The One Safe Place (12 page)

And if Doug came for her here, came straight to Autumn House, what could Reed do, anyhow? He wasn't a hunter. He was probably one of the few men in Firefly Glen who didn't even own a gun. He didn't kill things. He healed them.

And yet, strangely, the idea of facing the next couple of hours without his quiet strength to sustain her was almost more than she could bear.

“Faith? What is it?” He touched her cheek. “Talk to me.”

She tried to smile. “I guess I just wish you didn't have to go.”

“I'll be right back.”

“I know.”

Harry was at the door again. He had his hat on. “Reed. Customer at Theo's says he saw Boxer this morning, and he was already fairly well pickled by noon. He told Theo he wasn't driving, but somebody else saw his car on Main Street.”

“God.” Reed scowled. “Have you called Parker?”

“Yeah. He's going to meet us at Boxer's house, just in case. No point having Parker yell later that we talked to Boxer without his lawyer present.” He jingled his keys. “Come on. We need to shake a leg.”

Reed looked back at Faith. She gave him her best attempt at a smile. “It's okay,” she said. “I'm okay.”

But the performance that had fooled a six-year-old wasn't good enough to fool Reed. He looked at her a minute, and then he turned to Harry.

“You go ahead without me,” Reed said. “I think I'll stay here.”

Harry frowned. “What the hell? A minute ago wild horses couldn't have kept you out of this posse. That's half the reason I called Parker, so I'd have someone to help hold you down if it turns out Boxer really did make a mess of your car.”

Reed shrugged. “I changed my mind.”

“Really.” Harry's eyebrows went up. “Mr. Vigilante changed his mind.”

“Hell, Harry, you should be relieved. Now you won't have to worry about my temper, and you can concentrate on Boxer. Just call me the minute you see his car. I don't need a confession first, and I don't care how Parker spins it. If Boxer's right front bumper is dented, that's all the evidence I need. Call me.”

Harry looked from Reed to Faith and back to Reed. “Okay,” he said slowly, with a reluctant smile. “I think I get it. Although I'm not sure there's anything in the sheriff's job description that says I have to take orders from the town vet.”

Reed smiled, too. “No. That's in your job description as a human being and a friend.”

Harry grumbled as he left, but Faith could tell he wasn't really annoyed. Both at the scene of the accident, and in the two long hours they'd spent together waiting for Reed, she had learned what a sweet person Harry Dunbar really was under his dour exterior. He'd told her about his wife, Emma, and how they were trying to adopt a baby. He'd misted up a little when she told him about Grace and Spencer, though he'd tried to hide it by pretending to sneeze.

And, though he had nearly choked on the coffee she made him, he'd drunk the whole thing, just to keep from hurting her feelings.

She heard his Jeep start up and drive away. She looked over at Reed.

“Thank you,” she said. “I'm sorry to ask you to stay. I shouldn't have, but—”

“You didn't ask me. I wanted to stay.” He grinned a little. “I'm afraid of Boxer Barnes.”

“I doubt that.” She smiled back, appreciating his effort to lighten the tone. “I've seen your friend Boxer.”

“You have? Where?”

“He was passed out in the back of a blue Cadillac, drooling on the legs of a woman named Bridget O'Malley. He wasn't particularly terrifying.”

“He's scarier when he's awake.” Smiling, he took her hand and pulled her down the last few stairs. “Now. How about something to eat?”

She hesitated. “I guess I could fix something, like a…” She tried to think of anything she could make that was actually edible. So far she'd boiled a lump of pasta till it looked like a ball of sticky yarn, served an omelette so undercooked you had to eat it with a spoon, blackened toast and bacon and pancakes and muffins. She'd even baked chicken breasts until they could have been used for hockey pucks.

If it hadn't been for Theo's casseroles, they all would have starved.

“No. I meant I would fix something for you,” he said. “I make a mean peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and it's well known that carbs are very calming. We can take it out on the back porch and watch the leaves change, which is about all the excitement we can handle after a day like today.”

