Page 2 of Silent as Sin
The cutters bit the shackle. I had to brace my knee against the wall and put my back into it, metal protesting in a high, strangled squeal. Then the lock coughed apart, a bright, ugly sound in all that heat. The hasp dropped, swinging, and the door didn’t open on its own.
“Help me,” I said.
We got our fingers behind the edge and pulled. The panel wasn’t wood, it was steel skinned with drywall. It dragged out of the frame like it didn’t want to give up its secret, hinges groaning, sheetrock dust falling in a soft cloud that stuck to our sweat.
Behind it, a black mouth breathed out stale air and something sour, old fear, old bleach, old piss. A crawlspace no bigger than a walk-in shower, framed in studs and lined with more steel. A vent cut high and crooked in the back wall whistled a thin line of heat. A ring bolt in the concrete floor, scuffed shiny. A plastic bucket. A threadbare blanket spread thin as paper.
And her.
She sat in the corner with her knees hugged to her chest, bare feet tucked under the hem of a too-big T-shirt that had once been white and now was the color of old bones. Her hair fell forward in a black curtain, tangled, hiding half her face. Her hands were small and steady. In them, a scrap of torn magazine.Fold. Crease. Smooth. Again. On the concrete around her, a scatter of little birds—lopsided, crimp-winged—like a flock that forgot how to fly.
“Holy hell,” Warden whispered. He shoved the light a fraction lower, so it didn’t hit her straight on. “How the fuck—”
“Quiet,” I said, but it came out as a plea, not an order.
Her eyes lifted. Dark blue. Too big in her thin face, pupils huge from all that dark. Not fear. Not trust either. Just… waiting. Like she was a dead ocean measuring the weather by the way your boat rocked.
My mouth went dry. If we’d ridden out, like any sane men would after a cleared sweep—if I’d ignored the itch, the memory, the knot in my gut—she would’ve stayed in that hole. She’d have run out of more than paper one day, and then what? Death. Slow and painful.
Not this time.
“Hey,” I said, crouching slow, keeping my hands where she could see them. “I’m Ashen Graves. This is Warden Rourke. We came back to make sure nobody got left behind.” I nodded at the lock, at the metal plate. “They’re not getting to you again.”
She watched my mouth move. Her fingers paused on the last crease and then set the bird carefully on the floor, like she was adding it to a count only she knew.
“Do you have a name?” Warden asked gently.
I shot him a look. He lifted a shoulder:Worth a try.
She didn’t answer. She didn’t try. She looked at the open square we’d pried into the world and then back at me like she was testing air with her eyes.
“Can I come closer?” I asked. “It’s hot as hell in there.”
No flinch. No nod either. The vent whispered. Sweat ran down my spine in a single line that felt like a blade.
I eased onto my knees and set the bolt cutters on the floor where she could see them. The concrete was warm through myjeans. Up close, I saw the little things that got lost in the beam from the door, the thin scar at her temple lost under her hair, a bruise fading yellow on her cheek, the way her right thumb nail was chewed raw.
The ring bolt in the floor wasn’t empty. A chain lay coiled beside it like a dead snake, the cut end bright where a saw had kissed it clean. My jaw locked.
“We’re taking you out,” I said. “Now.”
Her gaze flicked to the chain. Then to my hands. My patch. The little square of The Devil’s House on my chest. I could see the math she was doing, danger on one side, danger on the other, which kind came with water.
“Got a bottle,” Warden said, reading it too. He fished in his vest and came up with a half-warm bottle. “It’s not cold.”
“Give,” I said.
I uncapped it and took a small drink first, let her see me do it. Then I held it out. Not too close. “You can have all of it.”
She didn’t reach, not at first. Her eyes traced the bottle like it was a trick. Then her hand came up, soft, quick, like a bird landing. Our fingers didn’t touch. She took two sips. Stopped. Took one more like she had to earn it. Handed it back, eyes on my throat like she could hear my swallow.
“You got shoes?” Warden asked, trying for light. “Feet are gonna hate this floor.”
Her gaze dropped to her toes, dirty lines across the knuckles where dust had settled. She tucked them deeper under her shirt.
“Blanket,” I said. Warden peeled the threadbare thing up from the concrete and shook grit loose. I laid it across the threshold so when she scooted forward, she wouldn’t have to touch the frame.
She didn’t move.
