Free The Escape Artist by Diane Chamberlain

undeniably like Linc. Kim held the remote in the air between herself and the TV, trying to cover part of the man’s face to see which features most resembled Linc’s. The blue eyes, definitely. Not the eyebrows, though. The hair, of course, was totally wrong.
    This was torture. Why was she doing this to herself? She turned off the TV and closed her eyes.
    She would never be able to touch him again. Never make love to him, or hold him all night long. Never pick up the phone to hear his voice on the other end, joking with her, making her laugh. Telling her he loved her.
    She would be able to listen to him, though. Sunday night. On the radio. At least she could still have that much of him.

–7–
    FOR TWO MORE DAYS , Kim drove east. The pace she set was slow and easy, with plenty of rest stops for herself and Cody. It was impossible to rush when you had no idea where you were going. On Thursday, she bought herself an inexpensive bathing suit, and both Thursday and Friday checked into motels early so that she and Cody could play in the swimming pools. It wasn’t until late Friday night when she was lying alone in bed that she began to feel the inescapable awareness of her homelessness. She could head east only a little longer. Sometime tomorrow, she was going to run out of country. Maybe that was fine. She’d keep going until she ran out of road, and then she’d plant herself wherever she’d landed.
    Then how was she going to support herself? She couldn’t get a job in a bank; that would be the first place anyone would look for her. She should never even tell anyone she’d worked in a bank. Maybe she could get a different sort of secretarial position, but she’d be able to offer no references. And then she’d need day care, and she was nowhere near ready to let Cody out of her sight. Maybe she could take in word processing jobs. She was a great typist. Hated it, but did it well. She could work out of her home—wherever “home” turned out to be. She hoped it would not be the back seat of the Toyota. If things were ever that bad for her, she would take Cody back. She had no right to him if she couldn’t provide for him any better than that.
    From behind the steering wheel of the car Saturday morning, she knew she was hitting civilization in a major way The traffic was wild, and before she knew it, she’d been dumped onto the Capital Beltway—the wide, fast, frightening highway that looped around Washington, D.C. She’d heard somewhere that if you were trying to hide, a big city would be your best bet, but the thought chilled her. If she got sucked into the mass of buildings and cars inside the beltway, it would be like being in prison. So she continued circling Washington, taking the first exit east she could find, Route 50.
    It was nearly time for lunch, and Cody was assertive in letting her know it. He kicked his legs out from the car seat as though trying to escape. She couldn’t blame him. Poor baby, trapped on the road for—she’d lost track—five days? He was entitled to kick. She sang “The Name Game” again for what seemed like the zillionth time in the past few days, but he was having none of it. It was food or nothing.
    She pulled off the road at Annapolis. Annapolis was the capital of Maryland, she was quite certain, and she expected a large city to greet her, but instead found herself driving through a quaint little town. The streets were narrow, and she felt as if she’d stepped back in time. A tall gray and white dome rose high above the city from a large brick building, and the rest of the town seemed to fall away from that dome in all directions. She drove around, enchanted, until she came to water, a river or a bay perhaps, and it seemed that she had stumbled upon the heart of the city. She was in a large square surrounding an enormous dock filled with boats and activity. People dotted the square, walking, taking pictures, eating at sidewalk cafes, or simply sitting on benches overlooking