“You know, I'm not sure I can eat.” Suddenly exhausted, she walked over to the sofa and sat down
heavily. She put her fingers up between her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. “And I—I don't think I want to be outdoors, where anyone could…”

He sat down beside her. He pulled her hand down and looked into her eyes. “Does your head hurt?” He had dropped his lightly teasing tone. “Harry should have made you go to the emergency room.”

“No. It doesn't hurt. The airbag inflated, and—” She tried not to remember that moment, when she had thought the guardrail would give way. It made her insides feel as if they were being sucked down into a whirlpool of terror.

“My head is fine. My nerves, on the other hand, seem to be kind of a mess.” She took several deep breaths, as if she could force her body to relax. “I keep thinking I should pack, I should hide, I should just take Spencer and run.”

She looked at him, swamped by a sudden feeling of helplessness, a wretched feeling she despised. It was so useless, so weak. “But then I realize—I don't know where to go.”

“Don't go anywhere,” he said. He shifted, and then he reached out and gently guided her into a resting position, with her head against his chest. “Not yet. Just rest here, with me, until we hear from Harry. And then we can decide what you should do.”

“I can't,” she said, her lips against his soft flannel shirt. She ought to sit up. It was too tempting, the thought of letting someone else shoulder the fear for
a while. She couldn't afford to relax her guard. “I'm not tired.”

“Of course you are,” he said softly. He put his hand on her head and grazed her cheek with his knuckle. “When something like that happens, adrenaline rushes through you, and then, when it's gone, there's nothing left but exhaustion.”

“I'm not tired.” But she was. She was. And her cheek fit so perfectly against the curve where his chest and shoulder came together. Her neck relaxed, giving up the fight.

“How could you not be tired?” His voice was soothing. She felt herself sinking into it. “I hear you up every night, checking on Spencer again and again. I hear you walking miles across the floor of your room. I see your light burning until dawn, keeping the demons away.”

His stroking fingers were rhythmic and as soft as warm silk. She closed her eyes.

“I didn't know you knew.” She realized she was slightly slurring her words. She was on the very edge of sleep, coaxed there by the gentle stroke of his fingers. “Do I make too much noise? Do I make it difficult for you to sleep?”

His fingers stopped their movement for a second, and then they began again.

“Yes,” he said quietly, so quietly she wasn't sure she really heard it. It might have been the rustle of the dark wing of a dream, which was rapidly over
taking her. “Sometimes the very thought of you can keep me awake all night.”

 

S
HE COULDN'T HAVE SLEPT
very long. When she opened her eyes, she saw that the fire hadn't burned down much. The shadows in the room were all in the same places. The light from the windows was still the wild-rose red of an early autumn sunset.

But she was stretched out on the sofa, with a knitted throw across her legs. Reed was kneeling on the floor in front of her, his fingers on her arm. The telephone was in his hands, and he was speaking her name.

“Faith,” he said as her eyes fluttered shut, then fought to open again. “Faith, wake up. Harry just called.”

“Harry.” Awareness returned like a wash of cold water. She struggled up on one elbow. She swallowed. “Was it Doug? Does he know?”

“He knows,” he said. He smiled, and the warmth of that smile could grow daffodils in December. “He's one hundred percent certain. It wasn't Doug, Faith. It was Boxer.”

Her elbow gave way, and she fell back against the soft cushions.

It wasn't Doug. That meant…

She was safe.

But that wasn't the only thought that went through her mind. It was paired with another.

She could stay.

D
OUG LET HIMSELF INTO
Faith's apartment without bothering to be particularly quiet. Who was going to hear him? In the middle of the day, these bourgeois apartment buildings were as empty as tombs. All the little worker bees were slaving away at the office, and the occasional housekeeper they could afford was sitting in front of their kitchen television, watching her favorite soap opera and eating whatever junk food she thought the boss wouldn't miss.

