Exception to the Rule (5 page)

She’d be ready. Whatever she read or didn’t read from Rio, she’d be ready.

Just outside of town, Kimmer found a Mill Springs Tireland and Gas—little more than a small gas station with an empty one-bay garage at the end, big enough to hold several racks of tires along the walls. The station itself had a single row of pumps, and everything about it made Kimmer want to invite Mr. Clean in for a visit. The building looked worn, the tire racks were forlornly half-full, the paint job looked as if it wanted to crawl away and hide…even the fall weeds edging the building and the lot looked tired.

Kimmer pulled over to the side where she thought she’d be most out of the way, and squelched an impulse to dig out a marker and change the hand-painted sign from Tireland to Tiredland. Instead she found her cell phone, realized it hadn’t been charging after all, and
jockeyed the plug around until she convinced herself it wasn’t working. That was worth a curse. Her usual luck with these things. She scowled at the phone and checked for messages anyway. None. Not a bad sign.

She hit the autodial for Hunter and waited, tapping newly adorned nails against the wheel. At least they were still short and rounded, practical. And on the positive side of things, if she found it necessary to take to the woods, their bright red color—
callor
to Bonnie Miller—would alert deer hunters that she was only a hapless human, and not good for their meat freezers. Maybe she should paint her toenails, too, just for fun—

“Chimera,” Owen greeted her. “You’re in Mill Springs? How’s it look?”

“Short version? Getting too interesting. I haven’t reached the site yet—I’m on the outskirts of town. If a town this small
has
outskirts…maybe it’s just a hem.”

“You ran into more trouble?” His focus tightened; he’d stopped the habitual multitasking in which he’d been engaged. “Already?”

“‘Already’ in spades. Our friendlies ran up behind me in a roadside store—they’ve switched cars, by the way.” She rattled off the new license-plate number for him. “They’d been tagged with a tracer, and the BGs were right on their heels. We had quite a little dance session right there in the store.”

“Casualties?” he asked sharply.

“None on our side.”

“Cover?”

“Safe enough. Carolyne was too panicked to notice anything out of place—she’s trying, but she’s not cut out for this kind of thing. Carlsen was busy. I managed to
have a quick chat with a BG who accidentally took a soup can upside his head. He knew nothing about me—this is a different set from the ones who followed me this morning.”

“Two players, then,” Owen mused. “I’m trying to compile a list of potentials…it’s pretty wide ranging. Contract players to terrorist groups to enemy black ops.”

“Leave room,” Kimmer said dryly. “Because the Taurus was bugged, too. I think it happened before I even got in it, but I do have this thing about avoiding assumptions.”

Owen was silent a moment. Not generally a good sign. Then he cleared his throat. “Do you want backup?”

“I want it ready to go,” Kimmer said. “But I don’t think there’s any way you’re going to cram more than one Hunter agent in this town without attracting notice, even if we all wear this demure shade of fingernail polish I found in the car.”

“Liked it, did you?” Faint amusement filled his words, but quickly faded. She heard the faraway sound of his chair wheeling over the thick carpet protector, from one end of the desk to the other. A few keystrokes followed. “Okay, I’m putting two people on stand-by—Dave and Rayna. That suit you?”

“Might not suit Dave,” Kimmer said, a pointed reminder that Dave Hunter had gone independent of the family.

“That’s my problem.” Owen didn’t even try to pretend it would be an easily reconciled problem, but he meant for her to dismiss it and she did. “Speaking of problems, Scott Boyle’s been in touch. We warned him, of course, that there was already activity and that he
might be approached. I’m not sure it took—he’s too used to painting himself in a caretaker role.”

“I wish I’d been able to talk to him,” she muttered, tipping her head back to examine the stained interior of the car just above the visor. Was that ketchup? Her gaze wandered over to the garage, and she found herself under scrutiny by a man in baggy jeans and a dark blue button-front shirt that seemed so ubiquitous at garages everywhere. He had a cap pulled down low on his forehead, with what looked like a Michelin logo on the front.
Please don’t turn around and prove me right about how low those pants are riding
. Heaven forbid he should bend over.

