The One Safe Place. Kathleen O'Brien

they catch him.”

      It was too cruel. He tightened his arms around her. And as he felt her slender body press against him, he was suddenly reminded of a small, broken bird he had once treated. It had been brought to him much too late. The bird had died in his hands.

      Determination shot through him like a burning streak of light. She had come here for protection, and by God he would make sure she got it.

      “No, you don’t,” he said softly. “You’re not alone anymore. Just this once, let someone else be strong for you.”

      She tensed again, holding her breath. And then, weeks and weeks too late, this brave, grieving woman finally allowed herself the luxury of tears.

      DOUG LAMBERT laughed to himself as he passed a policeman on the street. For a minute, he considered asking the cop for a dollar, just to enjoy the thrill of looking into his eyes and knowing the dumb bastard had no idea who he was.

      But ultimately it wasn’t worth it. Cops were too stupid to live—fooling them wasn’t even very much fun.

      While they scrambled around, putting out their asinine all-points bulletins about millionaire murder suspect Douglas Lambert and scouring all the obvious places in vain, Doug was hiding in plain sight.

      Living at a squalid, smelly homeless shelter.

      See, that was the key. The cops had no imagination. They never even thought of looking there. They believed he was rich, spoiled, incapable of enduring hardship, unwilling to sleep on anything but his expensive Turkish sheets or to eat anything but five-star cuisine.

      Morons. They didn’t know a damn thing about Doug Lambert. He came from a filthy, wretched nothingness, and he was perfectly comfortable returning there for as long as it took.

      Actually, it had been almost embarrassingly easy. Get a box of Clairol do-it-yourself color and go a few weeks without a shave or a hundred-dollar haircut.

      Take out your expensive front bridgework and let your lips cave in over a toothless mouth. He felt smug to think how everyone had urged him to get implants—he could certainly afford them. But he didn’t like doctors, he didn’t like pain, and so he had settled for the best damn dentures on the market. See, now, what a good decision that turned out to be?

      Then splurge five bucks on cast-off jeans and a T-shirt and a pair of stained sneakers. After that you could walk right up and spit in that flatfoot’s ugly face, and the damn fool would never know the difference.

      Still, Doug knew he had to find out where Faith had gone. He could feel the urge building inside him, until it was so big now it was almost a physical pain. Sometimes he thought he couldn’t breathe around it.

      He had to find her.

      He wasn’t stupid enough to hire a private detective. The police would be looking for that. But there were other ways. A man like him knew plenty of useful people whose names weren’t in the Yellow Pages.

      By the time he arrived back at the shelter, he had come to a decision. He wouldn’t wait any longer, with this anger, and the desire that was its twin, building inside him like a tumor. He was patient, but he wasn’t a waffler. He liked action.

      He sat down, put his hand into the pocket of the drunk slumped next to him and pulled out a couple of quarters, staring in the man’s eyes the whole time, daring him to object.

      And then he dropped them into the pay telephone in the hall and dialed a number he knew well but almost never used.

      He needed relief, and there was only one way to get it.

      Faith Constable had to die.