Broken (5 page)

A new voice . . . soft, shaking, unsteady.

“
He wants you dead.”

Sara Davis came awake with that voice echoing in her ears. After two years, she still heard that voice, all too often. She still had the dreams, all too often. And she was still on the run. As soon as she felt like she might actually remember what it was like
not
to run, she would have to pack up and start all over again.

She took a deep breath—through her mouth. In the little apartment where she lived, it wasn’t ever safe to breathe too deeply through one’s nose. Not when the aromas consisted of a nasty mix of stale food, marijuana, various bodily wastes when the plumbing screwed up, and sweat.

Holding her breath, she counted to ten and then let it back out. Sitting up, she kicked her legs over the side of the plain twin mattress. She hadn’t spent money getting a frame for it—the moment she’d looked inside this place, she’d known she’d stay only as long as it took to find someplace else.

That had been six weeks ago, and it was taking a lot longer to find a decent place than she’d hoped. Of course,
decent
was relative. She’d be happy with someplace where she could breathe normally without worrying about the hazard it might pose to her health. Someplace where she wasn’t constantly hearing the conversations from her neighbors, someplace where she didn’t have to share a bathroom with three other tenants would be a godsend.

But there were a number of things that kept the nicer places out of her reach, and finding a tolerable one was getting harder and harder.

From the apartment below hers, she heard a crash, followed by raised, angry voices. Tuning them out, she covered her face with her hands and thought longingly of the time when she’d woken up in a nice comfy bed. Back then, she’d always slept naked, loving the way her black silk sheets felt as she snuggled into them.

The feel of silk was nothing but a memory now.

Sleeping naked was just plain stupid—you didn’t want to be naked when the only locks on the door could be broken by a persistent two-year-old or a clumsy drunk. She slept in cotton jersey pants and a T-shirt, with her hand wrapped around a canister of Mace.

Once upon a time, she’d had a cute little cottage, and her bedroom had taken up most of the second floor. The walls had been painted a dark, vivid shade of purple, and framed prints of fairies had danced upon them. Her bedroom used to smell like vanilla, lavender, and spice, courtesy of her love for potpourri and candles.

Now she had the lovely odor of unwashed bodies, faulty plumbing, mold, mildew, and fried food lingering in the air. She’d given up potpourri and candles long ago, which was a good thing, because it would have been money down the drain in this dump. No amount of Glade, no amount of Febreze, no amount of potpourri would do anything to improve the atmosphere here.

Candles might—if she lit a few dozen and then the room accidentally caught on fire. If the place burned to the ground, that would be a huge improvement.

The alarm clock on her cell phone chirped and she sighed, pushed a hand through her hair. It was a drab shade, caught somewhere between brown and blonde and cut to chin length. She never let it grow much longer, although she took care of cutting it herself these days.

Questions warred in her mind as she reached for her phone, staring at the time. She had someplace she was supposed to be, but right now, she wasn’t entirely sure she should go.

She knew she
wanted
to, but that was a far cry from knowing if she
should
.

The voices downstairs rose once more, and as if on cue, voices from the apartment overhead joined in. Surrounded by angry, raised shouts on what felt like all sides, Sara dropped back on the mattress and reached out, blindly feeling around the little plastic crate that served as a table.

Her fingers brushed up against the napkin and she lifted it, read the address.

Somebody had said that to her once, and they were words she lived by.

Sara kept sunglasses on whenever possible. She avoided looking people in the eyes at all costs. If she’d kept to that rule a little more firmly, she might not be standing on a nice tree-lined street in St. Louis’s West End. Which would mean she might not have this odd, itchy sensation that something big was going to happen.

Some sort of change. Sara wasn’t exactly
opposed
to change, provided she got to do it on her terms and had some control over things. But this wouldn’t be one of those changes. She knew it in her bones.

Slipping her sunglasses up, she eyed the old house in front of her. It had been done up into apartments, and she could already see that somebody put a lot of time and love into it.

Gnawing on her lower lip, she shifted from one foot to the other. She didn’t need to be here. She should have just thrown the address away the second she had a chance. But she hadn’t. She was here, and now she was debating about whether she should just hightail it back to the bus stop and disappear.

Only one thing kept her from doing just that—the kindness she’d seen in Theresa Kingston’s gaze the day before. If you could truly know a person just by staring into their eyes, then Sara knew that Theresa was one of the kindest women on earth.

Sara wanted to trust that instinct, but when it came to kindness, she had a hard time. The biggest part of her said she could trust Theresa. But there was a voice, doubtful, reminding her, always, of what could happen if she trusted the wrong person.

She closed her eyes and played the scene through in her head again, tried to figure out what her instincts were telling her.

More than I make here
, Sara thought glumly. But she pasted a smile on her face and said, “Sorry . . . I’m just so used to everything being out of my range around here.” And the stuff that wasn’t out of her range, she couldn’t risk taking.