“I wish you’d been able to talk to Boyle, too,” Owen said. “Things are moving fast, and there’s no telling what tiny bit of insight might help us protect Carolyne Carlsen better. He’s pretty possessive of her, though—he pressed for details. I have the feeling he’d like to ride to the rescue.”

“You told him nothing?”

“I told him nothing. I believe he’ll call early this evening, at which point I’ll tell him nothing again. He asked us to protect her—he’s paying us to protect her. He might not like what that involves, but he’s out of the loop for now.”

“And is that all?” Kimmer asked suddenly. The man at the garage had disappeared, but she knew he’d be back—and probably bolder. “Is that Hunter’s only interest in this?”

Owen returned a guarded question. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on, Owen. This woman is packing a se
cret that poses a threat to our national security. At what point are you going to tell me that the bottom line is keeping that security intact, regardless of what it means to Carolyne? That stopping the BGs has priority?”

Silence. Then, “Later. Quite a bit later. Never, if things went as I hoped.”

“And are they? Going as you hoped?” Kimmer knew the answer…but she wanted this conversation on the table. Garage Boy reappeared, commencing to saunter in her direction. Kimmer turned away from the window slightly, ignoring him even as he came to stand beside the door, peering through the glare of the sun on the window glass. “Owen?”

“No,” Owen said abruptly. “No, they’re not, and you know it. Now, do we need to have that other conversation?”

“We do,” she said. “Those orders, I want to hear directly.” From behind her came the sound of a knuckle rapping glass.
Arrogant jerk
. She’d stopped to use the phone…what could be more obvious? But no, he had to make it clear that he owned this particular strip of land, and that he therefore had an interest in anything she might do here. She sighed a gust of annoyance. “We’ll have to do this later. I’ve got company, and its name is Bubba.”

“Just keep it in mind, Chimera,” Owen said. “I mean it.”

“So do I,” she said, flicking a hand at Garage Boy without so much as glancing at him, buying a moment. “Later, Owen.”

She folded the cell phone closed and replaced it in her purse with no haste. The impatience from the other
side of the door grew palpable. Finally, one hand still in her purse—and not coincidentally closed around her diminutive war club—she unrolled the window. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Sore-ey
. “Am I in the way? I was just about to buy some gas, but I didn’t want to block your other customers while I called my ma.” Never mind that there weren’t any other customers.

“Just checking.” He eyed the inside of her car, making no attempt to hide his interest. Just plain nosy, more like it. He tipped his hat up against the afternoon sun, revealing enough forehead that Kimmer could be pretty sure his hair wouldn’t make an appearance until much farther back on his head, and said, “We’re out of premium.”

Kimmer gave a little laugh. “As though I’d put premium in this old thing!” She cranked the engine, and he took the clue to step back so she could safely pull up to the pumps, but now he had a puzzled little look on his face, and she didn’t like it. Not with that kind of scrutiny attached. And it shouldn’t matter—he was of no consequence in her life or her assignment.

But it did matter. And she’d learned to listen to that instinct. As she exited the car and went through the motions of pumping gas, she never put her back to him. She gave him a friendly yet distracted smile, letting him know she was aware of him as he leaned against the glass door of the small garage store and watched.

As she replaced the handle at the pump and pulled a few bills from her back pocket, he finally pushed away from the building to approach her, pulling his own wad of bills out in case she needed change. But he was ready to approach her again anyway; everything about his ex
pression gave him away. “Eight-seventy,” he said. “Just topping off, were you?”

“Gas gauge doesn’t work,” she said truthfully enough, handing him a ten. “I like to keep it full.”

He counted out a couple of dirty bills and some coins. “I feel like I’ve seen you before,” he said, and there was something of an accusation in his voice—as though it might be her fault that he found her familiar and yet couldn’t recognize her. “But you don’t live around here, do you?”

