Driving out Highway 11 in the dark, he doused his headlights half a mile before he reached the turn-off for Ideal Maternity. It was a risk, and would have meant at least a traffic ticket if he had met a sheriff’s deputy or state patrolman, but he had the highway to himself. Three-quarters of a mile beyond the private driveway, on his right, there was a rest stop he had noted earlier, complete with picnic tables and a narrow gravel track that stretched for twenty yards or so, allowing him to hide the Chrysler from the view of anybody passing on the highway. He climbed out of the car.
There was no traffic on the narrow country road as Remo crossed it, worked his way into the trees for thirty yards or so and started back in the direction of the private driveway that served Ideal Maternity. He took his time, no hurry over unfamiliar ground, his passage silent in a forest where the wind, insects, night birds and scuttling animals provided constant background noise. Ten minutes brought him to the unpaved driveway, and he paused once again, to watch and listen.
If the “home” had posted guards, it stood to reason that at least one of them would be assigned to watch the access road. From where he stood he could not guess how far the driveway extended through the trees, but it made no sense for a guard to let potential enemies get close enough to strike, when he could stop them at the turnoff from the highway. Remo checked the shadows, gave full attention to his Sinanju-trained senses, alert for any sign of human life—and came up empty.
It was getting better all the time.
He didn’t actually use the driveway, but struck a course that would run parallel and take him to his destination by what seemed to be the quickest route. In fact, it might be shorter cutting through the woods, but Remo had no plot plan for the property, no other way of homing in directly on his target. This way he was bound to reach the home in minutes.
His next immediate concern was what to do once he arrived.
Ideally Remo meant to nose around the place, examine it from different angles, maybe try to slip inside and see what kind of operation Dr. Radcliff had created for himself. It could be no more than a haven for unwed mothers, as advertised, but Remo didn’t think so. Radcliff had invested too much time on his first love, genetic research, to abandon it entirely and revert to nursing teenage mothers through their final days of pregnancy. As for the clinic in Kentucky, what was that about? It seemed a bit ironic that the same man would be dealing with unwanted children on the one hand, and attempting to increase production on the other, with a clinic aimed. at treating infertility/ The two facilities would have a vastly different clientele, of course, and yet there was a quantum kind of connection.
Remo had a sneaking hunch that Dr. Radcliff’s goals had never really changed. He had abandoned the Eugenix Corporation when it suffered fatal cashflow problems…or in an alternative scenario, before the sham of money problems was employed to give him an escape hatch. Once out on his own, with brand-new sponsors, Radcliff would be free to carry on his work.
Which was what?
How did it gel with cookie-cutter hit men snuffing lives around the country and around the world? What value did a dead assassin, gassed with cyanide in 1965, have to a scientist engaged in pure research?
Remo’s first glimpse of the maternity home was startling. It reminded him of a big, old-fashioned ski lodge more than any kind of medical facility. The unpaved driveway circled right around the rambling two-story structure, lost to view before it came out on the other side and met itself again. Garage or carport in the back, he thought, examining the structure from a distance, noting lights in several windows.
An easy circuit of the grounds, and Remo would be ready to approach the building proper, try to get a peek inside. No rush, but he could feel a measure of anticipation building and focused on suppressing it to leave his senses crisp and clear.
He had as much time as he needed to complete his survey of the property. No sign of any guards, and if he met one, it would be the sentry’s problem.
Remo had not come this far to be diverted from his goal.
Joy Patton was afraid, but her outrage and determination overrode the fear, gave her the nerve to carry out her desperate plan. She didn’t know exactly what the staff would do if she was caught— nothing to harm the baby, Joy was fairly certain— but whatever happened, it was worth the risk.
She had to get out now, before it was too late.
A number of the girls had talked about it—slipping out when it was dark, or even using sex to bribe an orderly and make him look the other way—but none had ever followed through, as far as Joy could tell. Not in the seven months of her confinement, anyway.
She gave a toss to her shoulder-length, thick gingery hair. A bunch of fraidy-cats is what they were, intimidated by the matron and the orderlies, much less by the doctor and his bedside manner. Of course, some didn’t mind the place that much, and a few actually seemed to enjoy it.
Hate to think where they were coming from, she told herself as she completed preparations for her flight. It took all kinds.
She wore dark clothing, layered against the slight risk of exposure to a chill, and the athletic shoes she wore the day they checked her in. Joy’s feet were often swollen now, but she had loosened up the laces, and they still fit well enough to let her run.
No problem there. She would run barefoot over nails and broken glass, if necessary, to escape her stylish prison in the woods.
There wasn’t much in terms of luggage for the getaway. She always traveled light, had checked in with a duffel bag that disappeared somewhere along the way, but that was life. She had the basics in her pockets: toothbrush, comb, her lipstick, and the twenty-seven dollars she had managed to conceal for seven months. Hell, there were thieves and murderers who served less time and had more waiting for them when they hit the streets again.
Everything would be all right, she told herself, when she was free and clear. The first priority was getting out. Whatever followed the escape itself was secondary; she would take things as they came.
Joy had a semiprivate room all to herself these days, since Karen had her baby and they cleared her place. It was another strong incentive to get cracking, not to wait until they found another girl who might turn out to be a weakling, or worse, a squealer. Each day she waited was another day of freedom lost forever, coming that much closer to the time when she, in turn, would disappear.
The matron said her “graduates” were doing great outside, but Joy would never swallow that, regardless of the phony letters posted in the TV room from time to time. She knew damn well that Sheila and Regine had vowed to blow the whistle when they hit the street again, no matter what inducements the doctor offered in return for silence. They would take his money, clothes, whatever, and report the bastard anyway.
But they had not.
No cops told Joy that neither of her friends had ever made it to the outside world. The sight of Sheila’s postcard—from Hawaii, yet—delivered two weeks after she was “graduated,” made Joy want to scream, cry, beat her fists against the walls.
It wasn’t even Sheila’s handwriting, for Christ’s sake.
Time to go.
Her door was locked as usual, but Joy had been around a bit before she landed in her present situation, and the lock was no great challenge. Getting all the way outside would be another story—they had noisy “fire alarms” on any door that didn’t have an orderly assigned to watch it—but Joy had another exit route in mind. There was a window in the basement laundry room that looked out onto grass, a worm’s-eye view. The window had a set of burglar bars outside, but they were old and the surrounding wooden window frame was even older. It had taken Joy the best part of a month, with stolen moments here and there when they allowed the girls outside, but she had loosened up the screws enough that one or two good kicks should clear the way and give her room to run.