Broken Read Online Free PDF

breathe normally without worrying about the hazard it might pose to her health. Someplace where she wasn’t constantly hearing the conversations from her neighbors, someplace where she didn’t have to share a bathroom with three other tenants would be a godsend.
    But there were a number of things that kept the nicer places out of her reach, and finding a tolerable one was getting harder and harder.
    From the apartment below hers, she heard a crash, followed by raised, angry voices. Tuning them out, she covered her face with her hands and thought longingly of the time when she’d woken up in a nice comfy bed. Back then, she’d always slept naked, loving the way her black silk sheets felt as she snuggled into them.
    The feel of silk was nothing but a memory now.
    Sleeping naked was just plain stupid—you didn’t want to be naked when the only locks on the door could be broken by a persistent two-year-old or a clumsy drunk. She slept in cotton jersey pants and a T-shirt, with her hand wrapped around a canister of Mace.
    Once upon a time, she’d had a cute little cottage, and her bedroom had taken up most of the second floor. The walls had been painted a dark, vivid shade of purple, and framed prints of fairies had danced upon them. Her bedroom used to smell like vanilla, lavender, and spice, courtesy of her love for potpourri and candles.
    Now she had the lovely odor of unwashed bodies, faulty plumbing, mold, mildew, and fried food lingering in the air. She’d given up potpourri and candles long ago, which was a good thing, because it would have been money down the drain in this dump. No amount of Glade, no amount of Febreze, no amount of potpourri would do anything to improve the atmosphere here.
    Candles might—if she lit a few dozen and then the room accidentally caught on fire. If the place burned to the ground, that would be a huge improvement.
    The alarm clock on her cell phone chirped and she sighed, pushed a hand through her hair. It was a drab shade, caught somewhere between brown and blonde and cut to chin length. She never let it grow much longer, although she took care of cutting it herself these days.
    Questions warred in her mind as she reached for her phone, staring at the time. She had someplace she was supposed to be, but right now, she wasn’t entirely sure she should go.
    She knew she wanted to, but that was a far cry from knowing if she should .
    The voices downstairs rose once more, and as if on cue, voices from the apartment overhead joined in. Surrounded by angry, raised shouts on what felt like all sides, Sara dropped back on the mattress and reached out, blindly feeling around the little plastic crate that served as a table.
    Her fingers brushed up against the napkin and she lifted it, read the address.
    Hell. What could it hurt?

    YOU can know who a person is simply by staring into their eyes.
    Somebody had said that to her once, and they were words she lived by.
    Sara kept sunglasses on whenever possible. She avoided looking people in the eyes at all costs. If she’d kept to that rule a little more firmly, she might not be standing on a nice tree-lined street in St. Louis’s West End. Which would mean she might not have this odd, itchy sensation that something big was going to happen.
    Some sort of change. Sara wasn’t exactly opposed to change, provided she got to do it on her terms and had some control over things. But this wouldn’t be one of those changes. She knew it in her bones.
    Slipping her sunglasses up, she eyed the old house in front of her. It had been done up into apartments, and she could already see that somebody put a lot of time and love into it.
    Gnawing on her lower lip, she shifted from one foot to the other. She didn’t need to be here. She should have just thrown the address away the second she had a chance. But she hadn’t. She was here, and now she was debating about whether she should just hightail it back to the bus stop and disappear.
    Only one thing kept her