Chapter 25 — The Trade #2
“I understand exactly.” I lifted my chin and felt the locket slide cold against my throat.
“You want the Huntress and you want the ledger and I am standing here offering you both in one body. Twelve photographed pages, copied flat, taped to my chest right now under this sweater. That is the count and I am saying it out loud so your cameras and your men all hear it. Twelve. The originals are elsewhere and if I do not check in by voice by morning they go to a detective and a reporter at the same time.” It was a bluff built on a spine of truth and I sold it with my shoulders back and my red mouth steady.
“So here are my terms, Marcus. Me for Ophelia tonight, a direct swap, her walking out the gate before midnight. The copy stays on my chest until she is released and verified out. No marks on either of us. No separate interviews. You log it and your men witness it.”
Silence except the embers settling and the ice needling the window glass.
Marcus studied me the way he had studied contracts across forty years of tables, and the ring turned once on his finger, twice.
Then he crossed the rug in three unhurried steps and took my left forearm in his hand, above the wrist, fingers pressing into the muscle and the bone beneath, a hold calibrated to hurt without leaving the kind of mark a camera loved.
My ribbon crushed under his thumb. Cornflower blue against his white knuckle.
I did not pull away. Pulling away gave him the frame he wanted.
“Where is the full ledger, girl?” he asked softly, almost kindly. “The real one. Not copies. Not photographs. The book itself.”
My forearm ached under his grip and my pulse hammered against his fingers and I let him feel it, let him feel a frightened girl's rabbit heart, because frightened girls got underestimated and underestimated girls got terms. “Somewhere your men will never find without me breathing,” I said.
“That is the only answer you are getting tonight. Take the trade or explain to Julian why the Huntress walked up to your gate and you let the ledger walk away with her.”
The name landed. Something flickered behind the flat brown eyes, quick as a struck match.
He released my arm and I felt the blood rush back with pins and needles I refused to rub.
He plucked the white square from his breast pocket, wiped his right hand once though nothing was on it, folded it back to its blade, and nodded at the clipboard man.
“Log it,” Marcus said. “The Halloway girl in trade for the Yates woman. Copy of twelve pages on her person, custody declared. No marks pending compliance.” He looked back at me with the smile fully restored, gift wrap over a blade.
“Ophelia walks at midnight. You stay in the east holding room under monitor until the ledger is produced. That is my generosity, my dear. Spend it wisely.”
Relief hit so hard my knees nearly gave. I locked them. “I want to see her walk. Verbal confirmation at the gate.”
“You will hear what I allow you to hear.” He picked up the cane and tapped it once against the mantel leg, a full stop. “Search her for weapons and lock her in. Underlayers only. The dressing stays. I am not running a clinic.”
The words landed like a slap and a gift at once. The dressing stays. The wire stayed. The copy stayed. I memorized the shape of his permission and wrapped both hands around it.
The guard walked me eighteen feet down the side hall to a narrow door with a sliding bolt the size of my fist and a camera eye mounted over the lintel, red dot blinking in the stone gloom.
The monitored holding room. Cot, folded blanket, caged bulb burning behind wire mesh, walls of painted tile that sweated in the warmth.
It smelled of bleach over cold stone and laundered linen gone stale.
The camera in the corner had a glass eye and a red glow and a faint mechanical patience, sweeping its slow arc across the cot and the door and back.
“Clothes,” the guard said, and looked at the wall. “Sweater and jeans stay if you want. Boots, coat, extras off for inspection. Underlayers only means I check what is under. Make it fast.”
My hands shook for real as I unbuttoned the coat and handed it over.
He patted it, turned out the pockets, found nothing but melted ice in the seams, and tossed it onto the foot of the cot.
The boots came next and my whole body went cold and hot at once.
Right boot first. I unlaced it slowly, slid it off, set it upright by the cot leg with the inner sheath facing the wall, and prayed the sight line held.
He picked it up, shook it, ran a hand around the inside rim, felt laces and tongue and nothing else because the sheath rode low and flat and silent against the leather.
He set it down. Left boot, same. My socks on the cold tile.
My jeans and sweater stayed on, the tape a secret ridge under the wool, the battery a warm coin at my waistband.
Underlayers checked with brisk professional distance and then he stepped back, satisfied, incurious, already bored.
“On the cot,” he said.
I sat on the narrow cot with my taped chest angled toward the blind corner where the camera arc lagged, and pulled the folded blanket across my lap, and set my right boot just out of the lens line with the toe pointing at the wall.
The mattress springs complained under me.
The caged bulb hummed. The camera eye blinked red twice and held its stare.
“Water in the morning if Marcus says so,” the guard said from the doorway, hand on the steel. “Behave and the hour passes.”
The steel went shut. The bolt went Clack behind me, too loud in the small tiled room, and the camera eye in the corner blinked red twice and held.
I sat on the narrow cot with my taped chest to the blind corner and coughed three times, low, and felt the battery pack warm against my waist. Footsteps went away down the hall, and I kept my right boot angled out of frame and waited to be worth trading.