Broken (Otherworld 6)

Betrayed

AS IT TURNED OUT, HULL DID HAVE SOMEONE WATCHING the hotel: Rose. I don't know how he expected her to stop us if we'd tried to leave. More likely, Hull had been giving Rose a near-meaningless assignment to keep her rotting corpse away from them. Guarding us hadn't been a high priority. Even if we left, he could find me.

But what could have been so important that it diverted his attention--and his primary resources--away?

Rose knew only that Hull was "getting something" related to his ongoing experiment, the one whose completion he intended to finance with my children...and the one that had landed him in dimensional limbo in the first place. Seems the only lesson he'd learned from that experience was that he'd better hurry and finish his work before someone else in the supernatural community learned of it.

Although she didn't know where he'd headed, she could find him using a gut level sense that worked as well as any homing device. Yet we couldn't pop Rose in a taxi, so we had to walk, at her pace, staying on side streets and skirting all signs of activity.

"Gettin' close," she mumbled an hour later, as we cut through a narrow service lane between buildings.

"Watch--" Jaime said, waving at a swath of broken glass.

I steered Rose out of the way of the glass, resisting the urge to shudder as her bone fingers clamped into my side. My arm was hooked around her, under the stump of her right arm, and her good arm was around my torso, which made her trip a little easier, and mine a little less so.

We'd hobbled two-thirds of the way down the long lane when that broken glass crunched behind us. I tensed, but forced myself to keep moving. Jaime slanted a "What's up?" look my way.

"My back," I said. "The baby...Hunching over like this...Could you maybe take a spell?"

"Sure," she said.

As I disengaged from Rose, I tried to get a look behind us.

"You okay?" Jaime said.

I made a show of stretching my back, nodded and waved them on. Stop too long, and whoever was following us would know I'd heard him. I listened and sniffed, but both senses were useless. After an hour of walking beside Rose, I could fall face-first into one of these trash bins and still smell nothing.

If I turned around, our pursuer would know he'd been spotted. Even a second excuse to stop would tip him off. Or would it?

I moved up beside Jaime. "I have to go."

She frowned at me. "Where?"

I pressed a hand to the bottom of my belly. "My bladder. It--"

"Ah." She gave a small laugh. "We interrupt this life-or-death situation for a pregnancy pee break. Don't see that in the movies, do you?" She looked around. "I can't remember the closest restaurant, but we can go back--"

"No time. Just...keep walking. I'll catch up."

"Ah. Okay, then. Do you need tissue?"

"If you have some."

As she dug for tissue, I surveyed the lane, but whoever was following us must have taken cover. When Jaime and Rose moved on, I took cover of my own, backing into a gap between two stacks of cardboard boxes. They didn't reach my head, but that was okay. I had an excuse for crouching.

Now all I needed to do was wait for Hull or his zombie to get his butt over here and attack me. Only it wasn't happening. The lane had gone silent.

Finally, I heard the faintest shuffle of feet on dirt. Silence fell again. Was he hiding? Oh, great. Two of us, in our separate cubbyholes, each waiting for the other to make the first move.

I did my own dirt-shuffle, as if I was trying to crouch comfortably and not having much luck. All stayed quiet.

Great. Just great.

As I looked around, my gaze snagged on the long fire escape stretching overhead. I checked my outfit. Wine-colored T-shirt. Maternity jeans. Navy sneakers. All dark. Good.

I lowered a box from the stack on the far side. It was solid and heavy, marked "recycle," probably filled with newspapers or magazines. I laid it on the ground, then stepped on top and grabbed the fire escape. A quick tug to test how well it was affixed to the wall, then I pulled myself up. Not so easy with twins on board.

Once up, I crouched there, listening and looking. Nothing moved in the lane.