He probably hadn't even needed this ugly white electrician's jumpsuit, or the paint cap, or the gloves. But stealing them had been fun, and he needed all the fun he could find these days. Life at the homeless mission was not exactly intellectually stimulating.

The apartment was dark, but he knew where the light switches were. The air was stale, but not unpleasant. It merely intensified the scent of Faith, which he had always liked. Smelling it now excited him. It made him feel closer to her, closer to finding her.

He had been here before, of course, though not often. A couple of times, when he was a new and lucrative client, she'd let him in and given him dread
ful coffee. After that, the next time he came, she had told him that she conducted all her business at her office, and instructed him to meet her there.

She'd
instructed
him.
What a joke! He should have known then that she wasn't worth it. That she was just a bitch who didn't deserve him.

But unfortunately these things weren't logical. A woman didn't set your blood on fire because she met Sensible Standard A, or possessed Suitable Quality B. It was a chemical thing, or a metaphysical thing. It went as deep as your molecular structure, as high as your soul. You couldn't use logic to create it, and you couldn't reason it away.

If you wanted to be free of it, you had to kill it.

He took his time. He liked being here. It was frilly and female, all blues and purples and cream. She had good taste, he'd give her that.

It was not as nice as his own penthouse suite, not by a long shot. But it was better than the mission. And besides, it amused him to make himself at home among her things.

When her telephone rang, he almost answered it, just for kicks. Just because he could.

But he played it safe. The answering machine picked up after only two rings, and an uneducated voice drawled, “Ms. Constable? This is Delilah. I know you said it would be a while, but I was just checking. Call me.”

After that he didn't even want to touch the telephone. She was so cheap, so unworthy, with her low-
rent friends. More like his mother than he had wanted to believe. Strange that, after he'd worked so hard to leave those sleazy, stained-linoleum childhood days behind, he'd fallen for a woman who was so much like his mother it made him sick.

He looked through the fussy little secretary desk first, with its orderly pigeonholes and its prissy inlaid flowers and scrolls. She was neat and organized. God, was she boring. She paid every bill on time, the curse of the middle class.

That reminded him of how many creditors were still bleeding from the bottom line thanks to him, and that made him smile.

He had millions. Millions. Stashed safely overseas, just waiting for him to finish this Faith Constable business and come and get it. Suddenly impatient, he tossed her bills into a messy heap and moved to the personal correspondence. The clues were in the private life.

An hour later, he was more irritated than ever. Not a single clue. His man had already checked into all these people. He sent the tangle of letters, cards and e-mail addresses onto the floor with one swipe. Then he stood up and went into the kitchen for a beer.

Just inside the pass-through counter, he paused.

This was where he'd done it.

For a minute he could hear her voice again, giggling into the telephone. “I love you, too, teddy bear.” It was the stupid endearment that clinched it—the kind of thing his mother had called her boyfriends,
all of them, so he could easily imagine what kind of low-rent half-wit she was talking to. And she had preferred a cretin like that to Doug Lambert?

Thinking back now, he realized he must have gone slightly insane, just for a moment. But at the time he had felt a preternatural clarity. He'd put the roses carefully down on the countertop, walked quietly up behind her and snapped her neck with one swift crack. She hadn't felt a thing. She hadn't even had time to be afraid.

He looked at the floor, where her body had fallen, the telephone clattering to the tiles beside her. Her thick, dark hair had been like a veil across her face, and he hadn't realized then that she wasn't Faith. He hadn't realized his mistake until, when he was leaving, he saw Faith and the brat on the sidewalk.

His fury had been a physical eruption, like a volcano inside him. The bitch had made a murderer of him—and all for nothing. The comfortable Doug Lambert life he'd worked so hard to create was over, all because of her. But Faith Constable still danced along the sidewalk, holding her nephew by the hand, as if she hadn't a care in the world.

Well, he'd fix that, and soon.

