Lex Nelson's Arc

Chapter 7 of 13

Lex climbed out of the pit at dusk and found the cliff. A tall sandstone overhang rose from the flat, its cracked face throwing a long shadow. Anyone within a mile could see a body at its base. That was the point. She had until sunrise before the auction closed. If she wanted to catch the hand that set the trap, she had to make herself easy to find. She pulled a stained wooden crutch from the brush below the cliff — left behind by someone who had not needed it again. She leaned on it hard, let the wound at her ribs weep through the cloth. Blood on the shaft. Blood on her shirt. She walked a slow, crooked line across the open ground so the tracks would read like a wounded animal dragging itself home. She set the dog behind a low rock at her flank, ears up, nose to the wind. One small stone stacked on another marked the spot, a sign only she would read. The Malinois would hear them before she did. Then Lex sat down in the open shadow of the overhang, rifle across her lap, and waited. They came an hour after dark. Two riders, slow, drawn in by the blood trail and the shape of a broken woman under stone. The dog's low growl came first, right on time. Lex did not lift her head. She let them get close. She let them think it was over. The first shot took the lead rider from the saddle. The second rider wheeled, and Lex put a round through his thigh and another through his shoulder. She walked to him on the crutch, knife out, and pressed the blade to his throat. He talked. He gave her a name, a place, the tent where her sister would stand at dawn. Lex tied his hands with her rope and left him for the sun. She whistled the dog up, took his horse, and rode south into the dark with the auction still ahead of her and a name now to carry into it.