at the white wall unit by the counter as though it were a prison alarm bell. What now? Only Madeleine knew her number, and she should be in her meeting. Elvin, she decided, pushing herself off the chair. He probably forgot to explain something he thinks is critical. She didn’t want to talk to him or anyone else today; however, she figured that if the call went unanswered, Madeleine’s watchdog might be hammering at the door within minutes.
Bay snatched up the receiver on the fifth ring. “Hello?”
No one replied.
“One more chance, and then you get to talk to dead air. Hello!”
Bay heard enough background sound to tell her that someone was there; nevertheless, the caller remained silent. Frowning, she waited several more seconds, then, just as she was about to hang up, the caller did.
Somebody figured out they dialed the wrong number, she told herself. Her first call as a free woman and it’s a mistake. Grateful that at least they hadn’t tried to sell her something, she settled back in her chair.
The sun remained bright, the breeze playful as it turned the trees bordering the property into a shimmering sea of emeralds, and yet her isolation suddenly mattered. Those patches of dense shadows for instance…was something or someone moving around out there?
As her cozy oasis changed before her eyes, Bay’s imagination cranked into overdrive. What if the call hadn’t been a wrong number? People knew she was out of prison. Madeleine had said so, and had also admitted it was possible that not everyone agreed with the court’s decision just as Bay believed for her own reasons that the Tarpley story was a lie. And now that she thought about it, Bay believed it had been traffic sounds she’d heard. The caller could be on a cell phone standing in her very woods watching her.
She should have asked Madeleine more questions, found out exactly what the press knew and were saying about her, asked Elvin to stop for a paper. Considering the increased craziness going on in the world, she could be shot as she sat here, and it would be a day or more before Elvin or Madeleine found her.
With her heart beginning to pound like a full-fledged panic attack, Bay grabbed the blind’s wand to shut out the view, then she flew to the door to close that one, and to test the dead bolt. It wasn’t enough and, as she had on her first few nights at Gatesville, she withdrew to the most hidden corner of the room and curled into a tight ball in an attempt to make herself invisible.
“You’re okay. You’re okay,” she recited pressing her forehead against her raised knees. She just needed to give herself some time.
But minutes stretched into hours and darkness fell and, still, Bay couldn’t bring herself to move.
4
Opening her eyes to red numbers inches from her face was a shock. Once 4:00 registered, Bay went on to wonder how anything electronic, let alone something with a cord, had gotten into her cell. Belatedly, music drew her attention—and it wasn’t coming from the clock. In prison you learned to numb yourself to the nonstop noise, the shouting and screams, but music didn’t fit, either.
Rising up on her elbow, she saw subtle shifts of light on the door. As the thick fog dulling her senses receded, she made the connections—a door, not steel bars, sounds from a TV, not inmates and guards. This wasn’t prison.
The plush, queen-size bed must have seduced her, once she’d given up her corner in the kitchen and decided she could risk going to bed. She remembered turning on the TV for background noise and supposed an experienced burglar could have cleaned out the place while she’d slept. It was her deepest sleep in over six years, but now thirst and hunger drove her out of bed.
Moving through the house like a guest, she turned on the stove hood light in the kitchen and went next for a bottle of water from the refrigerator. She drank half before putting on water for coffee. Once she located the jar of instant and a spoon, she chose a thick mug from the two in the open cupboard and measured out a heaping serving of granules. Significant caffeine was a must regardless of where she slept or how little. She could survive not smoking and had the discipline to monitor her drinking, but Java was her weakness. She liked the flavor in ice cream and in candy. If she could find that someone had invented a coffee-scented bath gel, she could be content.
From the TV came the sound of sirens. Bay hit her knee on the side table as she grappled for the remote and flipped the channel. She had to flip often, soon discovering how much noise, bloodletting and sex was on at night. When she came upon an old, familiar Western, she left it there and returned to the kitchen to pour the boiling water. A movie buff from childhood—once she understood she was responsible for her own entertainment, as she was her education—she remembered being enthralled by the on-screen chemistry between Gregory Peck and Anne Baxter. Unfortunately, time and experience had worked like thirty-six-grit sandpaper on her romantic ideals. As she watched the passion grow between the two lead characters, she could only see the potential for problems down the road…reality making any commitment between them one long conflict.
“Nobody is going to call me to reinvent the wheel,” she said stirring her coffee.
Although she left on the set, she carried her mug to the dinette window where she peered through the blinds as she had earlier. Encouraged by how the security lights lit the property, Bay unlocked the door and settled into a plastic chair under the covered patio. Out on the highway traffic was virtually nonexistent; a freight truck rumbled by as she took her first sip of her brew, and after about a minute a car passed going in the opposite direction. Otherwise, sound effects were provided by night critters mostly from the creek that Bay guessed had to be to her right somewhere in the thickest section of woods. The thought of what went along with streams and dense vegetation had her tucking her feet beneath her. It was a nice night, though, even if city lights did obliterate star viewing.
Therein was a good message, she decided. There was nothing out here to dream over unless you invent it. Encouraged, she returned inside to find a pad and pencil and proceeded to list everything required to run a decent welding shop, and to stock it with ample supplies for the average walk-in business.
Before she knew it, the eastern sky went from indigo to fuchsia. Eager to see what Elvin had accomplished out in the shop, she washed up, slipped on sneakers and, with a third mug of coffee in hand, set off.
A foul smell greeted her as she slid open the shop’s door, the mix of humidity, old oil, dead rodents and who knew what else. But once she turned on the fluorescent lights, all Bay saw was the welding machine. It stood precisely in the position that Glenn’s machine had stood the night he was killed.
She turned away from the troubling coincidence and studied the rest of the shop. Nothing else triggered the same revulsion in her, not the bottles of argon, oxygen and acetylene that stood just inside the door, probably where the delivery truck had left them, and it was simple practicality for the leads to be on the worktable. That table stood six-by-ten feet, larger than the ones they’d used in the old shop, and the red gang box, every bit her height, was a far more modern model than she could afford before.
As she grew more relaxed, she inspected the rest of the building. On the far side in a portable rack lay a modest inventory of stainless sheet metal; beside that was another rack with pipe, a fair quantity. Bay knew it was for Madeleine’s gate.
She glanced back at the welder and decided it was an accident, that’s all. Where else would Elvin put the thing?
Energized, she opened the shop doors the rest of the way, snatching up the notepad and pencil from the scarred desk that would serve as her
