Lex Nelson's Arc

Chapter 10 of 13

Lex took the ledger and the lantern and went down the trapdoor. The tunnel smelled of damp stone and old sweat. At the far end stood a pair of carved sandstone doors, pale as bone, with a brass handle worn smooth. The dog froze three steps from the threshold. Lex saw why. A thin wire ran ankle-high across the floor, almost invisible against the sand-dusted stone. A voice came through the door. Calm. Bored. "Say the buyer name. You got three seconds or the south room drops." Lex's hand tightened on her knife. She did not know the name. The ledger had numbers, not buyers. Three seconds was not enough to read a column. Her sister was behind that door, on a floor that would open under her. She answered with the only true thing she had. She whistled — two short notes, the call she used for the dog. Then she said, low and even, "Pen's still wet. Your man at the barn didn't finish the line." A pause. A breath. The bolt slid back. The doors cracked open and a face leaned out, confused, looking for a guard who would never come. Lex's knife went in under his jaw. She stepped over the wire, caught the door before it swung, and saw the small back room, and the girl on the floor, and a rope trigger still tied to a man's wrist — a man who was already falling. She cut the rope before it pulled. The floor held. Her sister looked up at her, and Lex did not speak, because speaking would break something she needed whole. She cut the wrist ropes, lifted the girl, and carried her back over the tripwire toward the tunnel mouth, the dog tight at her heel and the auction still going on above their heads.