The One Safe Place (11 page)

“Think carefully,” Reed said in a man-to-man tone. “If you come, I'll need your help. You'll have to see if you can get the mare to relax. She's frightened right now, and she needs someone to help calm her down.”

Spencer gripped Faith's hand so tightly her fingertips were numb. Her heart ached. He wasn't going to be able to do it.

“So what do you say?” Reed stood. “Want to come along?”

Spencer took a deep breath. He looked up at Faith, his face so pale his freckles stood out like pennies on his nose.

He looked back at Reed.

And then, very slowly, he let go of Faith's hand.

F
AITH DROVE SLOWLY
,
not because the narrow roads frightened her, but because the view was so divine. She could hardly take her eyes off the sloping green mountainsides, the tumbling orange rows of pumpkins, the placid silver ribbon of a winding creek.

Eventually, she couldn't resist. She needed to get back to the house—Tigger probably was ready for a walk—but she wanted to enjoy the scenery without worrying about wrecking Reed's luxurious little BMW. She pulled onto a paved overlook, slipped on her suede jacket and climbed out of the car.

Amazingly, she had the overlook all to herself. Just below her, Firefly Glen lay peacefully in the open palm of the mountains. For a moment the glen seemed like a living thing, as cherished and protected and safe as the kitten she had earlier held in her own hand.

Safe.
She breathed deeply, trying to absorb that feeling. She'd been tense a couple of times during their shopping expedition, imagining that she saw the same expensive black sedan parked near them no matter where she went. Then she'd realized that Firefly Glen's high-income crowd loved expensive black se
dans. Those and pricey SUVs pretty much dominated Main Street.

Up high in the mountains, paranoid ideas seemed completely ridiculous. The air was cold and thick with the clean smell of rich earth and growing things. How could she have lived so close to this beauty all her life and never taken the time to drive up to see it?

Even in these early stages, she could tell that the approaching autumn wasn't going to be anything like the ones she'd known in the city. On the traffic-clogged street outside her apartment, one half-choked maple had always burned orange and red like a single candle.

She had loved that tree and had appreciated its valiant effort to brighten their steel-and-smog landscape. But here—here acres and acres of that spectacular fire would roll across these mountainsides.

Any day now. She could smell it in the air. She could see it in the trees—a few red spots like a flight of cardinals in the maples; a few gold specks, like a scattering of coins, in the aspen. It was like watching an orchestra tuning up for its most magnificent symphony.

And suddenly she realized that she very much wanted to be here when the colors hit their peak. As much as she wanted them to arrest Doug Lambert, as much as she prayed for that every day, she hoped she wouldn't have to leave before fall came to this beautiful little town.

She climbed back into Reed's car, feeling a little guilty about Tigger, who had been left alone for hours. She started the ignition.

If she hadn't been checking her rearview mirror, preparing to back out of the overlook, she wouldn't have seen the approaching car at all. As it was, she got only the briefest glimpse of a swerving black sedan, taking the downhill mountain curve so fast it was little more than a terrifying blur.

Suddenly it seemed to make a sharp turn to the right.

It began speeding straight at her.

Her hand froze on the key. She had time for one half-formed thought. Thank God Spencer wasn't with her.

And then, as she'd known it would, the car hit her.

She heard the awful crunch of her back bumper, the crumpling screech of metal. Her whole body was paralyzed—her heart, her mind, even her lungs ceased to function, frozen into useless blocks of pure, solid fear—as her car lurched insanely forward.

For one horrible second she could see the steep drop of the cliff beyond the guardrail. A chaos of hemlocks, jagged granite rocks, black earth—falling away, falling down, hundreds of feet into more trees, more granite, more unforgiving earth.

And then, like a miracle, her car met the guardrail, and the guardrail held. The metal blistered outward as the nose of her car smashed into it. But it didn't break, and the car didn't fall. All at once, a headlight
shattered, the airbag deployed, her head snapped back and finally everything was still.

Even the sound of the sedan roaring away faded in a very few seconds.

For a moment, the silence was so complete she thought she was deaf. But slowly her blood calmed, her ears opened, and she heard herself breathing like an exhausted runner. Heavy, rapid, desperate, from the diaphragm.

And she heard herself whispering, the same thing, over and over.

