Broken (25 page)

“A total overhaul,” I said. “Creating a revitalized cultural and architectural landmark for Toronto.”

“Overhaul? From that picture, it’ll look like it was hit by a goddamn glacier.”

“I know,” Zoe said. “Isn’t it gorgeous? Did you see the front? They’re going to have the dinosaurs right there, so you can see them from the street. Wonderful. Although, if they’re going to put artifacts in the window, I’d personally prefer something more portable.”

Clay shook his head and strode up the museum steps.

Once inside, we split up. Past experience told us our zombie friends wouldn’t come out while I was surrounded by bodyguards, though Clay would stay with me for as long as possible.

We’d barely made it to the second-floor landing when my phone vibrated. I checked the display. Nick.

“She’s coming,” he said when I answered.

“She?”

“Think so. Zoe says it’s a she. Hard to tell under all that clothing.”

“Be on the lookout for her partner then,” I said. “They’ve played this game with us before.”

“Tag-team stalking.”

“Exactly.”

When I hung up, Clay said, “Rose?”

I nodded.

“Shit.” He glanced at the exit, frown deepening to a scowl.

“You’d prefer a knife-wielding thug to an aging hooker?”

“Hooker with syphilis. Remember what Jeremy said?” He looked around, scouting the territory. “Change of plans. I’ll be the bait. She’s seen me with you enough to know I’d be just as good a source for that letter. If I’m easier to nab than you—”

I shook my head. “Unless her brain’s rotting with the rest of her, she’s never going to think you’d be easier to nab than me. I’ll be careful. You know I will. I’ll avoid her mouth and scrub up afterward. Better yet, I’ll knock her down and wait for you. Minimal contact.”

After a moment, he nodded and we headed for the stairs.

We bypassed the busier second floor—home of the kid-friendly dinosaur and natural history displays. In the third-floor Islam gallery, we settled in for some museum browsing, which was one act I didn’t need to fake. Fifteen years with an anthropologist has made me a bit of a museum geek.

Clay always finds an artifact that catches his eye, usually with a great story attached. When we visit a city, Clay will snore through opera and jazz concerts, stake out a bench in the art gallery, even fall asleep during eardrum-shattering Broadway musicals…but don’t ask him to leave town before he’s visited every museum.

I used to wonder how a guy who wants little to do with humans can be so fascinated by their history. I understand now that the two attitudes aren’t mutually exclusive. Human society is foreign to Clay and, therefore, all the more fascinating, if only from a scientific point of view. Like an anthropologist studying apes, he finds the structure intriguing, but he has no desire to join it.

We wove through the Islam gallery, through Rome, and back to the Greek areas in the southwest corner. There, we split up a few times, one of us wandering off to look at something, conveniently rounding a corner and getting out of the other’s sight. Yet Rose didn’t strike. Nor did Nick phone to say she’d backed off. Every once in a while, I detected a whiff of rot on the air-conditioning, confirming she was nearby. There was no sign of the bowler-hatted man, though.

We wove through a forest of armless, legless, emasculated marble male torsos. I stopped in the corner, behind a raised scale model display of the acropolis of Athens.

“Either she’s waiting for her partner or she’s waiting for us to give her a better shot,” I said. “You know the place as well as I do. Where’s a safe place to take someone down?”

As his eyes half-closed, I could almost see the floor plan of the museum flipping past them, his brain ticking off every place he could kill someone or hide a body. A discomfiting skill, but I knew it came from that part of his brain that instinctively assessed danger and mapped out escape routes in any new environment. When it came to randomly killing strangers and stashing the bodies, there were few werewolves less likely to do it than Clay.

“That’s the public areas,” he said after he’d recited the list. “You want the labs and stuff too?”

“Uh, no, that’s okay. Just don’t ever invite me to the museum after we’ve had a fight, okay?”

He snorted. “I think
I’d be
the one more likely to be knocked over the head and stuffed in a sarcophagus.”

“Never,” I said. “They’re all behind glass. Lousy place to hide a body. But there’s a really big vase over there that might work.”

He growled and swung to grab me. I sidestepped just as a mother and two kids walked in.

“Speaking of sarcophagi,” I whispered. “I think it’s time to move on to the Nile.”

Clay nodded and followed me out.

Pursuits

WE CHECKED OUT THE EGYPTIAN WING
,
BUT DECIDED IT
was too busy for Rose, so we crossed the floor to the Samuel European Gallery, and walked through the rotunda, then turned right.

The south wing was semidark, with tasteful spot lighting illuminating decorated rooms from various periods. A corridor about ten feet wide wended through the gallery, with lots of twists and curves, so you couldn’t see more than two or three glassed-in rooms at a time. Alcoves and doors were everywhere. Even on the busiest days, the wing was quiet. Today, it was empty. Perfect.

We stopped by a well-marked emergency exit near what looked like a large storage closet. Even a zombie had to recognize an ideal kidnapping opportunity when she saw it. Then it came time to separate. If Rose was looking for that ideal opportunity, we were going to give it to her, making sure she knew Clay was leaving, and might be gone for a few minutes.

Clay asked for my cell phone.

“Gotta call work,” he said, speaking just above a normal conversational tone. “See how that department meeting went.”

I handed him my phone. He didn’t have one—a cell phone presupposes a desire to communicate with the outside world.

He hit the buttons, pretended to listen, then grunted, looked at the display and said, “No signal.”

“It’s these old buildings,” I said. “The walls are too thick. Try moving closer to the stairwell.”

Before he left, he circled his lips with his finger, then pointed the finger at me, reminding me to stay away from Rose’s mouth. I nodded. He walked away, head down as he redialed. I turned to examine a room done in French Regency, all gilt and ornate tapestry. On a pedestal stood a bust of a toga-wearing man who, judging by his expression, had lived in a time that predated laxatives.

