Broken, p.1
Broken, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF SHILOH WALKER FRAGILE
“An exciting character-driven romantic suspense thriller.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Fragile is about the delicate balance of vulnerability and strength that can be brought on by trauma. It’s about love in the face of insurmountable odds. And it’s about suspense, mystery, and terror . . . All in all, this is an excellently crafted mystery and romance!”
—Errant Dreams Reviews
“The suspense sneaks up on you like a good thriller should . . . One of the best contemporary romances I have read in an age.”
—A Romance Review
“A complex and intense story that addresses some very dark and disturbing issues . . . One of the most satisfying reads I’ve had in a while.”
—CK2S Kwips and Kritiques
“A fast-paced book that sizzles with suspense and sexual tension equally.”
—Night Owl Romance
“Walker is a master storyteller, and this book has everything you could possibly want in a suspenseful romance. I hope she writes more like this!”
—Manic Readers
“This book offers suspense, romance, and an ending that I can’t say anything about—because that would be a spoiler, yes? I recommend reading this one.”
—The Best Reviews
THE MISSING
“A page-turner from the very start. Intense and fast-paced, the action is gritty, the emotion heart-wrenching, and the characters lively. Sexy and romantic, this tale has plenty of action—of the erotic kind—and is loaded with suspense. No wonder Ms. Walker is loved by fans everywhere. This is a winner.”
—Fresh Fiction
“[A] romantic spine tingler . . . A sweet love story alternates with an exciting manhunt.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This is a great romantic suspense that grips the audience . . . Action packed.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Walker certainly has a future in paranormal and/or romantic suspense.”
—The Romance Reader
THROUGH THE VEIL
“[A] hold-on-to-your-seat tale of demons, hunky warriors, and witches served with a mix of love and betrayal. Fun! If you enjoy otherworldly, action-packed adventures with a hot and steamy romance, this is for you.”
—Fresh Fiction
“A good read . . . Walker obviously has an unmatched imagination.”
—Romance Reader at Heart
“Action, adventure, and romance abound . . . An engaging tale.”
—Romance Reviews Today
“A fabulous, action-packed romantic fantasy . . . Fans will believe that the world on the other side of the veil exists, which is key to this fine tale.”
—Midwest Book Review
HUNTER’S SALVATION
“One of the best tales in a series that always achieves high marks . . . An excellent thriller.”
—Midwest Book Review
HUNTERS: HEART AND SOUL
“Some of the best erotic romantic fantasies on the market. Walker’s world is vibrantly alive with this pair.”
—The Best Reviews
HUNTING THE HUNTER
“Action, sex, savvy writing, and characters with larger-than-life personalities that you will not soon forget are where Ms. Walker’s talents lie, and she delivered all that and more . . . This is a flawless five-rose paranormal novel, and one that every lover of things that go bump in the night will be howling about after they read it . . . Do not walk! Run to get your copy today!”
—A Romance Review
“An exhilarating romantic fantasy filled with suspense and . . . star-crossed love . . . Action packed.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Fast paced and very readable . . . Titillating.”
—The Romance Reader
“Action-packed, with intriguing characters and a very erotic punch, Hunting the Hunter had me from page one. Thoroughly enjoyable with a great hero and a story line you can sink your teeth into, this book is a winner. A very good read!”
—Fresh Fiction
Titles by Shiloh Walker
HUNTING THE HUNTER
HUNTERS: HEART AND SOUL
HUNTER’S SALVATION
THROUGH THE VEIL
HUNTER’S NEED
THE MISSING
FRAGILE
BROKEN
Anthologies
HOT SPELL
(with Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, and Meljean Brook)
PRIVATE PLACES
(with Robin Schone, Claudia Dain, and Allyson James)
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2010 by Shiloh Walker, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. BERKLEY® SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / March 2010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walker, Shiloh.