He found us. Oh, dear God. He found us.

 

R
EED NEVER DELIVERED
a foal so fast in his life.

From the moment Harry Dunbar's call came through to his cell phone with news of Faith's accident, Reed could barely keep his mind on the job. If Harry hadn't assured him Faith was fine—and promised to stay at Autumn House with her until Reed arrived—he might have left Mark alone to finish the foaling, which thankfully was proceeding quite normally.

But years of professionalism helped him see it through. It also helped that he needed to remain calm for Spencer's sake. He told the little boy only the bare minimum, that Faith had been in a minor accident, that the car was slightly bunged up but Faith herself was fine. He'd even managed to smile, as if to say
Wouldn't you just know it?

Reed must have cloaked his anxiety well. Spencer
had smiled back, without even a shadow of fear in his eyes.

Finally it was over. The foal teetered up on spindly legs, the mare watching, tired but healthy, from her stall. Mark's weathered face broke out in a cheek-splitting smile, and he pumped Reed's hand so hard he nearly pulled Reed's arm from the socket.

Spencer stared at Reed with such awestruck admiration that he felt the need to issue a disclaimer.

“This lady here did all the work,” he said, stroking the horse's back. “I'm really no more than an insurance policy. I'm a just-in-case kind of guy.”

It wasn't easy to get Spencer to leave. He climbed on the low rung of the foaling stall and hung there, as if he'd never get enough of watching this charmingly awkward animal discover its world.

Ordinarily Reed would have let him linger. But today was different. He had to get home to Faith. He had to see for himself that she was unharmed.

The sight of the sheriff's Jeep in front of the house reminded him that his BMW had been so mangled it wasn't even driveable. Probably totaled, Harry had said darkly.

Thank goodness he'd had it towed to the station impound. Spencer didn't need to see the wrecked metal, didn't need to picture Faith in the car as it had been hit….

Besides, he was already tense. As they approached Autumn House, and he saw the police car, the little boy clutched the dashboard with skinny, white-tipped
fingers and drew in a loud, rasping breath. Then he turned, his brown eyes liquid with sudden fear.

“She's fine,” Reed said again. “Sheriff Dunbar promised me. She's fine.”

Spencer nodded, but he held Reed's hand as they walked up to the house. At the front door, Spencer hesitated, dragging on Reed's hand as he lagged behind.

Reed could only imagine what terrible pictures, what inexpressible fears, were darkening the little boy's imagination.

There was no point in trying to reassure him with words. Spencer knew for a fact what horrors could lurk on the other side of that door. He was just a six-year-old child, and yet he had already seen things so dreadful no adult could ever forget them.

Only Faith's voice, only her strong, living arms around him, could reassure Spencer now.

“I'll go first,” Reed said. Spencer just nodded.

There must have been an anxious, unconvinced part of Reed, too, because the sight of Faith sitting on the living room sofa having coffee with Harry sent a huge swell of relief through his chest.

“Faith,” he said.

She jumped up. “Reed! I'm so sorry about your car—” She looked beside him, suddenly tense. “Where's Spencer?”

“He's just outside. He was hanging back. I said I'd come in first.”

She paused, and then, as the significance sank in,
she hurried toward the door. “Spencer,” she called, her voice deliberately cheerful. She touched Reed's arm in a silent “thank you” as she passed him. “Hey, sweetie, where's my hug?”

As soon as she was out of earshot, Reed walked over to Harry. “Who was it?” He kept his voice low. “Did anybody see the car? Could it have been Lambert?”

Harry shook his head. “No witnesses. But she sure thinks it was.”

“What do you think?”

“I think it probably was just some fool who doesn't know how to drive in the mountains. You know things like this happen sometimes, especially during tourist season. But she's scared of this Lambert, damn scared. She's practically paranoid.”

Reed frowned. “He did kill her sister.”

“I know. I'm not criticizing her, Reed. I'm just telling you how it is. If her lunch tastes funny, she'll think he poisoned it.”

For some reason, Harry was really getting on his nerves. “Maybe that's why she's still alive. Maybe a little paranoia is a good thing when somebody is trying to kill you.”

Harry gave him a funny look. “Hey, man. I understand. I'm just saying all she saw was a black sedan. It could have been anybody. Kids joyriding. A tourist from Florida who never saw a hill in his life. Could have been a drunk—”

“At two in the afternoon?”

