hold another day. She knelt and began packing the water into the coat. The haven she wanted was still out there, somewhere past the men waiting in the dark.