FOR HOURS, JAMIE lay on the sand, hidden by the sea grass, barely moving, moisture seeping into her clothing, relieved that in spite of his strange surroundings Billy had fallen asleep. When he seemed to be waking, she patted him and whispered to him in her soothing go-back-to-sleep voice.
She wondered about the men who were searching for her. And wondered just who they thought they were looking for. Some Mata Hari who was spying for enemies of the state with a baby on her hip? Unlike the men in Oklahoma City, who were surely hired killers, she realized that these men were simply doing what their superiors had told them to do, and their superiors apparently answered to Gus Hartmann or someone who answered to Gus Hartmann. Probably when these men went home to their families at night, they were just normal guys. But right now they were her enemies, and if they did their job well, her life was probably over. Not that these men would kill her. They would turn her over to others, but eventually death would be her fate. She would never see her son grow to manhood. He would grow up thinking that Amanda Hartmann was his mother and would be taught that he was God’s chosen and didn’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else.
From time to time, she heard people talking, and then she heard a vehicle and parted the grass long enough to see a van drive up to the cabin. The next time she looked two men had dumped her trash on the ground and were meticulously going through it, even opening up Billy’s soiled diapers and peering inside.
She tried to plan. She didn’t dare leave her hiding place until darkness fell. But then what?
If only there were some way to contact Joe and tell him what had happened. Some way to warn him not to come back here. And together they could decide where she should go, what she should do. The man Joe planned to see in Houston was named Morgan. Mr. Morgan. She didn’t know his first name. All she knew about him was that he had an RV and his wife had been Joe’s math teacher in high school. There would be long columns of Morgans in the Houston telephone directory. Here she had been hoping that Joe would return this evening. Now she prayed that he was not on his way back and that it would be days before he returned and these men would be long gone.
Even if it seemed as though the men had left, Jamie wouldn’t dare go back to the cabin. Some of them might continue to keep the cabin under surveillance, waiting for her to do just that. With all the discussion about what to do next, she and Joe had not designated a meeting place should they become separated.
She waited throughout the rest of the afternoon, moving her legs and arms only enough to relieve the cramping in her muscles. Finally, when she couldn’t keep Billy asleep any longer, she nursed him again. When he finished nursing, he filled his diaper and, keeping her head low, she changed him and buried the soiled diaper in the sand. Then she dug her trench deeper and, sitting cross-legged, she played with him for a time, keeping her head down, talking softly. From time to time, she peeked through the grass. Visible activity around the cabin had ceased, and the van had gone.
When darkness finally fell, no light came on in the cabin. But Jamie not only knew that there were people still inside waiting for her to return, she felt their invasive presence in what for the past week had become a home of sorts to her.
It was Oklahoma City all over again. Fleeing in the night. Leaving everything behind. At least this time there had been no beloved dog for them to kill.
Her chest began to heave with sobs. It was all too much. If she survived this night, was this to become the pattern of her life? Always hiding? Always running?
So what was the alternative? To give up? To die?
She cradled her baby in her arms and forced her mind away from hysteria. She had to be calm. To think. To plan.
She tried to remember what time the moon had risen last night. She probably should leave now, taking advantage of the moonless darkness. Yes, that was what she should do. But still she waited a few minutes more, taking deep breaths, willing whatever residual courage still resided within her to come forth and fortify her. Then, clinging to her baby with one arm, she crept out of her hiding place.
Keeping to the low spaces between the dunes, she headed away from the cabin. She walked for a long time, an hour or more she estimated, staying south of the beach road until the terrain changed, and the cover offered by the dunes and grasses diminished in favor of wide beaches. She waited out of sight by the road, watching for any sort of movement or sound, then took a deep breath and dashed to the other side, where the cover was better. Finally she took the time to put Billy in the sling and catch her breath. Then, keeping the road on her left, she kept out of sight as best she could, which was difficult in the darkness. Several times she stumbled; twice she fell, putting out her hands to protect Billy. Her hands and knees were cut and bruised, her arms and legs scratched and bleeding from brambles. If only she had pulled on sweats this morning instead of shorts. Her only spare clothing in the canvas bag was a T-shirt and a pair of underpants. She ate a handful of trail mix and drank some more water, but she was still hungry. And exhausted. Filled with self-doubt. What if she was doing the wrong thing? What if Joe was apprehended when he returned to the cabin? Maybe she would never see him again. But for lack of another plan, she kept walking. When she reached an intersection, she turned north and, still keeping well out of sight of passing motorists, followed the new road. Occasionally she would take a few more bites of trail mix and drink a little water.
The sun was almost ready to peek over the horizon when Billy began to protest his confinement. She pulled him out of the sling and carried him over her shoulder as she headed down a country lane. He was howling with hunger by the time she found a sheltered spot in a dry creek bed where they could spend a few hours. The creek bed’s sandy bottom welcomed her exhausted body. When the sun rose, a nearby black willow would shade them. She drank some water while Billy nursed, then gratefully closed her eyes. Billy would just have to amuse himself for a while.
She wondered where Joe was at this moment. Were those men still waiting for him back at the cabin? What would they do to him if they caught him?
It was all so unreal. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen to ordinary, law-abiding people. Not here. Not in the United States of America.
Joe muttered a curse when he saw the signs warning that there was roadwork ahead and all traffic was being funneled into the right lane. Getting stuck in traffic at this hour of the night was unanticipated, to say the least. Joe got more and more impatient as he drove at a snail’s pace behind the impossibly long line of vehicles.
