فصل 28

CHAPTER 28

ONE LAST PUSH

THE TRAINS HAD STOPPED.

Because she was cut off from the outside world, Molly’s sense of time had come down to two factors: the workers’ schedule and the trains. She’d lost track of the schedule because von Schatten had ordered the work halted. That left the trains. She’d not heard one for over an hour. She knew the Underground stopped at midnight, which meant it was now past one in the morning.

That, in turn, meant there would likely be fewer guards on duty—and those who were on duty were likely dozing.

Carefully, Molly pushed the stout plank out her cell’s barred window. By the dim light from the bare corridor bulbs, she managed to fit the plank into a space she had made between the corridor’s clay wall and the closest vertical wooden support post.

Creating the space had required painstaking effort. Molly had hovered by the cell window, waiting for the rumble of a train to cover her efforts. When she heard one coming, after checking each way to see that there were no guards about, she would ram the end of the board into the clay and rock, chipping away what little she could before the train noise subsided.

The guards had nearly caught her. Despite the trains, they apparently heard her pounding and came looking. Fortunately, she was able to pull the board back into the cell before they arrived, and they had failed to spot the small hole she’d dug behind the post, hidden in shadow.

That had made her nervous enough to stop her work, at least during the day. But her digging had shown her that the corridor wall—which was also the wall to her cell—was not particularly strong. If she could move the post, the wall behind it would crumble. And that would leave a hole.

A way out of the cell.

She wasn’t sure exactly what she would do when she got out. Somehow she would have to get to James and the others, to try to free them before von Schatten decided to kill them. She would worry about how to do that later. First, she needed to escape.

She punched the board repeatedly into the small hole she’d carved behind the post. A tiny bit of clay and rock dislodged. At this rate, it was going to take forever.

But, she thought, if there was one thing she had a lot of, it was time.

Patience, she reminded herself. She stabbed the board into the hole.

And again …

And again …