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.

She drove at a crawl past the house and down the front drive. Then, after weeks of agonizing and planning, she arrived at the point of no return.

In her gut, or wherever it was within the human psyche that one puts logic aside and blunders forward if for no other reason than inaction feels wrong, Jamie had found the courage to point the remote at the metal gate and press the button. Ghostly and silent in the darkness, the gate swung open.

She held her breath.

There were no spotlights. No alarm. No men racing toward the car.

“Maybe this is going to work,” she whispered to Ralph, who seemed as apprehensive as she was by this strange late-night outing.

With her heart pounding furiously, she drove through the open gate.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. She was on the other side. She looked over her shoulder and watched the gate close. The front drive was empty.

So far so good.

Except it was starting to snow. Just a little, though. Just those isolated flurries the weatherman had mentioned. Not a cause for concern.

The tires crunched on the gravel as she turned north on Hartmann Road and drove ever so slowly, squinting into the darkness of the moonless night. She strained to make out the edge of the roadway, which she used as a guide. She wanted to be well past Hartmann City before she turned on the headlights.

The snow was coming down harder now. She replayed the forecast in her head. The snowstorm would be south of the interstate. She was certain of it. The ranch was more than twenty miles north of the interstate.

She would drive out of it soon. At least she hoped so. She’d never driven in snow before.

After she passed the Hartmann City turnoff, she turned on the headlights, which did little to help visibility. All she could see in front of her was swirling snow. She slowed to a crawl, continuing to use the edge of the road as her guide.

The swirling snow was hypnotic. She kept blinking her eyes and shaking her head to clear her vision. Surely the snow would let up soon. She just needed to keep going.

After what seemed like an eternity of tedious driving, she forced herself to relax a bit. All she had to do was inch along and stay on the road.

Then suddenly she saw something other than snow reflected in the headlights. What looked like a pair of glowing coals was floating a few feet above the road. It took her several seconds to understand what she was seeing. The eyes of a deer. She put her foot to the brake.

Only then did she realize how slippery the road had become. The car began to swerve out of control.

As she let up on the brake, she had a fleeting image of the deer leaping into the underbrush along the side of the road.

Somehow she managed to keep the car on the road. Then ever so carefully she slowed to a stop and buried her face in her hands. Why tonight of all nights did the TV meteorologist get the forecast wrong? This didn’t look like isolated flurries to her. She was in the middle of a damned blizzard!

Which made her think of the family that had frozen to death in their truck after being evicted by Gus Hartmann. The McGraf family. Had she already gone past what once had been their property?

She was looking around for some sort of landmark when she felt the beginning of a contraction.

It lasted only a short time and ended as quickly as it came. Another Braxton Hicks contraction. Not the beginning of labor.