Kira Vex's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

The signal fire was dead, but the dune road was open ground. Kira crouched beside the wet ash and made Kayla crouch too. Two miles inland meant a long walk with no cover if they picked wrong. Pick wrong, and they'd walk into whoever the doppelgänger's enemies had waiting. "Show me the needle again," Kira said. Kayla lifted the brass disc. The needle held steady, pointing past the dune grass toward a low ridge of pine. "That's her. Sitting still." "And behind us?" Kayla turned a slow circle. The needle stayed locked inland. Then she frowned and thumbed a small ring on the disc's rim. The needle jumped. It swung north up the coast, then south, then north again. It kept twitching. "What was that," Kira said. "Second setting. Finds anyone looking for us." Kayla's mouth went tight. "Three of them. Spread on the coast road. One's already past the shacks." Kira's stomach dropped. The next operative wasn't hours out. He was already here, and he'd brought help. Walking straight inland would put them on the same line as at least one hunter. She pulled Kayla flat behind the dune. "Can it show me ground they can't see? Gullies. Dry creeks. Anything low." "It finds people, not dirt." Kayla thought. "But I've run these flats since I was nine. There's a drainage cut a quarter mile south. Runs inland almost a mile. Walls above your head. It stinks and it floods, and nobody uses it." "Nobody watches it either." "No." Kira ran the math. South put them off the compass line their hunters expected. The cut would hide them for the worst mile. After that, open pine, but the compass would show any watcher before a watcher saw them. "We go south first," Kira said. "You call the needle every hundred steps. If any of those three moves toward us, we stop and I decide." Kayla nodded. She tucked the disc inside her shirt so it wouldn't flash. They moved low along the back of the dune, then dropped into the cut. The walls were sand and clay, taller than Kira. The air smelled of salt rot. Kira drew the cleaver but kept the emitter dark. One charge. Maybe two. Not enough for three men. Half a mile in, Kayla stopped and pulled the disc. The needle steadied inland toward the girl. Then she thumbed the ring. Two of the hunters were drifting north, following the dead fire's smoke trail. The third had stopped. "He's thinking," Kayla whispered. "Let him think. Walk." They walked. The cut carried them under the coast road and kept going. Kira had her route now, and a girl who could see the hunt before it closed. The target was still two miles ahead. So was the third man, and he wasn't drifting. He was waiting.