“I might for a while,” she said, hoping to change the subject. “You got any place around here you recommend to stay at?” She kept her voice friendly and her posture casual, pocketing her change—showing no signs of the tension that ratcheted along her back, or the sudden cold spot in her stomach.
He knows me
. Munroville was the next town over, and somehow, somewhere, this man had seen her in those years before her escape.

And she had no idea who he was.

She took him in again, assessing his age—he’d lived hard, had unpleasant teeth and the skin of a smoker who spent time in the sun, and for all she knew he was the same age as her. Or he could be ten years older, even fifteen. He’d had his nose broken, and under the baggy jeans and button-front shirt he was starting to gather the pounds.

Even if she’d known him, she wouldn’t necessarily recognize him now. Not with life wearing on him. Not when she’d left this area at fifteen—more than ten years earlier—when many of the teens were still just undeveloped boys and would look entirely different when they
matured to men. With some desperation Kimmer recalled once sitting in a diner beside two women who’d just been to a twentieth high-school reunion. All their girlfriends had been instantly recognizable, but they’d only been able to identify a handful of the men without looking at the name tags.

Kimmer herself wouldn’t know. She’d walked away from her high school and never looked back. She’d since done enough reading, traveling and studying up for assignments until she counted herself as educated as any woman with a college degree, and more educated than most—at least, when she ever thought about it at all. But she’d never encountered anyone from those early years, never had that experience of matching up faces over time.

“Try the Millstream Motel,” the man said abruptly, though he smiled while he was at it. He’d decided to be charming, apparently. Or to be what he thought was charming. “Though there are some boardinghouses around if you end up staying any time.”

Kimmer heard his words as “end up
doing
any time.” As in, prison. She had to shake her thoughts loose before she could smile back. “Thanks. I’ll look up that motel.” She slid into the car without offering him the rest of her cover story, the information she intended to plant once she reached Mill Springs. He was, she could see, the type who would take advantage of such a situation, and she didn’t want to encourage him. Didn’t want him hanging around, didn’t want him watching her long enough that he finally remembered who she used to be.

“I must have been wrong,” he said, pushing the door closed without checking to see if her feet were out of
the way; she yanked them to safety. “I can’t imagine ever forgetting someone like you.”

Ah. He thought himself gallant. She smiled as though he had been. “That’s sweet. Maybe I’ll see you in town sometime.”
I need the sprinting practice
. After all,
run away
was a sound strategy. It had worked for her in the past.

Run away
.

Too bad she was now going in the wrong direction.

Kimmer drove into Mill Springs with the decided feeling that two different people occupied her body, one of whom already knew this place. The town’s age, its lost-in-time look of solid red brick buildings and streets lined with establishments set so closely they might as well have been the same building…the age of the trees lining the sidewalks. Huge maples, dressed to kill in startling scarlet-orange hues, soon to inspire much raking and mulching…

At least it wasn’t spring. In spring, the gingko trees made the air smell like the bottom of a sun-warmed pigsty. The thought came unbidden, reminding her of just how many other well-preserved memories lay in wait.

Bonnie Miller drove into Mill Springs, on the run from her temperamental boyfriend. Ready to make a new start.

Kimmer Reed fled from Munroville, on the run from an abusive family and a brother ready to give her away. Underfed, dressed in clothes scavenged from her brothers, bruised from their pinches and slapping and battered in soul by their cruelty. Ready to make a new start
.

Bonnie Miller had her Taurus. She carried her life in a small suitcase and duffel, and had left the remainder
of her belongings in a small storage locker. She needed work, and she needed a town that would take her in as one of their own.

Kimmer Reed had her thumb, and the uncanny knack of choosing a safe ride. She carried her life in a ratty little bag and clung to a battered Instamatic camera and the memory of a mother who exhorted her to escape. She needed work, and a town that would leave her alone. She needed a life
.

Kimmer poked herself. She literally poked herself, jamming a finger into toned stomach muscle. “Stop that,” she said out loud, braking at one of the few lights in the town. Obediently, the thoughts receded. She’d had years of practice at chasing them away, and the first flush of them, triggered by this little town so much like Munroville, retreated quickly.