Kelly let out a low whistle. “So, that’s who went through the front gate.”
“Apparently so. You have any idea how she managed that?”
“One of the remotes is missing,” she admitted.
Gus resisted the urge to let forth a stream of obscenities. No more yelling. He needed to stay calm. Needed Kelly’s help.
“Go see about Montgomery,” he told her, “and get me the license-plate number on the Long girl’s car. Don’t make a big deal of this, Kelly. If anyone at the ranch asks, just say the girl decided to have her baby elsewhere.”
“Will do.”
“I’m worried about Montgomery,” he admitted. “She was pretty upset when I talked to her. Call me back right away.”
Chapter Twenty-two
WHEN JAMIE POINTED the remote control at the front gate, she half expected an alarm to sound and the car to be bathed in bright spotlights and men to appear suddenly and drag her from the vehicle.
Until that moment she had told herself that she could always change her mind. That this was just a trial run and not the real thing.
But in bed early this morning, she had felt a tightening of her abdominal muscles. Not exactly painful, but uncomfortable. She experienced the same feeling again in the bathroom, along with the beginnings of hysteria. Freda had warned her about the possibility of a false alarm. About Braxton Hicks contractions. Sometimes they could be pretty strong, but they came intermittently and then went away. Real labor didn’t go away. Jamie prayed that was what she was experiencing. Braxton Hicks.
She experienced another episode midmorning but nothing else for the rest of the day. She had been thoroughly shaken by the experience, however.
What if the pains she had felt were a lead-up to true labor?
What if her labor started during daytime? She’d never be able to leave in broad daylight, and if she waited until dark, she risked having the baby alone and unattended.
Jamie had known all along that leaving would not be simple. That fact in itself is what finally convinced her. Miss Montgomery and Kelly were not about to allow her just to get in her car and drive away. They would find some grounds to stop her-accuse her of stealing something most likely. And it would be almost impossible for Jamie to prove otherwise. It would be her word against theirs, and they worked for the Hartmanns. In Marshall County, the Hartmanns were above the law.
She knew her departure would have to be clandestine. She needed to get as far away from Hartmann Ranch as she possibly could before anyone realized that she had left.
Getting access to her car had been a major problem. She hadn’t planned to threaten a hunger strike. The words just came out of her mouth. She wouldn’t have done it, of course, at least not to the extent that it would hurt the baby. But Montgomery didn’t know that. Montgomery had called her a “wicked girl.”
Once the car was in running order and parked in the ranch-house garage, Jamie went about the business of packing up her possessions and carrying them out to the car, always accompanied by a gardener or sometimes by Miss Montgomery herself. Jamie made a deliberate effort to be cheerful around Miss Montgomery and Nurse Freda, telling them how excited she was about returning to Austin and continuing her college education and getting in touch with her friends. “I know you think I’m rushing things,” Jamie told Miss Montgomery, “but I’m bored and don’t have anything better to do.”
The garage was locked at night, but Jamie had been able to unlock a window on the back of the building while her current escort was out front smoking and chatting with his compadres.
With the only possessions left in her apartment the articles of clothing and toilet articles she would need for the remainder of her stay, the two rooms looked bare and impersonal. She considered putting back the decorative items that had been in the room when she arrived but decided against it. The bare look signified that the end of her incarceration was near.
With the packing done, she was anxious to leave. Her plan was to wait until the danger of winter storms had passed but not so long that she would be in danger of going into labor. She hoped to have enough time to get herself settled and make arrangements for the delivery of her baby.
Her baby. That was how she now thought of the baby boy she carried. Her baby. Her child. Her son. And with acknowledgment came love. She continuously caressed her swollen belly. Her love for her unborn child made her strong and determined. She must plan her escape thoroughly and well so she would be the one who raised her son.
Since the area north of the ranch was so vast and empty, Jamie was fairly certain Miss Montgomery and Kelly would assume that she would head south to Interstate 40, which would take her either east to Amarillo or west into New Mexico. Jamie planned, however, to drive north into the Oklahoma Panhandle. If all went well, she would have breakfast in the town of Guymon. According to the atlas in the library, Guymon was a town of more than five thousand people, or at least it had been twenty years ago when the atlas was published. It was large enough to have restaurants and motels, and a stranger in town could go unnoticed. Not that she would be staying long.
She tried to imagine what was going to happen at the ranch when it was discovered that she had left. Would Kelly contact the county sheriff and the Texas highway patrol and claim she’d run off with the silverware or the family jewels? Jamie knew that she would feel safer once she crossed the state line and was in a different legal jurisdiction.
Jamie imagined Amanda’s fury when Miss Montgomery called with the news. She would expect her brother to track her down. Jamie hoped to make that impossible.
Just last night she had crept down the stairs in the middle of the night to make sure the security code had not been changed. At the back door, she punched in three fours and a five, then opened the door a few inches. No alarm sounded. The code was still in effect. She went down the steps and tried the code on the back gate. It worked.
This afternoon she and Ralph took their usual walk with Lester following behind. She was too nervous to eat much dinner and flushed most of the food down the toilet so that nothing would seem amiss. Then she took Ralph downstairs for his last outing before Miss Montgomery locked up for the night. Back in her apartment, she put on her granny gown-just in case Miss Montgomery decided to stop by-and pulled back the covers on her bed. She even stretched out on the bed for a while, watching the weather. The weather reporter said that what should be the Panhandle’s last winter storm of the season was now located over central New Mexico. The storm would affect the Texas Panhandle as far north as I-40, with only isolated flurries predicted farther north.
A good thing she was heading north, Jamie told herself. She should have clear sailing.
She forced herself to stay in bed until midnight. Then she got up, dressed warmly, and packed the remainder of her possessions in a plastic bag.
Ralph followed her down the stairs. She paused briefly at the back door, took a deep breath, and punched in the security code. The minute she opened the door, Ralph raced past her, headed down the steps, and lifted his leg at the closest tree.
As always, the backyard was lit by floodlights mounted on the roof of the house, but the gate was close to the house and deep in shadows. She couldn’t read the numbers on the touch pad but counted to the fourth button, punched it three times, and the button next to it once.
Ralph followed her as she hurried across the paved area in front of the garage, then went around back. She put Ralph through the window, then crawled through herself.
The garage door made a frightening amount of noise, but no lights came on in the ranch house. She peeked around the corner of the garage. No lights were on in the employee cottages.