Broken/Shiloh Walker.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-18573-5
1. Bounty hunters—Fiction. 2. Neighbors—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.A35958B76 2010
813’.6—dc22
2009044142
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Lora Leigh, who told me to get
Quinn’s story done before I even knew
he had one. You were right—the book
had been out no more than a week
when I started getting e-mails asking for
Quinn’s story.
For Renee, answering the million and
one questions about St. Louis.
For Traici Sexton, answering the million
and one questions about bailbond
enforcements and bounty hunting.
For Lauren Dane, for the chat sessions
when I was trying to plot this story out.
For my friend Susan . . . may brighter
days await you.
And for my kids and my husband. I love
you all so much. I thank God for you,
every day of my life.
ONE
MAD. Quinn could hear it in her voice: the old lady was mad.
Hell, screw mad. She was fucking pissed. Quinn swallowed the bitter taste bubbling up in his throat. It wasn’t a new thing, her being mad. She spent most of her life that way, or at least it sure seemed like that to him. At eleven years old, he couldn’t really think of a time when she hadn’t been mad over something.
Mad because she didn’t have the money to score some drugs.
Mad because she didn’t have the money to buy more booze.
Mad because the landlord wouldn’t take a blowjob in exchange for rent.
Mad because of Quinn—just because he existed.
Always mad about something.
Still, going by that shrill tone in her voice, he had a feeling it was worse than usual this time. He glanced around the dirty little apartment where they lived, calculating the distance to the door, wondering if he could get a window open without her hearing him.
Looking for escape, even though there wasn’t one.
It had all of three rooms, a main room where his mother slept on the couch , a kitchen that hadn’t ever been used, and a bathroom with a toilet that was permanently stained with urine and shit. He didn’t eat in that kitchen, and the only time he used the bathroom was when he had to piss or take a shower under the stingy showerhead.
When he could, he avoided even that. He’d rather sneak into a youth center and get a shower there. Sometimes he even pretended that he might stay, pretended that he could trust the adults there enough to think about staying.
He had found another nice youth center—he’d been going there for a while. It was clean, warm . . . safe. Not the nicest, but still. It was warm there. Warm, cleaner than anyplace he’d ever lived, the people who ran the joint didn’t yell at him . . . and they had books.
Quinn didn’t own a single book, but he loved to read.
He’d given up trying to keep any books for himself after what had happened the last time his mother had found his stash. She’d beaten him, but that hadn’t been the worst. She’d burned every book, right in front of him, tossing them into the sink and using her lighter to set the pages on fire.
All but one. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. That book, she hadn’t burned. It had been a gift from a lady that worked at the Calumet Youth Center, a teen shelter run out of a church back in Indianapolis. It still had a card in it—Quinn had been using the card as a bookmark, unwilling to bend the pages of the book given to him by one of the ladies at the shelter.
Because he hadn’t thrown that card away, his mom had found out about the shelter where he went almost every day. Because he hadn’t thrown that card out, a nice lady had gotten the shit beat out of her by his psycho mother. While he watched, scared, mad, and confused.
It had been two years since that happened, and it left a mark on him, one that wouldn’t ever fade. Sometimes he wished he hadn’t ever stumbled past the threshold of Calumet Christian Church, and at the same time, he wished he hadn’t taken off the few times the people there had tried to help him. If he’d let them help, if he hadn’t run when he’d suspected they were calling Social Services on him, he might have gotten away from his mother. Then again if he hadn’t ever gone there, a nice lady wouldn’t have gotten beaten just for trying to help him.
God, his mother had been mad that day.
About as mad as she sounded now, he thought. He swallowed and wished there was another way out of here. The only way, though, was through the front door. Even as he eyed the windows, he knew he wouldn’t get them open without her hearing. He was pretty fast, but still . . . he wasn’t going to risk trying to climb out on the fire escape when she was that mad. She just might try to push him.
He was going to have to risk the door. He could hear the sounds of breaking glass, her voice rising as she ranted and cussed.
