The One Safe Place. Kathleen O'Brien

she said. “I can’t let him chase me into a hole like a frightened mouse. What if you never do catch him? Am I going to live in that hole for the rest of my life?”

      “We’ll catch him,” he repeated doggedly. “If it really is Doug Lambert, we’ll get him. And if it’s someone else, we’ll get him, too.”

      “It’s Doug, damn it. It has to be. A millionaire who has been stalking me for months suddenly vanishes the day after my sister’s murder, and you think it’s a coincidence?”

      “It might be. It’s my job to consider all the possibilities. I’ve told you that a thousand times, Faith.”

      She felt her anger rising even higher. She was breathing fast, and the air tasted horribly of hospital, a bitter concoction of alcohol and sickness. She sensed her anger was irrational, maybe even artificially induced by shock and fear, and yet she was so filled with its roiling power that she could hardly lie still for the doctor to go on working.

      Bentley’s attitude was frustrating to the point of madness. Doug had killed her sister. And now he was trying to kill her. She didn’t want a single hour wasted looking for other suspects.

      “I saw him there that morning. And he knows it. He knows I am the only one who can place him at my apartment. That’s why he tried to shoot me today.”

      “Maybe,” the detective agreed calmly. “And maybe not. Stray shootings aren’t exactly unheard of in this city, you know.”

      “Bull.” She tried not to go any further with the profanity, though it was pushing at her throat, trying to explode through her fragile control. “That’s absurd. You’re not an idiot, Detective. How can you possibly swallow so many huge coincidences all at once?”

      “I can’t. At least not without some serious chewing.” The detective shifted in the hospital chair, which was far too small for his six-foot-plus body. “Truth is, I hate coincidences. Which is why I want you to get the hell out of this town, Faith, and let us do our jobs.”

      Hadn’t he been listening? Faith raised up on her elbow and twisted to look at him. “I told you I—”

      “Please.” The young doctor had been steadfastly ignoring the debate between Faith and Detective Bentley, but at her movement he looked up, aggrieved. “I need you to be still. You two can work this out when I’m done.”

      “I’m sorry.” But Faith couldn’t lie back down. Her adrenaline was pumping too wildly, making her veins feel slightly electrified. She felt as if she could leap off this table, run right out and capture Doug Lambert single-handedly. She glared hard at the detective.

      “I’m serious. I’m not going to scuttle away. I am not afraid of him anymore. Let him try to kill me if he thinks he can.”

      Bentley met Faith’s bravado with dark, serious eyes. Those eyes had seen too much, she thought suddenly. And now they saw everything, even the things she was trying to hide.

      “Okay.” He paused. “And what about your nephew? If the boy is with you, he’ll probably get killed, too. Is that also okay?”

      Faith stared at him a minute, hating him. And then, the adrenaline leaking out of her like water from an opened drain, she lowered herself slowly back onto the table.

      Spencer.

      She shut her eyes, feeling herself go limp. She had been right to cling desperately to her anger. The adrenaline had been the only thing that stood between her and the razor edge of meltdown.

      The doctor took advantage of her momentary quiescence, knit his final stitch and tied it off. He stood, peeling off his latex gloves, obviously eager to depart before things got emotionally out of hand. Blood he could handle. Tears obviously were a different story.

      That was his youth, Faith thought vaguely. Though she was only twenty-five, she felt a thousand years older than this young man. You had to cry a lot yourself before other people’s tears didn’t scare you anymore.

      “Tell you what,” the doctor said, picking up her chart and scribbling in it. “I’ll leave you two to finish this. Let my nurse know when you’re ready, and she’ll apply the dressing. Detective, if you need anything more, have them page me.”

      No one tried to stop him. And then Faith and the policeman were alone in the little alcove formed by the long white curtain. It wasn’t really a shelter, but it at least offered the illusion of privacy.

      Still lying on her side, Faith stared at the huge silver hooks that held the drape on its semicircular rod. But she didn’t really see any of that. Instead she saw Spencer, his brown eyes wide and liquid with fear, his skinny, six-year-old body trembling, his hand creeping into hers. His pain locked somewhere so deep inside him it couldn’t make its way out in words.

      Spencer.

      Grief and guilt seeped in again, in the void the adrenaline and anger had left behind. She felt suddenly too heavy to move.

      “And even if Lambert doesn’t bother killing the kid,” Detective Bentley went on conversationally, as if the subject truly intrigued him. “What does Spencer do when you’re gone? When he’s lost his mother and you?”

      She didn’t answer. The anaesthetic was starting to wear off, and her arm had begun to throb.

      The policeman didn’t seem to notice her silence. He just kept talking, as if mulling over the subject with an idle curiosity.

      “Well, I guess he’d just have to go into foster care. It’s my understanding you’re the only family he’s got left—am I right? Kind of tough on the kid, though, wouldn’t you say? Foster care can be pretty grim. They don’t even stay in one home very long before—”

      She closed her eyes. “Detective.”

      “Yes?” He sounded annoyingly smug, as if he had predicted to the nanosecond exactly when her resistance would vanish.

      “That’s enough,” she said softly. “You win.”

      “I do?”

      “Yes. I’ll go. I’ll go to—” She took a deep breath, though the air was sharp with disinfectant. “What did you say this mouse-hole you’ve found for me is called?”

      “Actually, I didn’t say,” he answered politely. “You didn’t ask. But now that you have, I’m happy to tell you. This mouse-hole, as you put it, just happens to be upstate, in a rather beautiful little mountain town called Firefly Glen.”

      ON THE WAY down to his veterinary clinic the next morning, Reed Fairmont looked around his quiet home, a rambling, lovingly renovated farmhouse from the 1800s, and tried to imagine strangers living here.

      Frankly, he just couldn’t do it. In the two years since Melissa died, he’d come to terms with solitude. More than that—he’d come to like it. He’d come to need it.

      And yet, by dinnertime today, these total strangers, this Faith Constable, who had somehow tangled with a murderer, and her nephew Spencer, who apparently was emotionally disturbed, would be here.

      And then what? No more quiet dinners with the newspaper, that was for sure. No more smoky jazz on the stereo when he couldn’t sleep at three in the morning. No more burning off the day’s tension by banging weights around in the exercise room at midnight.

      And lately he’d begun to start thinking about maybe dating again, just as another way to work off tension. Well, forget that, too.

      Hell. Damn Parker Tremaine anyhow. Reed should never have let Parker talk him into this. That was a lawyer for you. They started talking, and before they were finished you found yourself agreeing with them.

      He slammed the door that cut the rest of the house off from the clinic, something so out of character that Justine Millner, his receptionist, looked up, a line of worry marring her clear, white forehead.

      “Anything wrong, boss?”

      Behind