Broken

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?”

“Er, uh…” I struggled for something to say, something other than: excuse me, I have a homicidal zombie to catch.

The women were all beaming my way, ready to welcome a temporary addition to their clique, and I realized just how much I was not going to be “moms and tots” playgroup material. Had I already doomed my child to life as a social misfit? A father who’d never coach Little League…a mother who’d never host PTA bake sales…an entire family whose idea of an exciting summer getaway was chasing down zombies? Which reminded me…

“Excuse me-” I began.

“Oh, speaking of warm, show her the sweater set.”

The first woman, the one with the baby, lifted a paper from her stroller and held it out. On it was a picture of a matching knit sweater, booties and hat.

“That’s…cute,” I said, scanning over their heads for Rose. “Great idea for winter. Maybe I’ll buy one. Now if I could-”

“Buy one?” The second woman laughed. “It’s a pattern. For knitting. Old-fashioned, I know, but it’s a great way to relieve stress.”

Knitting? I stared in horror at the outstretched pattern, mumbled my excuses and finally squeezed through, hurrying back to less terrifying pursuits.

I rounded the corner at the same time as Clay came barreling around the other side. We stopped, twenty feet apart, looked at each other, then searched the gap between us, our lips forming a silent curse-probably the same curse.

We strode forward and met in the middle.

“She didn’t get past me,” I whispered.

“Me neither. It’s not crowded or dark enough to have missed her circling back.”

I looked for potential hiding places, but the layout was simple-too simple to misplace an entranced toddler, let alone a woman. Then I remembered the stroller barricade.

“I was stopped,” I said. “Back there. The hall was blocked. Maybe, when I got through, if she was right on the other side, in the shadows or something…”

“You could have missed her. Probably not, but…”

“We should check.”

The strollers were still there, the women now talking to a pair of preschoolers. Their faces lit up when they saw me again.

“Oh, is this your husband?” one said. “Lucky girl. I can never get mine anywhere near this place.”

“We were with another woman,” I said as I reached them. “A friend. We’ve lost her. Did anyone come back this way?”

“No one’s been by since you, hon,” said the oldest. “It’s dead in here today.”

As I thanked them and turned to go, the one with the baby grabbed the sweater set pattern and thrust it out.

“Here, take this. I have a copy.”

Clay glanced down.

“Isn’t it sweet?” she said. “I’m making one for Natalie.” She looked at me. “You’ll love knitting. It’s so relaxing…and you’re going to need all the relaxation you can get soon.”

As the women chuckled, Clay grabbed the pattern.

“Knitting?” He looked at me. “Yeah, I can see that.”

He thanked the woman and stuffed it into his pocket.

As we strode away, I muttered, “When that page leaves your pocket, it better be headed straight for a trash can.”

“You heard the lady. You’ll need relaxation. Knitting would be-” His lips twitched. “-fun.”

“You ever buy me knitting needles, and I’ll show you a whole new use for them.”

“I’ll remember that.” His grin vanished. “Now where the hell did-”

He stopped as our eyes traveled in the same direction…and reached the same destination. An exit door, concealed in the back wall.

“Shit.”

Clay jerked his chin at me. Not much of an instruction, but I understood it. Stay and watch while he opened the door.

I did, he did, and we slipped through the doorway and into a narrow service hall. There was no one in sight, so I dropped into an ungainly crouch and took a deep breath.

When I caught the scent, we set out, jogging quietly along the back hall. Patrons weren’t the only ones avoiding the museum that day. Only once did we hear footsteps echoing through the maze of corridors, and they turned off before getting anywhere near us.

At each doorway or branching hall, I stopped, dropped and sniffed. The trail stuck to the main passage. Did Rose know she was being followed? Or had her near-death upstairs spooked her into picking a back exit?

When we hit a flight of service stairs, the trail went down. She hadn’t stopped at the first floor, but had kept going, into the basement. All the better. I pulled out my cell phone and turned it on. Despite its tumble, it still worked. I called Nick and told him to meet us downstairs. As I hung up, I almost missed a step. Clay caught my arm. As he moved, I caught the scent of blood. I grabbed his wrist. He looked down at the dripping “scratch” and snorted, as if it was a cause for annoyance not concern.

“It’s deeper than I thought,” I said.

He shook his head. “Probably nicked a vein or something. No big deal. Jeremy will take care of it-later.”

“Maybe I should check-”

“Keep walking. I’ll fix it.”

He stripped off his T-shirt and tore a few inches from the bottom. I tried to get a better look at the scratch, but then we hit the bottom step and he swung around me to take the lead.