Behind me, Clay circled the first corner. “Yeah, it’s me. How—?” He muttered a curse. “Hold on.” His voice drifted farther. “There? Can you hear me now? Christ, the echo in this place. How did the meeting go?”

A split-second pause. “Hold on. I’ve lost you. I’ll move…”

As his footsteps headed in the direction of the rotunda, his voice faded under the soft strains of piped-in classical music. Okay, Rose, it’s not going to get any better than this. Here, I’ll even bend over to read this placard, so you can—

A growl, half-anger, half-surprise off to my left. The clatter of the cell phone dropping and skating across the hard floor.

Even as I turned and ran for Clay, my brain told me I was overreacting, that he’d probably just bumped into something or someone. But my gut knew better.

As I ran, I heard a thump, then a grunt. Another thump—harder, like a body hitting the floor. I rounded two corners, then saw Clay pinning a figure to the floor beside twin display cases of silver tableware.

It was Rose. She held a knife in one hand, but he had her by the wrist, so the weapon was useless. His other hand reached for her head, to snap her neck.

“The swords!” a child’s voice shrieked. “I want to see the swords!”

Running footsteps sounded at the mouth of the gallery. Arms and armor were on the opposite side, but Clay hesitated, listening. As he turned, he saw me. I motioned for him to wait.

The footfalls screeched around the corner, heading our way. The child’s parents tried calling him back, but he was too far to hear or too excited to care.

Clay pulled back and looked around, still holding Rose’s knife hand, but his attention was elsewhere, searching for a place to move her before the child came racing around the corner.

“There!” I hissed, pointing at a gap between two displays. “I’ll head off—”

Rose bucked. The knife flashed and, although Clay still held her wrist, he instinctively dodged, loosening his grip just enough for her to wrench free. As she scrambled up, I raced around to cut off her escape route. Clay dove for her. Then two kids, no more than seven or eight, turned the corner and stopped dead, gazes fixed, not on us, but on the knife-wielding woman rising before them, her face like something out of their most macabre comic books. One screamed.

Rose raced past me. Clay tore after her.

“It’s—we were rehearsing,” I said quickly. “A play. She’s dressed up.”

I wanted to say more, but once Clay realized I wasn’t behind him, he would stop chasing Rose. And, to be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be around when the parents found their terrified children. So, with a weak smile, I scooped up my cell phone from the floor and hurried after him.

I caught up as Clay reached the stair landing. He’d stopped there and was looking back, ready to return for me. I waved him on, but he didn’t move until I’d caught up.

Rose was hurrying down the stairs, disappearing then reappearing from behind the huge Haida and Nisga’a totem poles that rose up the center of the circling stairs. I touched Clay’s arm.

“Hold back,” I whispered. “Let her think she’s lost us.”

He nodded, and let me nudge him back into the shadows, but kept his gaze fixed on Rose as she descended.

“She ambushed me,” he whispered.

“Guess her brain
is
rotting after all.”

“Or she was getting me out of the way first. Learning our routines.”

“Possible. Where the heck is her partner?”

“Don’t know, but I’m keeping my eyes open.”

I touched his forearm, to tell him we could start forward. When I pulled back my fingers, they were wet with blood. I grabbed his arm for a better look, but he pulled away.

“Just a scratch.”

“She stabbed—?”

He shook his head as he propelled me to the steps. “Her nails.” He swiped away the blood, then started down the steps.

Rose hit the second-floor landing. I expected her to carry on down the stairs and run for the exit. Instead, she hurried toward the museum’s most popular exhibit: the dinosaurs.

Clay let out a soft snarl of frustration. The dinosaur gallery was right under the European galleries, but U-shaped, guiding traffic in one end, then around and out the other, with no possible side trips.

I looked at Clay. We were both thinking the same thing—we had a surefire shot at catching Rose here…if we split up.

A moment’s hesitation, then Clay nodded and motioned for me to cover the exit.

I watched him stride through the exhibit entrance, then ducked in the exit and stopped to get my bearings. In any other gallery today, this would have been a simple matter of looking down the empty hall for the first sign of life. But there were quite a few other people here, most under the age of five, as if parents were taking advantage of low attendance at the museum to give their preschoolers as much face time with dinosaur bones as they could want.

Children raced along the corridor, under the snouts of the looming beasts as their parents sat or stood in twos and threes, chatting and laughing. The noise level, replete with choreographed booms and shrieks, made listening for Rose impossible. Sniffing was also out of the question—the old and well-loved gallery was overpoweringly ripe. So I had to look for her…which would have been much easier if the lights weren’t cranked down to simulate primeval darkness.

I walked down the center of the hall, my gaze drifting from side to side, only registering life-forms four feet and taller, which cut the prospects dramatically.

I hit a stroller barricade and murmured an “excuse me,” my gaze still focused ten feet ahead. Someone caught my arm, and I swung back, hand balling into a fist…then realized I was about to deck a smiling woman holding a baby.

“Sorry,” I murmured. “Excuse me—”

“When are you due?” she asked.

“Due?”

She motioned to my stomach. I looked down, and for a split second stared at my jutting stomach, wondering “where did that come from?” before my brain slammed back on track.

“Oh, ummm, soon. Excuse—”

Another woman in the group let out a squeak. “Oh, my God. See, I’m not the only crazy one.” She laid her hand on my arm. “Lee was just reminding me about
last
August when I was—” She motioned to my stomach. “That huge, and whining about the heat.”

“I warned you, never get pregnant at Christmas,” the third woman said. “As romantic as it might seem, it isn’t nearly so nice eight months later, when it’s baking hot and you’re carrying an extra twenty pounds.” She looked at me. “Am I right?”