Her instincts told her that Theresa wasn’t any sort of threat to her. Still, in hindsight, Sara should have just thrown the napkin away, finished up her day at the café, and then quietly disappeared. She didn’t need people noticing her. Being nice to her. Being friendly.

When people started being friendly, it meant only one thing.

She no longer trusted her instincts—she couldn’t afford to. The girl she’d once been would have looked at the elderly woman and fallen in love. Theresa looked like Mrs. Claus, complete with a tidy white bun in her hair and rosy cheeks, and was always ready with a kind word or a joke to share.

Sara desperately wanted to accept that kindness.

Setting her jaw, she shoved the napkin in her pocket and hitched her backpack a little higher up on her shoulder. She was going to go back to the roach motel that masqueraded as an apartment. She was going to pack her stuff. And she was going to leave.

In another month or two, it would start getting cooler. Then winter would settle in. Maybe she’d head farther south this time. Someplace warm. Maybe she could get lucky and even find a place halfway . . . well, like home.

“Sara, is that you I hear out there?”

She just barely managed to keep from flinching when she heard Theresa’s voice calling her name. Steeling herself, she pasted a smile on her face and waited as the older woman bustled around the corner of the house, carrying a tray of flowers and beaming.

Huh. People really do beam when they smile that big . . .
Theresa set down the tray of flowers and rushed up the brick walkway to greet Sara.

“Oh, I’m so glad you decided to check out the apartment.”

“Actually, I . . .”

But Theresa was a petite, friendly steamroller. She rolled right over her attempts to speak and linked arms. Sara obediently fell in step with the older woman.
Just get it over with.

This place wouldn’t be some dive where she turned over cash in exchange for problems with the plumbing, busted-up plaster, and paper-thin walls.

A place like this would come with a renter’s agreement. Credit checks. First and last month’s security deposit. Identification.

Even if those things weren’t an issue, the price definitely would be. Places in St. Louis’s Central West End weren’t exactly what she could call
affordable
, not on her income. She could do the walk-through and then when Theresa named her price, she’d have an honest reason to refuse.

But Sara hadn’t counted on how much she missed being in a
home
. Even though the apartment wasn’t
her
home, it felt . . . well, welcoming. Warm.

There were knickknacks scattered about. A futon that would double as a bed. Another window along the front wall, with a big, overstuffed chair sitting in front of it. In the little kitchenette area, there was a small table set under a window that faced out over the backyard, giving Sara a view of the flowerbeds. Theresa must have been working on them when Sara showed up—vivid bursts of color, vines, plants, and little yard statues.

Staring down at the flowers, Sara lifted a hand and rested it on the pale yellow wall. She wasn’t much for yellows—hated pastels with a passion, but this . . . this was nice. Maybe it was because it seemed so sunny and cheerful, and she’d spent far too much time in dank, depressing places where it seemed the sun never quite penetrated inside the room.

“It’s lovely,” she murmured, her voice husky. With the knot in her throat, it was amazing she was able to speak at all. “I didn’t realize it was furnished.”

“I’m sorry . . . I thought I’d mentioned it.” She stared owlishly at Sara. “Are the furnishings a problem?”

“No. Of course not.” Sara turned and smiled at Theresa. “I don’t really have all that much stuff anyway.”

And that doesn’t matter—even if you could afford it, and you can’t, you wouldn’t be able to move in here
.

Taking one more lingering glance around the pretty space, she asked, “So how much is it?”

“Three-fifty a month.”

Sara’s jaw dropped. “What?”

Theresa’s brow puckered and she said, “I’m sorry . . . if that’s too high, maybe we could work something out . . .”

“It’s not too high. Theresa, you could charge double that. A furnished apartment this close to downtown?” Hell, Sara was paying three hundred a month in cash for that fricking roach motel.

“Really?” Theresa cocked her head and pursed her lips. Then she shrugged and gave Sara a sweet smile. “But I don’t need double that. I own the home, you know. It belonged to my husband’s parents and they left it to us. He and I, we spent years fixing it up after the kids left home. Now that he’s gone, they’ve all married and moved away . . . well, I’d just go crazy in this big old place all by myself.”

Sara took one last look around the apartment.
Want!

She wanted to sit at that little table and drink coffee in the morning, looking at the lovely flowers. She wanted to curl up on the chair close to the front door and read a book with light streaming in over her shoulder from the window. Hell, she even wanted to wake up and stare at the cheerfully yellow walls.

She wanted to come to a place that could actually feel like
home
.

“It really is lovely, but I’m afraid I can’t afford it.” It wasn’t a lie—she
could
just barely manage the monthly payments, and she wouldn’t even have to dip into her precious stash of cash. But she couldn’t afford the other things that would come with taking the apartment.