And she wouldn't go like her sister, she'd know she was dying. She'd have plenty of time to be afraid. She'd be so damn scared she'd get down on her knees and beg. He felt a small swell of arousal just imagining her eyes drowning in tears.

He took the beer into her bedroom. He'd left that
room for last, and now he was glad he had. Because he suddenly realized he wasn't quite over his need to have sex with her. He would do that first, before she died, while she still thought there was hope. He'd do everything, and she'd let him. Even the things the prostitutes refused to do, no matter how much money he offered them.

But he'd need something to gag her with. And probably tie her hands. When you were in enough pain, instinct took over, and you began to fight, even if you were trying not to, even if you were trying to pretend you liked it.

He picked up a couple of pairs of panty hose, which were the perfect handcuffs. Wasn't that ironic? If women only knew. And a pair of powder blue satin bikini panties.

He stuffed them in his pockets, chuckling. It was too perfect. She'd refused to let him get even a glimpse of her sacred underwear, and now he'd take them and stuff them into her wet, weeping mouth.

The whole idea excited him so much the jumpsuit was killing him. It was much too small for a man like him.

He unzipped the suit and freed himself, sighing with relief and anticipation. He didn't have to worry about his DNA showing up in her apartment. They already knew he'd been here.

He stood over her panty drawer, over the innocent white lace and the sinful silk fantasies. And then, closing his eyes, he entered a hot, throbbing world of
terrified brown eyes and the delicious, gurgling sounds of blue-satin screams.

 

I
T RAINED
Saturday night, and then it turned cold. By Sunday morning autumn had officially arrived in Firefly Glen.

Spencer must have seen it from his loft window. He woke Faith early, his face alive with excitement. He pulled at her, tugging impatiently until she sleepily grabbed her robe and let him lead her onto the second-story porch.

The minute they opened the door, a cold mask of crystal air molded itself against her face. When she stepped out, a garnet carpet of leaves crunched under her slippers.

“What is it?” She wrapped her robe tightly around her throat, took two steps, and then she froze, speechless.

Nothing she'd ever seen in a picture book had prepared her for the magnificence of this cloisonné-colored landscape.

Magic had come in the night. Every tree suddenly was dressed in a new, exotic costume. Vermilion, carnelian, russet and rose, mandarin orange, burnt sienna, saffron and strawberry. The entire forest, from ground shrub to treetop, was jeweled and decorated and painted with fire.

Spencer stood beside her in his Lassie pajamas. His hand crept up to hers.

“Oh, Spencer,” she said. “It is beautiful, isn't it?”

He nodded, his teeth chattering. She looked down and saw that he hadn't even taken time to put on his slippers.

“We should get you inside,” she said. “You're going to freeze.”

He shook his head vehemently. She had never seen him so excited. So instead of insisting on the sensible retreat, she picked him up.

It was the first time she'd been able to do that without even a twinge of pain streaking through her arm. A tall, thin young Firefly Glen doctor had taken the stitches out the other day, wisecracking his way through the procedure, and he'd seemed thrilled with the neat job done by the emergency room physician. But today was the first day her arm had felt completely normal.

It was reassuring to realize that her body had been doing its job all along, knitting her flesh back together while she was busy, sleeping or working or playing. Maybe the psyche was equally competent. Maybe it, too, was going about the business of healing silently, one small step at a time.

She wrapped Spencer inside her robe, and together they stayed out on the porch, marveling at the colors, until their noses and ears were numb.

After about ten minutes, Reed appeared on the lawn below them, bundled up in a wool sweater, gloves and a sports cap. He smiled up at them, tossing the football in the air meaningfully.

“Kickoff time!” he called, and those, it seemed,
were the magic words. Spencer wriggled out of Faith's arms quickly and ran inside.

“Dress warmly,” she cautioned, but she didn't think he'd heard her.

