Mia M Dre's Arc

Chapter 8 of 13

Mia held still behind the second case, the comb heavy in her bag. Boots hit the floor and moved past her hiding spot. She tracked the steps by sound. When they shifted toward the ladder again, she let out a slow breath and turned. Behind the shelf of stolen family pieces, the stone wall did not match. A thin seam ran from floor to ceiling, dust packed along its edge. A sealed passage. Whatever the buyer kept here was only the front of something larger. Mia eased along the seam and found a curled paper pinned to the stone beside it. A planner's list, inked in a careful hand. Names of pieces, dates, marks beside the ones already taken. Her mother's name. Her aunt's. Cousins she had not seen in years. Half the rows were still blank, waiting. Mia's hands went cold. She tore the list from its pin, folded it small, and pushed it deep into her bag beside the comb. The passage stayed sealed. She could not open it now. But she knew, finally, the size of what she was fighting — and that the comb in her bag was only the first thing she had come to take back. She pressed her palm to the seam and found the lock — a brass dial set flush with the stone, shaped like a sea star with five turning arms. Each arm clicked under her thumb, but the center would not give. A keyed pattern, then, and one she did not know. Above her, a voice called down the hatch, asking if anyone was there. Mia stepped back from the dial, set the planner's list firm against her ribs, and slipped toward her second exit. The passage would wait. She had a name to find first — the one below who had sold her family out — and now she had a list to match it to.