Kelley Armstrong - Broken

We were walking back-driving the short distance had been more trouble than it was worth-when I caught a whiff of something that stopped me midstride. Jeremy and Clay took another few steps before realizing I was no longer between them. Jeremy stayed where he was, as Clay circled back.

“What’s up?”

I tilted my head and inhaled, then rubbed my nose and made a face. “I hate that. You catch the faintest smell, your brain says ‘hey, that’s someone I know,’ then it’s gone.”

Clay looked around. We were in the middle of a strip of grass between the road and the hotel parking lot. Cars zoomed past, but there was no one around. A busy road and no sidewalks didn’t invite pedestrian traffic.

“Maybe someone you knew drove by with the window down.” He glanced at the strip mall to our right. “Or stopped here.”

I nodded. “Probably, whatever-whoever-it was, it’s gone now.”

We caught up with Jeremy and headed for the SUV.

I flipped between Toronto radio stations all the way to Buffalo, listening to the private stations for news at the top and bottom of the hour, then tuning to CBC as the other stations switched to music. By the time we moved out of Buffalo and the Canadian stations faded to static, I was convinced that Jeremy was right. Whatever had happened last night, it was safe enough to leave.

We pulled off at the Darien Lake exit to fuel up with gas and food. We would stop for lunch in a favorite restaurant outside Rochester, but it had been two hours since breakfast, and our stomachs were complaining. Well, Clay’s and mine were complaining; one could never tell with Jeremy.

Jeremy shooed us off to the store, getting me away from the fuel fumes. Inside, I scooped up a doughnut and chocolate milk. Convenience food-they didn’t offer much else.

The store was busy, there were only two cashiers, and one was fiddling with her register, so the lineup stretched back to the refrigerators. People kept brushing past me to get to the pop fridge. I’ve never been one to enjoy personal space invasions but, lately, close contact with strangers set my fight-or-flight instincts on high alert.

Stuck there in line, in an enclosed place, with too many people, my gaze kept drifting to the exit, to freedom and fresh air. Especially fresh air. The mix of BO and cheap cologne and fried food from the restaurant made my stomach churn…and made me wonder whether I’d be able to eat my snacks at all.

A passing trucker jostled my shoulder so hard I wobbled back into the shelf. He reached to catch me, blasting coffee breath and halitosis in my face. Another hand caught me from behind. Clay glared at the trucker, who mumbled something vaguely apologetic and shambled past.

Clay took my milk carton and doughnut, and piled them onto his and Jeremy’s snacks.

“Hey,” grumbled a man behind us. “There’s a line here, you know. You can’t just-”

Clay turned and looked at him, and the man’s mouth snapped shut. I leaned out to see why the line wasn’t moving.

“You okay?” Clay whispered.

I swept a glance around. “Just…claustrophobic.”

He nodded, but didn’t comment. He didn’t need to. Clay hated crowds, always had, and I’d always faulted him for it, chalking it up to his dislike of humans. But now, looking into his eyes and seeing my own response reflected back-discomfort not distaste-I knew I’d never again snipe at him about avoiding a crowded mall or packed movie theater.

He shifted over, his hip brushing mine. “Go on outside. Get some air.”

“I’m-”

He bumped me with his hip, causing his stack of junk food to sway. “Go. Stretch your legs. There’s a field out back, isn’t there? Behind the building?”

“I think so.”

“Find a picnic spot then. Grab Jeremy and I’ll meet you there.”

“Thanks.”

Jeremy was just outside the doors, eying one of those new SUV hybrids.

“Looking for a trade-up on the Explorer?” I asked.

“I was thinking of you.”

“I have a car.”

“Which is half dead, has no air bags, no child restraints, and is definitely not baby-friendly.” He waved at the SUV wannabe. “This is cute.”

“Cute? It looks like a minihearse. Yes, I know I’ll need something new. But not that. And if you mention minivan-”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

I told him Clay’s picnic plan.

“That’s fine,” Jeremy said. “I need to use the restroom. You can wait for me or, if Clay comes out first, I’ll meet you both out back.”

He started to walk past me, then stopped to watch a vehicle pull in a few spots down. A Mercedes SUV.

“Perhaps something like that,” he said. “It’s a luxury vehicle, sure to have all the top safety features, plus be quite reliable in bad weather, but not as big and unwieldy as the Explorer. I’m sure you’d find it quite peppy.”

“Peppy? That’s almost as bad as ‘cute.’ ”

“It would be the perfect vehicle for a-”

“Suburban soccer mom.”

A slight furrow of the brows.

“Never mind. Just…” I waved at the car. “Not me. Not now. Not ever. I’ll find something. But not-” I looked at the Mercedes and shivered. “That.”

He shook his head and walked toward the building.

I followed the walkway along the north side of the service center. Behind the building, the path cut on a diagonal to the southwest truckers’ lot.

The whir of the huge air-conditioning unit and the distant rumble of idling trucks blocked out the roar of the highway to the north. To my right was a white storage silo. Beyond that was a swamp.

I thought the swamp was what I’d smelled when I first picked up the scent of something heavy and overripe. But the smell came on the south wind, blowing toward the swamp, not from it. The scent carried other notes too, all human-the smell of an unwashed body and unwashed clothes, male, seemingly healthy, but underlain with that faint scent of overripeness. Of…rot.

It was the same scent I’d smelled on the man in the bowler yesterday. Not sickness but rot, so faint I had to get a noseful before I was sure. I realized it was the same thing I’d smelled walking back from the restaurant after breakfast.

I dismissed it. No one-and nothing-could track us like that. We were 185 miles from Cabbagetown. Even I would’ve lost the trail the moment we’d driven away last night. If this guy came from where I thought he did-nineteenth-century London -well, let’s just say he couldn’t hop into a car and give chase.

So it was impossible. Even when I glimpsed a figure darting between the rigs in the southwest lot, and caught another whiff of that distinctive scent, I knew it couldn’t-shouldn’t-be him. But follow logic too far and it can lead right into the jaws of folly.

Jeremy had asked me to wait for him or Clay, and I hadn’t meant to ignore him. But after fifteen years of being able to walk through deserted parking lots without a spark of fear, I was ill-accustomed to needing an escort.

Someone was following me, possibly hoping to cut me off when I was far enough from the service center, and from my male companions. At the very least, I should stop and wait for Jeremy and Clay.

Yet, the moment they showed up, my pursuer would run. So I kept going slowly and concentrated on picking up some sense of Clay. No luck. I stopped to tie my shoes and scope out the playing field.

Swamp to the right. A good place to throw my pursuer off-kilter, but the stink and the water would make tracking difficult. The field in front of me was too open. Behind it was a forest, which screamed “pick me, pick me.” My ideal environment. But it was too far away, and I risked losing him on the trek across the open field. The parking lot had lots of places to hide, and that’s where he was now. But the noise, the stink of diesel fuel and the possibility of bystanders would complicate matters. The best choice was also the closest-that thirty-foot-wide storage silo to my right.