“Hell, you know drunks. Boxer Barnes is plastered by nine in the morning.”

Suddenly the two men looked at each other. Harry's mouth was slightly open.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “Boxer?”

 

T
HE ADVENTURES
—and the emotions—of this long day had clearly worn Spencer out. Though he had stopped taking naps at least a year ago, when Faith suggested one now he didn't balk.

He climbed up onto his bed, patted the quilt to invite Tigger to join him and settled back against the pillow with a sigh.

Faith sat on the edge of the bed and held his hand tightly while she told him about the accident. Just the most general details. She didn't mention Doug at all. She merely said that someone had been driving down the mountain road too fast, lost control for a minute and bumped into Reed's car.

Somehow, deep inside, Spencer must know that “bumped” was a serious understatement. But he gave her a sleepy smile and let his grip relax a little. He obviously wanted to believe. He was tired of being afraid.

Finally he turned on his side, his arm wrapped around Tigger's fluffy coat, and fell asleep.

Faith patted them both on the crowns of their little heads, and then she quietly left the room. She didn't have a lot of time to waste. She needed to talk to Reed.

She stopped on the lower landing, aware that Reed and Harry were conferring in muted tones by the front door. Harry was holding the portable phone in one hand, his walkie-talkie in the other.

“He said he can be here in ten minutes,” Harry said, clicking on the telephone and beginning to punch numbers. “I'm going to call the café. Someone might have seen Boxer today. Might know if he'd been drinking.”

Reed looked up and saw her. He murmured something to Harry, and then hurried up the first few stairs to join her on the landing.

“Is Spencer okay?”

She nodded. “He's sleeping.”

“Good. The sheriff's deputy is on his way right now. Harry had an idea, and we want someone to stay with you while we go check it out.”

Reed was leaving? Surely not… But she felt numb all over, and her thoughts seemed to be moving in slow motion. It was a little like being drunk. Drunk on fear.

“What kind of idea?”

“There's a guy in town who drives a car like the one you described. He's had a drinking problem for years. Boxer Barnes. It's a long shot, but it's worth checking out.”

She shook her head. “Don't go,” she said. “It wasn't Boxer. It was Doug.”

Reed hesitated, then he put his hands on her shoul
ders. They were warm. If he left them there, she might thaw out a little. She might be able to think.

“Faith, listen to me—”

“If he's found us, we'll have to leave. Detective Bentley said there was no need for us to change our names yet. That they weren't even sure Doug was still in the country. Or that he was guilty at all. But now—” She took a deep breath, which was harder than it should have been. Her throat felt raw. She wondered if she might have screamed as the car hit her. She didn't remember.

“I should have started packing right away, but I wanted to see you first. I wanted, at least, to tell you how sorry I am about your car.”

“I don't care about the car.”

He ducked his head, and he put his finger under her chin, lifting her face so that he could look straight into her eyes. “Faith, listen to me. I know you believe it was Doug, and maybe it was. But think about it. How could he have known you'd be there, on the overlook? How could anyone have known? It's possible it really was an accident.”

She looked at his rugged, honorable face and felt strangely sad. She understood why he didn't want to believe it. Until you met evil face-to-face, you couldn't accept that it even existed.

But she knew it did.

“Maybe he's been watching us. He did that for weeks before he…” She shivered, remembering how, sometimes when she pulled up in front of her interior
design shop, Doug's car would be parked across the street, waiting.

“He liked to watch me.”

Reed's fingers tightened on her shoulders. “Don't think about it, Faith. Not until you have to. We don't know who it was yet.”

Harry, still over by the open front door, put the telephone on a table and cleared his throat. “Reed. Danziger's here. I'll fill him in, and then we'd better get going.”

“Okay. Right there.” Reed smiled at Faith. “Danziger is Harry's deputy. He's a good man. He'll look after you and Spencer while we're gone, okay?”

Faith didn't answer. She felt, momentarily, as mute as Spencer. What could she say? She didn't have the right to ask Reed to stay. If Doug really was in Firefly Glen, anyone near Faith was potentially in danger. The deputy was okay—he had signed up for hazardous duty. Reed had only signed up to hire a housekeeper.