She got dressed, too, but she was slower, feeling the need for little niceties like a shower that Spencer sometimes ignored. By the time she met them outside, the game was already fourteen to nothing.

“He's beating the pants off me,” Reed complained. “He's as slippery as an eel. I tackle him, but he just squirts free and scores.”

Spencer grinned smugly. His cheeks were two red apples, and his nose had a distinctly Rudolphlike glow. It was running from the cold. His hair was matted with bits of dry leaves and grass. But he looked happy and normal, and she wouldn't have combed that hair or wiped that little nose for all the money in the world.

“You'll have to be on my team, Faith,” Reed said. “Just to even things up. He's got Tigger, who tackles with his teeth.”

So they played, and they played, falling into piles of huge amber leaves that had dropped from the big leaf maple, and sending the football soaring through the crystalline air.

She and Reed scored once. At that happy moment, Reed spiked the football in the end zone, which was officially the clearing between two golden elm trees, and triumphantly yelled, “Touchdown!”

Spencer laughed, but from then on, whenever he
scored, he spiked the ball, too. He'd look over at Reed, and Reed would cooperate by hollering “Touchdown!” at the top of his lungs.

She didn't know much about football, but by the time the score was forty-nine to seven, she got the idea Reed was letting Spencer win.

“We have to,” he said with a grin when she pulled him aside and accused him of it. “It would destroy his developing male ego to get beaten by a girl.”

“Oh, yeah?” She brushed maple leaves from her behind. “Frankly, I haven't noticed that the male ego is all that sensitive.”

He pulled a mock-tragic face. “Honest, we're very fragile.” Then he dove for Spencer, who came streaking by. He missed, falling into a pile of leaves, and Spencer spiked the ball again with feeling.

“An eel, I tell you,” Reed said, groaning from his pyre of leaves. “Touchdown!”

Just then his beeper went off. He pulled it from his pocket, looked at it and climbed to his feet. “Whoops. Gotta go. Emergency over at Lofton's farm.”

Spencer looked crestfallen. Faith believed he could have stayed out here all day.

“It shouldn't take long,” Reed said. He tossed the football to Spencer. “I'll be back for lunch, I promise.”

Spencer clearly wanted to be invited, but Faith understood that Reed didn't think it was a good idea. Perhaps he didn't know what he'd find at the Lofton
farm. The last thing Spencer needed was to witness an animal's suffering. Or death.

“Come on, champ,” she said. “We never got any breakfast this morning. Let's go roast some marsh mallows by the living room fire.”

Spencer looked at her, obviously surprised. She never allowed him to eat things like marshmallows for breakfast. Not even marshmallowy cereals or doughnuts or pie.

But he didn't know that something had changed inside her yesterday, when she almost went over that cliff. He didn't know that, for the first time since Grace's death, she had understood how very much she wanted to live.

Yesterday, when the guardrail had held its ground, saving her, she had been given a second chance. And she intended to make the most of it.

No more crouching in fear and paranoia. Tragedy existed, and maybe evil did, too. But so did beautiful autumn forests and football games and marshmallows.

Detective Bentley might be right. Doug Lambert might already be in South America, far more interested in saving his own skin than in damaging hers. But even if he wasn't, even if he was still in New York, still hoping to harm her, she couldn't let terror rule her every thought. It wasn't healthy.

Not for her, and certainly not for Spencer.

And so she was going to choose life. Real messy, scary, thrilling, beautiful life.

Complete with marshmallows.

 

I
T WAS ALMOST
lunchtime when she heard the car pull up. Thinking it was Reed, Faith hurried to the back door and flung it open.

But it wasn't Reed. It was a young, beautiful blonde with wild, curly hair and the prettiest smile Faith had ever seen. Another of Reed's would-be girlfriends?

“Hi,” Faith said, wiping her hands on her apron. She had finally learned that she needed an apron when she tried to cook. It didn't save the food, but it at least protected her clothes. “I'm sorry, Reed's not here right now, but he—”