Beautifully Broken (The Broken Series Book 2)

by Ruff, K. S.

  We were one of the last teams to approach the registration desk. They quickly checked us in, handed us a thick manila envelope, and programmed our phone numbers into their computer system. We couldn’t open the envelope until the bull horn sounded. Suddenly, a horn blared and a loud cheer went up. We ripped open the large manila envelope and quickly programmed our phones with the designated number for texting pictures. Kadyn read all twelve challenges. Cenia plotted the first few activities and locations on the map. As soon as we had four locations, we sprinted toward Habib’s car. The place was complete chaos with hundreds of people scrambling in different directions.

  As soon as we approached the car, Kadyn shouted, “The YMCA, Habib!” We dove into the car. Habib’s tires squealed as he pulled away from the curb. He was clearly taking his role on our team very seriously.

  We tried to work through the more difficult clues while Habib drove. We scoured the Internet on our phones as we tried to decipher a number of riddles and puzzles. Before I knew it, Habib was pulling in front of the YMCA. We sprinted inside the building, where we discovered that we had to choose between walking barefoot on glass or bending rebar with our necks. We quickly shed our shoes and walked gingerly across the glass while snapping pictures of one another completing the task.

  I hopped down the sidewalk while tugging my shoes back on. “I can’t believe we didn’t get cut!”

  Cenia yelled over her shoulder as she ran toward the car. “I say we do the Beyonce dance challenge next. We have to recruit four strangers to dance to a Beyonce song with us. If we solved the riddle correctly, we need to document this in front of the Peeps store in the National Harbor.”

  We jumped into the car. “National Harbor, near the Peeps store,” Kadyn shouted at Habib.

  “I just texted pictures of the three of you walking on glass,” Phil announced.

  Cenia began typing on her phone. “I’ll text your picture in, Phil.”

  “I just downloaded the song ‘Single Ladies,’” I chimed in.

  Habib wove through traffic as he raced toward the National Harbor. He pulled up as close as he could to the Peeps store. Cenia and I quickly identified four teenage girls who we thought would be ecstatic to dance with us once they got a load of Kadyn and Phil. They were thrilled. In fact, they snapped off more pictures than we did.

  Kadyn shoved a few dollar bills in one of the girl’s hands. “Thanks for the dance. This is for the Peeps.”

  I gaped at him as he popped a Hello Kitty Peep in his mouth. “She gave you her Peeps?”

  Kadyn nodded and offered me one. I quickly snatched it out of his hand. The Peep was still in my mouth when I caught up with Cenia.

  Cenia held her hand out for one of Kadyn’s Peeps. “I think I just got schooled! Those girls had some serious moves,” she exclaimed breathlessly.

  “You’re telling me,” Kadyn remarked. He opened the door to the car.

  I punched him in the arm as hard as I could.

  He didn’t bother flinching. He grinned as I shook out my hand.

  Habib looked thoroughly entertained. “Where to next?” he asked as we piled into the car.

  “The Lincoln Memorial,” Phil answered. He explained the next challenge as Habib pulled into traffic. “We need to record the first letter of every fifth word written to the right of Lincoln.”

  I glanced at him, confused. “Why can’t we just pull that up on our cell phones?”

  “We can, but we also have to take a picture in front of Lincoln,” Phil explained.

  Cenia was already searching for the passage. “Wait, his right or our right as we’re facing him?”

  “His right, our left,” Phil clarified.

  “That’s the Gettysburg Address,” Kadyn offered without even looking at his phone.

  “I’m on it,” Cenia mumbled. She pulled the image up on her phone and began writing letters in the notebook the sponsors had given us.

  Habib didn’t bother parking this time. He stopped the car in traffic near the memorial, and we all scrambled out. We sprinted across the lawn and up the marble stairs. Kadyn recruited someone to take our picture. We sat on the steps to catch our breath as Cenia finished recording the letters.

  Kadyn peered over Cenia’s shoulder. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I’ll take it from here,” Phil offered before lowering his voice. Remember, this is just the starting point. This puzzle is a cryptograph, so these letters won’t make any sense… not until we figure out which letters they are meant to represent. They aren’t going to make this too difficult, so they probably used a simple substitution cipher.” Phil scribbled out the alphabet forward and then backwards directly underneath. He looked around suspiciously, then motioned us back toward Habib’s car.

