Mrs. Brammer paused a second or two before continuing. Jamie had a sense that she was not going to like what followed. “Joe signed on as a crew member on a tramp steamer, Jamie. His last phone call was from some island off the coast of Turkey.”

Jamie found herself having terribly conflicting reactions. God only knew when she would be able to talk to Joe. But trekking around Europe didn’t sound like something a married man would be doing.

“So, Joe is not married?” she dared ask, trying to keep her voice a careful neutral.

“No, dear, he’s not married. I always thought he was waiting around for you to grow up, but he got sidetracked with Marcia, who is a lovely girl, and they really seemed to care about each other, but I think she got tired of waiting around for him to get on with things.”

Joe was not married. Not married.

Jamie realized that she had been holding her breath. She let it out before asking, “So, when do you think he’s coming home?”

“Believe me, we ask him every time he calls. And his father lectures him about how it’s time for him to settle down and how risky it is nowadays for Americans traveling abroad. Joe’s all but promised that he’ll be home in time for his father’s birthday in June, but I’m hoping it will be sooner. We do miss him so.”

“Is there any way I could get in touch with him?” Jamie asked.

“Not that I know of. He was e-mailing his grandparents every few weeks from places called cyber cafés, but they haven’t heard from him since he’s been on the ship. Is there anything Art and I can help you with, dear? You sound so forlorn.”

“No, really I’m fine. The next time Joe calls, tell him that you talked to me,” Jamie said, disappointment displacing joy.

“Where are you, Jamie? And where in the world have you been? Before he left for Europe he checked with UT, but you weren’t enrolled for the spring semester. And while he was in England, he searched for you on the computer-which I don’t understand at all. Finally he decided that you must have signed up for the Peace Corps or something exotic like that.”

Jamie took a deep breath. Joe had been looking for her. Really looking for her. “It’s too complicated to explain on the phone,” she said.

“But you have to be living someplace. Where are you calling from?”

A man and woman were coming through the front door. They looked down at the baby in the carrier parked at Jamie’s feet and smiled. “A pay phone in another state,” Jamie said, lowering her voice. “I’ll try to call you back in a day or two and tell you where I can be reached.”

“You can’t even tell me the name of the state! Are you in hiding or something? You sound so tired, dear. Are you all right?”

The sympathy and concern in the voice of Joe’s mother was too much for Jamie to bear. She choked up, unable to speak for several seconds, unable to hold back sobs.

“Oh, my goodness. You poor child. How can I help you? Please tell me where you are. Art and I will come to get you. Or wire you money. Send you a plane ticket. Just tell me what you need.”

“I’ll be fine. Really I will. I’ll talk to you soon. Okay?”

“No. I want you to promise me that you will call back tomorrow with a phone number where we can reach you.”

“I’ll try,” Jamie said and hung up the phone. She wondered if the Brammers had caller ID. She should have warned Mrs. Brammer not to tell anyone except Joe that she had called. And her husband. That would be okay. But no one else. She rubbed her forehead and tried to tell herself once again that her fears could very well be baseless. But how could she know for sure?

Chapter Twenty-five

JAMIE SAGGED AGAINST the foyer wall by the pay phone. She wanted to carry her baby back into the nice warm library and sit in an easy chair for a time to ponder her conversation with Joe’s mother-to replay Mrs. Brammer’s words, turning them over and over in her mind and examining them from every angle as one would a handful of pleasing pebbles gathered from a creek bed. Jamie had no idea when she might see Joe again or hear his voice. But he was not married.

Even so, she must put thoughts of him aside and decide what she was going to do next. She would get back to them, though.

With no way of knowing when Joe would return home, maybe she should find another lawyer.

She imagined sitting across the desk from an attorney. Imagined the incredulous look on his or her face as she tried to explain the predicament she was in. And what if in the process of checking out her story, the attorney alerted the very people who were looking for her?

Joe wouldn’t think she was crazy. He would realize the threat against her was real.

She had always been in love with Joe. She could admit that now. It had not been just an adolescent crush.

She had tried to cure herself of Joe, telling herself that he was nice to her because he felt sorry for her. Sorry that her parents were dead. Sorry she didn’t have cute clothes and wasn’t popular and lost her one shot at being special when she hurt her knee and couldn’t run track anymore. But now Joe’s own mother had indicated that his feelings for her were not based on pity.

Jamie knelt and touched her baby’s unbelievably soft cheek with a fingertip. “Let’s go, my little Billy boy,” she whispered.

She stopped at a Conoco station on the way out of Guymon. She paid for gas, a cup of coffee, and a cheese sandwich, then-with an ever watchful eye on the car and its precious cargo-studied the map of Oklahoma taped to the wall. The Oklahoma-Kansas line was only thirty-five miles away.

She got back in the car and started the motor. Then, absently stroking her dog, she sat there for a time, trying to decide what to do. She was exhausted and desperately in need of sleep. The stitches in her bottom hurt like hell. The baby was whimpering, and soon she would need to nurse him again, longer this time. Maybe she should get a motel room here in Guymon.

But she had used her ATM card here. Twice. She could be traced to this town. Gus Hartmann’s henchmen might already be on their way. Jamie recalled a movie in which an on-the-run Julia Roberts discovered that her bank account had mysteriously vanished, leaving her without funds. Even though Jamie realized that she would be leaving an electronic trail by using her ATM card, she hoped to remove all of the money from her account before anyone had a chance to make it disappear. By then she would be far away from the town in which she made her withdrawals.

She needed to keep going. Needed to put miles between herself and Guymon. Needed to find other banks and withdraw the rest of her money before it vanished like Julia Roberts’s had done. Of course, she was probably being paranoid. Probably Gus Hartmann could not simply pick up a phone and make her money vanish. But just in case he could, she needed that money and whatever she got for selling her car to live on until she had a Social Security number and was able to find a job.

She closed her eyes, trying to will away the headache that was planting itself inside her weary brain.

The next thing she knew her head was jerking back. And she realized that she had dozed off while sitting in the car beside a gas pump.

She could see a road sign indicating that Liberal, Kansas, was straight ahead. She would go there, withdraw more money, and then decide where to go next. She drove behind the service station. She let Ralph run around a bit then fell asleep again while she was nursing Billy.

During the drive to Liberal, when she felt herself starting to nod off, she would pull over onto the shoulder of the two-lane highway, get out of the car, inhale the cold air, swing her arms around for a minute or two, then get back in and drive a few more miles.

Finally she crossed the state line. Liberal was just ahead.