Slipping out of the bathroom, he kept his back pressed to the wall and inched down the short hallway. She was in the kitchen. If he was quiet enough . . .
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
Quinn froze. He swallowed the bile boiling up his throat and made himself look at his mother. “Nowhere.”
“Fucking liar. Worthless fucking liar.” She sneered at him, curling her lip and revealing teeth that were past the yellow stage and edging toward gray. Some were already close to black. “You taking off to that damned library again? Or are you sneaking off to one of those stupid shelters?”
He didn’t respond.
“You ain’t nothing but trash. They don’t want your kind there,” she muttered, shaking her head. Then she frowned and turned back to the mostly empty cabinets, looking at them as though she couldn’t quite understand how they’d come to be empty. “What did you do with my drinks?”
“Nothing.” He jammed his hands into the grubby pockets of his jeans and stared at the floor. He watched her from under his lashes, though. Watched. Waited.
Part of him wanted to tell her that she’d finished up the rest of her tequila the night before and she’d run out of whiskey a few days earlier. But he wasn’t going to do that. He liked keeping his teeth in his mouth, and the last time he’d reminded her she’d finished all of her booze, she’d tried to knock a few out. Or least it had felt that way.
“Bullshit. Somebody had to go and drink it.”
Somebody did—you. Still, as much as he wanted to say that, Quinn kept quiet.
She glared at him. Even though he wasn’t looking at her, he could feel that angry gaze, all but burning through him. “Fucking useless brat,” she muttered. “So worthless. Why in the hell did I ever have you?”
He kept an eye on her as she lit a cigarette, watched the way her hands were shaking. Fuck. That was bad. When she got the shakes, it was always bad.
His mind raced furiously. He needed to get out of there. He could almost hear her ticking, a time bomb ready to go off. He swallowed the bile that burned in his throat and looked up, shoving his long hair back from his face. “I thought maybe you had stashed something under the sink in the bathroom the last time that Sam guy was here.”
She had . . . but then she’d drunk it the next day. But she never remembered drinking the booze.
Just like he’d hoped, she took off down the narrow hallway, making a beeline for the bathroom. The second her back was turned, he headed for the door, pausing only long enough to grab the backpack he always kept tucked behind the ragged couch. She yelled from the bathroom, but he didn’t wait.
No way. No how.
HIS belly was full, pleasantly so, and he was wearing some clothes that were the closest to new that he’d had in a good long while. The youth center had sponsored a clothing drive, and one of the ladies had pushed some clothes into his hands when he showed up at the shelter two days earlier.
Although they’d offered him a bed, Quinn hadn’t slept there. He’d gone back each day for a meal and a shower before walking to school. He didn’t always like going to school, but that was mostly because of the idiots there, not because of school itself.
If it wasn’t for the idiots, he’d actually like school a lot—learning shit was definitely better than hanging around anywhere close to his mother. There were times when he found himself staring at some of the kids, enviously listening to them talk about their parents, seeing a movie on the weekend, taking vacations.
Normal stuff.
Or at least he guessed it was normal. For Quinn, normal was sleeping with one eye open. Wearing clothes he’d either stolen from someplace or hand-me-down stuff he picked up at shelters. Going to bed hungry and waking up cold because she didn’t think about food or heating bills, not when she could use the money on booze or drugs.
For Quinn, normal sucked.
Standing in front of the door to their apartment, he listened to the noises coming through and wished he had headed back to the shelter instead of coming here. But he’d already spent too much time at that one—the past two days, and then a few weeks earlier, he’d been there another couple of days. If he hung around any one place too long, somebody almost always made a call to Social Services, and he wasn’t doing that shit again.
It was almost worst than home.
Besides, it was the middle of the month and that meant at some point, his mom’s caseworker would be by. Quinn needed to make sure the rattrap was as clean as he could make it, and do what he could with the drugs and stuff that she might have picked up over the past few days—and figure out how to remind her about what time of month it was without her belting him.
