Exception to the Rule. Doranna Durgin

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 secret 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 expression 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