  We quickly made our way to the car. Phil placed the notebook on the hood while he wrote. The rest of us hovered over him. “See, if we substitute each of the letters Cenia found with its polar opposite at the end of the alphabet, the sentence will form words.” Phil played with the letters, then read the message, “St. team to complete the Great Urban Race is a rotten egg. Keep itre.”

  “The first and last few letters still don’t make sense,” Cenia complained irritably.

  Kadyn handed her another Peep.

  I glanced over the clue sheet, then pulled up a picture of Lincoln’s statue on my cell phone. “Wait, we haven’t completed the last part of the clue… the one about his hands. See here? His right hand forms an ‘L’ and his left hand forms an ‘A’ in American Sign Language. We were supposed to add ‘LA’ to the beginning of the first word and ‘AL’ to the end of the last word we formed after we deciphered the letters.”

  “Got it!” Phil shouted excitedly. “Last team to complete the Great Urban Race is a rotten egg. Keep it real.” Phil took a picture of the answer and texted it in.

  “What’s next on the list?” I inquired curiously.

  Kadyn looked at the list of challenges. “We need to find a bike vendor near the Tidal Basin. He’ll let us use the bikes for free if we tell him the moon is made of banana cream pie.”

  “God, that sounds good,” Phil moaned.

  Kadyn rolled his eyes as he gave Phil the last remaining Peep.

  I poked my head in the car. “Habib… a bike rental place near the Tidal Basin?”

  Habib nodded. “I know where it is. Hop in.” We climbed into the car.

  Kadyn continued to explain the task, “We need to ask for tandem bikes and convince four strangers to go with us. We have to take pictures to prove that they did.”

  I balked at the idea. “You have got to be kidding me! Who’s going to jump onto a bike with us?”

  This time, Cenia scouted out four college boys who were willing to come along for the ride. One of them gave her his phone number when we returned the bikes.

  Cenia grinned as she rejoined the group. “Next task?”

  I wrapped my arm around her, totally excited about the next challenge. “We have to go to the Marrakesh and take pictures of the four of us feeding each other Moroccan food and learning how to belly dance.”

  A mischievous smile tugged at the corner of Cenia’s mouth. “The guys have to learn too?”

  I nodded as a huge grin spread across my face.

  “That’s awesome,” she responded. We piled back into Habib’s car.

  We made Habib join us for lunch. We were surprised to learn that the Marrakesh didn’t offer any silverware. Our waiter washed our hands for us as soon as we were seated at a low table surrounded by a pile of colorful pillows. The challenge prohibited us from feeding ourselves, so I absently shoved a handful of meat pie into Kadyn’s mouth while I studied the remaining seven tasks. Kadyn returned the favor. The meat pie was wrapped inside a flaky crust, which was dusted in powdered sugar. It was absolutely delicious.

  I looked up from the list of tasks. “I think I finally have this one figured out. We have to collect chocolate from Belgium’s embassy, ice from Iceland’s embassy, and beer fro
m Germany’s embassy.”

  Kadyn shoved more meat pie in my face as soon as I finished speaking.

  I shot him a dirty look. Everyone laughed as I wiped powdered sugar from my nose.

  Cenia fed Phil a piece of roasted chicken in a more civilized manner. “That should be easy.”

  Kadyn held up his hand before I could shove another handful of food in his mouth. “I just finished all ten brain teasers from the Forbes website. Cenia, you need to take a picture of my results.”

  Cenia wiped her hands on her napkin, picked up her cell phone, and quickly snapped off a picture of the screen on Kadyn’s phone. She forwarded the photo in a text. “Great! That’s another task down. We have six remaining.”

  “Make that five,” Phil corrected. “I found a picture of the James Madison statue in the Library of Congress and was able to enlarge it enough to make out the dates. Once I played around with the numbers, I was able to decipher the puzzle. It says, ‘Don’t quit.’”

  I shot Phil an incredulous look. “Just how high do you score on intelligence tests, anyway?”

