By the third night, Damien had learned quite a bit about Felicity. She missed the smell of salt on her husband's jacket and had once splinted a kitten's paw with two wooden stirrers and a strip of her own bra. She could also tell how many men stayed outside each time the guards brought a meal, even when he couldn't hear their feet.
"What happened to the kitten?" he asked, lifting a floor grate so she could slide the last wrapped panel underneath it.
"It got better. I went home with one boob considerably lower than the other and never saw a cent for my trouble." She pushed the bundle clear of the bolt holes. "Since we're sharing the shameful parts, I chased that ungrateful little shit all the way under a car to get my bandage back."
He smiled as he tightened the grate, picturing her crawling under that filthy car in a crooked bra, swearing at a kitten she'd spent her lunch break trying to save.
He'd started taking the panels apart the evening after he tore up the receipt. When the light at the service hatch went dark, Felicity had eased the hatch open and looked outside. The guard on the stairs had walked right past without seeing her. Now the empty frames stood against the wall. Since then the brokers had sent somebody to ask after their money at every meal. Each time he'd kept his hands busy with a length of wire while Felicity listened past the man's voice. Two pairs of boots always waited outside his room. A third pair went up the stairs, and shortly afterward the women in the holding rooms above got their food. During those few minutes, while the doors up there stood open one by one, they had a chance of getting the others out.
Damien tapped the drawing they'd made against the tip of her shoe. "The service tunnel comes out beyond the west fence. I can get you to it through the loading floor now. Once they realize what I've done with those panels, nobody here will be bringing us supper."
"There's a woman up there who can't turn a handle with her bad hand. If somebody gets out and she's stuck behind a door I knew how to open, I'm going to remember the sound of that handle for the rest of my life." She touched the penciled marks for the holding rooms. "Give me until the next meal. If the guards come down for us first, we'll try it your way."
She had let him take his turn at deciding. It was a small thing after the deal he'd made over her head, and it landed harder than forgiveness would have. He fed their rough map into the grate of the little wall torch. By then he knew every turn. If the guards put either of them on the floor, he didn't want those men reading the way out over her shoulder.
"Once we get outside, you go to your husbands," he said. There were less painful things he could have done with his tongue, such as getting it caught in a door. "Anything you want me to tell them before they try pulling me apart?"
"Tell Victor what you were planning to do when they gave me to you. If you let him find out two days from now, he'll think I kept it from him too." She glanced down at the ash drifting off the edge of his workbench. "You could leave on your own. If you stay, you might have to trust me to put in a good word."
He put his hand down on the bit of floor between them, where her tail used to curl when she still wanted a little space. Her fingers found his. Until then he'd only touched her to put a cup or a plate into her hands. "I'm prepared to take my chances," he told her. She made room for his claws, and he let himself hold on.
Beyond the ridge west of the warehouse, Victor drew his team up short when the first amber light came on behind a square of dusty glass. The truck tracks they'd been following ran under a set of steel doors. Through his field glasses he could see a bed bolted to the wall behind the glass, and a woman getting up from it to wait for her food.
"Is Mummy scared in there?" Frost asked. Victor had carried that question through the ashlands, wishing he had an answer he liked.
"I think she probably is. Your mother went up to your cupboard every morning with monsters outside the bank. She did it scared then, too." He gave the boy the field glasses for a moment so he could see where they'd come. "Wait past the west fence with Finch and your sister. We're going to need somewhere safe to take people when they come out."
Voss marked the storage wing with two fingers. There were guards between it and the holding rooms. The lower loading floor showed one set of tracks in and four ways for a leak of cold air to come out. Whatever lay under the place had more than one exit. "Make your hole on the storage side, Silver. I'll take the locks. We want every one of those doors opening before anybody with a key can change his mind."
Inside, Felicity heard an unfamiliar sound break across the noise of the evening meal. Something metal twisted under load. A moment later the electric hum thinned. For the first time in days she could feel warmth travel all the way into her fingertips.
Damien saw the change in her face before he felt the air go cold. He'd spent days trying to get her to look at him like that. A few seconds of frost on the screws above his door and there was the answer to a question he'd had no business asking. She knew who was coming for her.
He got his tools and knocked the latch off his side of the door as the men outside broke for the stairs. Felicity let him cover the opening with his body, then slipped her hand into his again. "When they come through that door, let them see my face. I want to be the one who tells them whose side you're on."
There was a crash up on the loading floor that dislodged a chunk of plaster beside his head. Damien let the dust settle and looked down at her. "That's one hell of a good word you're offering."
"You've got to give me the chance to say it," she told him. She was asking him to face an armed man and trust her to keep him alive. A few days ago he'd have laughed at the idea. This time, he believed her. He opened the door as something heavy came through the outer wall.