CHAPTER ONE

      “I’M GOING TO LEAVE HIM.” Determination was stark on Lenora Escobar’s face, but her hands, clenched on the arms of the chair, betrayed her anxiety.

      Karin Jorgensen felt a thrill of pleasure, not so much at the statement but at how far this terrorized woman had come to be able to make it. Yet Karin’s alarm bells also rang, because the days and weeks after leaving an abusive man were the most dangerous time for any woman.

      The two sat facing each other in Karin’s office, a comfortable, cluttered space designed to allow children to play and women to feel at home. For almost five years now, Karin had been in practice with a group of psychologists at a clinic called A Woman’s Hand, which offered mental health services only to women and children.

      She remembered having a vague intention to go into family counseling. By good fortune, an internship here at A Woman’s Hand had presented itself while she was in grad school, and she’d never looked back. Women like Lenora were her reward.

      Lately, she’d begun to worry that she went way beyond feeling mere job satisfaction when her clients took charge of their lives. She’d begun to fear they were her life. Their triumphs were her triumphs, their defeats her defeats. Because face it—her life outside the clinic was…bland.

      Annoyed by the self-analysis, she pulled herself back to the present. Focus, she ordered herself. Lenora needed her.

      “Are you sure you’re ready for this step?” she asked.

      Lenora’s thin face crumpled with a thousand doubts. “Don’t you think I am?”

      Karin smiled gently. “I didn’t say that. I’m just asking whether you’re confident you’re ready.”

      Two years almost to the day had passed since Lenora Escobar had come for her first appointment. In her early thirties and raising two young children, she had virtually no self-esteem. Virtually no self. She had come, she’d said, because her husband was so unhappy with her. She needed to change.

      She’d made only three or four appointments before she disappeared for six months. When she returned, her arm was in a sling and her face was discolored with fading bruises. Even then she made excuses for him. Of course it was wrong for him to hurt her, but…She should have known better than to say this, do that. To wear a dress he didn’t like. To let the kids make so much noise when he was tired after work. Only recently had she declared, “I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I don’t think he’ll change.”

      In Karin’s opinion, Roberto Escobar was a class-three abuser, a man as incapable of empathizing with another human being as he was of real love or remorse. Rehabilitation for this kind of offender was impossible. His need to control his wife and children would only escalate; his violence would become more extreme. If she didn’t leave him, the odds were very good that eventually he would kill Lenora or one of the children.

      Not that leaving him brought her any certainty that she would be safe. He had told her from their wedding night on that he would kill her if she ever tried to leave him. Lenora had once confessed she was flattered when he’d first said that. “He was so passionate. He told me I was his whole world.”

      Now she said, “I know I have to go. I guess I’m scared. I’ll have to find a job, even though I’ve never worked. He’ll be so angry…” She shivered. “But I have put a plan in place, like you advised.” She talked about the safe house where staff already expected her, about the possessions she’d been sneaking out over the course of several weeks in case she had to go suddenly.

      “That took courage,” Karin said with approval.

      “I was so afraid he’d notice when I had something tucked under my shirt or my purse was bulging! But he never did.”

      “How did you feel about keeping that kind of secret from him?”

      “The truth?” Her face relaxed. “I felt good. Like a kid with a secret from her sister. You know?”

      Karin laughed. “I do. Powerful.”

      “Right! Powerful.” Lenora seemed to savor the word. When had she ever been able to think of herself as powerful? “I’ve been looking at him and counting off the days. Thursday is payday and he always gives me money for groceries. I’ve been stowing some away, but a couple hundred more would be nice. So I’m going to leave Friday.”

      Karin nodded. “Enough for a month’s rent would be great.”

      “But I feel I should tell him I’m going, not just disappear. After fifteen years of marriage, I think it’s the least I owe him. If I had somebody there with me…”

      Karin straightened in her chair. “You know how dangerous confronting him could be.”

      Lenora bit her lip. “Yes.”

      “Why do you feel you ‘owe’ Roberto?”

      Lenora floundered, claiming at first