  Phil tried not to smile. “One hundred seventy-eight.”

  I turned toward Kadyn. “And you?”

  Kadyn smiled. “One hundred seventy-six, but that was a bit of an off day for me.”

  I looked at Cenia. She just shook her head.

  One of the belly dancers shimmied up to our table. “It’s now or never,” I warned my friends. The four of us rose from the table. Habib remained seated so I walked around the table and pulled him to his feet. “No way are you getting out of this.”

  Habib laughed as I pulled him toward the belly dancers.

  As soon as we snapped off some pictures of each of us learning how to belly dance, we jumped back into the car so Habib could drive us to Embassy Row. We quickly divided up the tasks. Phil went to retrieve the beer, Cenia and I went for the chocolate, and Kadyn settled for the ice. We had to take pictures of each of the items so we could throw the ice before it melted, eat the chocolate, and drink the beer.

  We had to find a costume store for the next challenge. We were tasked with finding uniforms that fit our registered team name. We had registered as the Justice League, so it was easy to find superhero costumes. The hard part was wearing the costumes in public for the remainder of the race. Kadyn chose a Batman costume. No surprise there. Phil was Spiderman. Cenia chose Wonder Woman, and I dressed as Supergirl. Thankfully, there were six hundred other people racing through DC in costumes, so we didn’t stand out… much.

  For the third task we had to find a sushi restaurant that would serve us raw squid. Each and every one of us had to eat the nasty stuff. Phil was the only one who liked it. I wiped my tongue on the napkin and drank a full bottle of Sprite to rinse the taste out of my mouth. Cenia and Kadyn assured me it was better than eating bugs, which they evidently had to eat at survival training. The restaurant staff gave us the squid for free after we let them take pictures of us in our superhero costumes.

  Habib drove us back down to the Tidal Basin so we could race relay style in paddle boats across the basin. It was painfully obvious who the weakest link was on that task. A number of children approached us after the paddle boat race to ask if they could take pictures with us. We didn’t think it would be appropriate for superheroes to refuse, so we spent a good twenty minutes posing for pictures.

  We had to return to the National Mall for the final task. We were promptly fitted with leg irons and handcuffs. Thankfully our wrists were handcuffed in the front, because we had to run a wheelbarrow race against ten other teams while still in the cuffs. Given the arm strength required, we decided the best approach would be for Cenia and me to hold Kadyn and Phil’s legs while they hopped their hands across the lawn.

  The four of us collapsed on the ground on the other side of the finish line. We were the twenty-ninth team to complete the race, which we agreed was remarkable considering it was our first year in the competition.

  Habib dropped us off at Kadyn’s place. We walked over to his old apartment, where we joined Mason, Gabi, Marie, and Roger for pizza. There was no end to the ribbing over our costumes.

  It was after eleven when Kadyn finally drove me home. My entire body ached from the race, so I grabbed my iPod and portable speaker and ran a bath. I threw in some lavender bath salts before settling in to enjoy the steaming water. I examined my wrists and ankles as I lie in the bathtub listening to Ella Fitzgerald. They were rubbed raw from the cuffs. The angry red marks threw me back to another place and time... the time when Justin handcuffed me to the bathroom sink and left me without food for days.

  I tried to shake the haunting images as I washed and rinsed my hair. I was still battling those memories when I climbed out of the tub. I toweled off, brushed my teeth, and slipped a silk camisole and short set on as I got ready for bed.

  I took some Ibuprofen and a sleeping pill before burrowing under the covers. I nudged my thoughts toward the race as I tried to force Justin from my mind. I smiled as I reflected on the day’s activities. I couldn’t remember the last time I had so much fun. My thoughts shifted toward Shae and the job she wanted me to apply for. I yawned as I made a quick mental note to e-mail her my resume in the morning.

  My smile faded as my thoughts spun toward Rafael. I still couldn’t believe I had seen him this morning. What was he doing in Virginia, and why had he walked away without speaking to me? My chest tightened as I questioned whether I would see him again. I had avoided calling Rafael for months because I didn’t want to be reminded of the life I had with Michael, and I didn’t want Rafael to feel pressured to maintain our friendship because I knew it would cause problems between him and Michael.