He felt like a middle-aged man driving a recreational vehicle down the highway. He would have to keep his speed under the posted limit at all times. Speed was the only thing that might attract attention to the vehicle. He was certain that the RV and its license number weren’t on any law-enforcement watch list. He and Jamie and the baby would seem like an ordinary family on vacation. Mr. Morgan had given him a nationwide listing of campgrounds. Once he had Jamie and the baby onboard, they could move around the country effortlessly. Maybe if they could stay pretty much continuously on the move for a few months or even a year, the baby thing would become a moot issue. Amanda Hartmann would have learned to love the other baby and forgotten all about Jamie’s kid.
Of course, Joe knew that such a scenario was just wishful thinking on his part. Fear was going to be their constant companion until the business with the Hartmanns was resolved. Already his stomach was in knots because he had been away from Jamie and the baby too long.
Joe and Mr. Morgan had spent much of the day tossing out ideas to each other and searching for information on the Internet. When the garage finally returned the RV, the two of them put away the provisions that Mr. Morgan kept carrying out from the house-canned goods, paper towels, toilet tissue, soap, beer. Then they had dinner, and Joe suggested a game of chess, not because he wanted to play but because he knew Mr. Morgan was itching to. And he had decided that he shouldn’t leave until Mr. Morgan’s neighbors had bedded down for the night and wouldn’t be out in their yards or walking their dogs and observe an unfamiliar person driving away in Harvey Morgan’s RV.
At ten o’clock, they walked out to the garage. Joe unscrewed the lightbulb mounted on the overhead garage-door opener so he could make his exit in darkness. Then he punched the button to open the door and embraced Mr. Morgan.
“I wish I could tell you to call me and keep me posted,” Mr. Morgan said, “but don’t even think about it. No postcards with cryptic messages. The next time I see you I want you to have hair on your head and Miss Jamie and little Billy at your side.”
Joe had waved out the window as he drove away. And now, an hour later, he was less than fifteen miles from Mr. Morgan’s home, but the roadwork was behind him.
Finally he reached the Freeport turnoff, and shortly he was driving through Neptune Beach, with its darkened stores and restaurants. He parked the RV near a picnic area, locked the vehicle, shoved the key deep in his pocket, and made his way across the beach. When he reached the hard, wet sand by the water’s edge, he broke into a run. He ran with joy in his heart, each step taking him closer to Jamie.
A thin sliver of moonlight reflected on the water and provided sufficient illumination for him to avoid stranded jellyfish and pieces of driftwood. When he reached familiar terrain, he cut inland and wound his way through the dunes for the last couple of hundred yards-just to be on the safe side.
Finally the cabin, silhouetted against the night sky, came into view. He dropped low behind a clump of beach grass to survey the scene and make sure that all was well.
The cabin was dark, which didn’t surprise him. Then he noticed that the trash container had been moved from its former position alongside the building to a place by the back porch. Which hardly would enhance the view. And besides, the thing smelled like shit.
Maybe the trash container had been pushed over by a stray dog or an armadillo in search of leftover food, Joe speculated, and Jamie had simply turned it back over and not bothered to drag it back to its original position.
He was still pondering the trash container when he noticed that the only vehicles in the entire enclave were two identical black vans, each parked by a different cabin.
As much as he wanted to go dashing up to the cabin and tap on the door, Joe decided to hunker down and watch things for a while. For fifteen minutes, he would do that, he decided, and looked down at the glowing dial of his watch.
He watched. Everything was peaceful. The only movement was the waves on the beach.
At the end of fifteen minutes, he decided to stay put for another fifteen. Just to be sure.
And then he saw something out of the corner of his right eye. Just a glint of reflected moonlight from up there on higher ground.
Or had he imagined it?
Joe waited, trying not to blink as he watched to see if he saw whatever it was again. His eyes began to water and finally blinked of their own accord.
Then he saw it again. Or thought that he had.
He backed out of his hiding place and crawled through the clumps of grass angling toward the road. When he was certain that he would be out of the line of vision of whomever might be up there watching the cabin, he dashed across the road. On the other side, the vegetation began to change. Within a few yards, kudzu vines were everywhere, impeding his progress as he climbed to a place that would put him directly behind the area from which the mysterious reflection had come. A reflection from the lens of binoculars, perhaps. Or night-vision goggles.
When Joe neared the top of the incline, he dropped to his belly and scooted over and through the vines, trying not to think about the possibility of snakes and scorpions. When he calculated that he was getting close, he stopped and simply listened for a time.
At first he thought it was just the rustling of leaves he was hearing. But there was no breeze. It was voices. Very soft voices.
When he lifted his head, he saw them. Two men dressed in dark clothes, surveying the quiet scene below, waiting for something to happen.
Joe considered the possibilities. They could already have apprehended Jamie and the baby and were waiting for him to return. If that were the case, Jamie could already be dead and the baby already delivered to the Hartmanns.
But since that particular scenario was unacceptable, he tried to imagine one in which Jamie would have gotten away.
She had seen them coming and went racing out the back door.
But they would have had the back door covered. He tried again.
She had gone for a walk on the beach.
He imagined her leaving by the back door, locking it behind her, and strolling up the beach for a couple of miles then heading back. She saw the men before they saw her. And she turned tail and ran. She would have her escape bag with her. That was what they had decided. Anytime she left the cabin.
He liked that version better. Much better.
Okay, if that was what had happened, Joe reasoned, those two men and probably others who were watching from different vantage points would have no way of knowing that he wasn’t with Jamie and the baby. With their possessions still in the cabin, the men were probably waiting for the three of them to return.
Joe made his way back down the slope through the maze of vines, which were like living things from some horror movie. His feet became tangled in them, slowing his progress.
Where would Jamie have gone, he asked himself. With all that talking and planning they had done, deciding that he should go to Houston for the RV and where they should go when he returned, they had neglected to include a scenario like this one. He didn’t have a clue as to where she would go.
Or did he?
Once he had made his way back to the beach, he took off his shoes and ran full out on the wet sand. As fast as he had ever run in his life.