One Safe Place Read Online Free Page A

my motivation. Real justice—my justice—is pure from any form of monetary gain. Call me an executioner, and I know what that is.
    I’m a former bullet catcher who’s fortunate that I never had to catch one. Nowadays, I catch pain for others and fix troubles for the intended targets. Sometimes trouble remains, but the bull’s-eye is eliminated. Sometimes my justice is purely avenging, and sometimes it’s to prevent me from avenging on a level that only God and the devil understand.
    I stare at the light coming through the curtain. I can’t see anything clearly, but I know what’s out there. I smell the ocean, and hear waves and seagoing vessels on Puget Sound. From the front of the house here on Alki Beach, the islands are to the west and downtown Seattle is to the east. I know what is out there. People making the world go around; some wanting to spin in the wrong direction.
    I know a beautiful woman who is partly dead inside. I know she is spinning like a warped record, and sometimes the needle has to be moved manually. Then she sings:
    â€œThis is for the women, so beautifully complex
    This one’s for love without sex”
    And for me, I love her no matter what.
    Evita calls me by my nickname, PB, for Purple Black. I’m a light- brown-skinned man, the shade of honey spread thin over white bread. Under my right eye, I have a small birth mark. It resembles a grape stain, and it’s a dark purple, wine color. As a teenager, a few started calling me Purple Black, aka PB. My birth name is Psalms Black.
    I’m watching Evita as she comes back and forth into the room while she makes my breakfast.
    â€œPB, I may go to Atlanta next week, to hang out with Esperanza,” she says to me. Her expression is asking me to not ask or say anything. I didn’t plan on saying anything—she is free to do what she wants to do. That look was really more about her wanting me to say something.
    Evita’s slippers swish-swish away, and my eyes stay glued to her ass as Curtis Mayfield sings, “Give Me Your Love.” Being close to her is confusing at times to my sense of responsibility, but at least with her somewhere near me, I know she’s in one safe place.

CHAPTER 3
Drifting in Place
    A long Lake Washington, bits of sunrise crept around the edges of the curtains into the Dandridge house. Meeah and Tylowe lived on Lake Washington, a body of water that was twenty-two miles long in the middle of urban Seattle and surrounded several other smaller, suburban cities.
    Meeah reached for a remote control. Holding a button down, the grand master bedroom’s motorized curtains lifted by rolling up. Floor-to-ceiling windows with a 170-degree view of the lake entered with the eastern sunrise. The brightness reflected off the serene lake and the hardwood floors.
    Tylowe opened his eyes to the view of him and Meeah. A mirror above the bed reflected him covered up, but his wife’s beautifully naked body lay on top of the covers. For the beauty he viewed, he put another man in prison and gained the legal and moral rights to love her. She was as beautiful as the day he first crossed paths with her ten years ago, on the end of an open-air pier in Vancouver, B.C. Now her brown, leaf-colored skin had gained some freckles—angel kisses on the bridge of her nose and under her eyes. The freckles highlighted Meeah’s natural beauty, and Tylowe loved kissing her face.
    A few added pounds had spread throughout her body, but that also increased her sexiness in his eyes. Ten years ago, she had long,straight hair, but now she had gone natural. If one looked, a few strands of white hair could be found in her mane, but not many. On most nights, Tylowe buried his face into her hair as the two spooned and slept. The softness and scent of the Jamaican oils acted as a sleeping agent to sweet dreams.
    The mirror reflected her naked body stirring. Her fingers roamed her husband’s chest, moved