  I reached for my cell phone, which was still charging on the nightstand. I slowly scrolled through the contacts. Rafael’s number was still there. Maybe I should call... My thumb hovered over his number as my vision blurred. I was still holding the phone when I drifted off to sleep.

  * * * * * *

  It was another dream. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I knew it was another dream. I wanted out, desperately, but the sleeping pill held me firmly under. Tears flowed from Michael’s eyes as he grabbed my face and kissed me roughly on the lips. “Go,” he rasped. I could feel his hand on my face, taste his tears, smell his cologne.

  I felt myself falling. My knees hit the floor. The words were thick and jumbled in my mouth. “No, Michael, please don’t make me go. I love you. I can’t breathe without you. I need you, Michael. Please, I’m begging you to let me stay.”

  “Go. Now,” he yelled more forcefully. “Leave me!” he screamed.

  I sobbed as pain radiated through my chest. I clutched at my chest, but my hands were already there. “No,” my mind whispered. “Not yours.” I struggled to make sense of it. “Not mine, not mine, not mine,” echoed through my brain.

  Warm arms strengthened their hold. My tears stalled as my brain fought against the remaining dredges of sleep. My eyes fluttered opened and slowly focused. I was in my room, safely tucked in bed. I sighed. Michael’s words still lingered in my mind. I could still smell the cedar and cloves from his cologne. My pillow was soaked, my face still wet with tears. I reached for my chest again, hoping to ease the pinched feeling that had settled there while I slept.

  I froze. There were hands… and arms wrapped firmly around me. I looked down at caramel colored skin. I slammed my eyes shut, then opened them again. The arms were still there. My breath caught sharply. My heart beat a crescendo until I could hear nothing else. I grasped the arm that was draped over me, needing some assurance it was real. Slowly, I turned.

  His face looked beautifully broken in the strands of moonlight that poured between the blinds of my bedroom window. Dark eyebrows were knit with concern, framing soft brown eyes steeped in pain.

  I tightened my hold on his well-sculpted arm. I was certain he would disappear the moment I released him. My heart beat once… twice… then stopped. The air rushed out of my lungs as his name fell
breathlessly across my lips. “Rafael?”

  # # #

  About the Author

  I live in Northern Virginia with my football-crazed husband, two beautiful daughters, two psychotic Shih Tzus, and two freakishly large goldfish. I teach courses in international relations, foreign policy, peacekeeping, and human security at the American Military University. I also work as a reading tutor at my daughters’ elementary school. What can I say? I still love school. Reading has long been my passion, so I belong to not one but two book clubs, which I fondly refer to as my “good girl bookclub” and my “bad girl bookclub.” Suffice it to say the “bad girl bookclub” is the one that decided to read Fifty Shades of Gray.

  I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. In my childhood, I loved writing poetry, song lyrics, and short stories. Somehow, this morphed into supreme court briefs, government reports, congressional bills, journal articles, and op ed pieces as I grew older. And now? I’m writing romantic suspense novels. God only knows why.

  Thanks for reading this second book in the broken series. Keep reading for more information on book three in the series. I love hearing from my readers, so please stop by ksruff.com, drop me a note, and let me know what you thought about the book!

  Additional books by K.S. Ruff

  broken wings

  book three in the broken series

  Just when she thinks she’s gotten her life pieced back together, Kristine Stone wakes to a searing kiss from someone unexpected. This dark angel is determined to win her heart, and he refuses to play fair. This doesn’t sit well with her former lover, Kadyn Rand, who yanks the rug out from under her when he confesses he wants to be more than just friends. She refuses to choose and gets roped into an impossible dating agreement, that she is quite certain will land her a one way ticket to hell. Amidst all this insanity, a new friend presents an exciting opportunity to work for an international organization devoted to peace-building. When Kristine joins her friend in Sevastopol to train university students in conflict resolution, she finds herself accused of being a spy by a security agency deeply entrenched in the former KGB. A chance run-in with the Russian Mafia proves beneficial as three men from her past are forced to work together in an effort to save her life.