A Kate Page novel

No one was perfect. Mason didn’t talk much. He had a lot on his mind.

So did Remy.

They’d been through hell lately, but now their dreams were within their grasp. They were going to get enough money to get a place along the Oregon coast and start their new life, the real life they both deserved. It was going to happen. They were beating the odds, and now Remy believed that they could overcome anything.

Even a dead baby?

Yes. No. I don’t know.

An alarm bell went off in her skull, her brain convulsed. She held her head to keep it from splitting open and took deep breaths.

Stop thinking about that! It’s in the past! Leave it there!

Her jaw tensed as she counted backward from one hundred until she recovered.

Okay, okay.

She was all right.

Just one of her little spells.

She turned back to the TV.

We were so lucky to get out with nothing but a few scrapes.

It’s all meant to be.

The newswoman was talking about the number of dead, missing, injured, homeless, and where tornado victims could get help. The screen showed a graphic with information and websites on locations across the Metroplex for emergency shelters providing medical services, food, water, clothing, trauma support and other aid.

This was important. Remy took notes, got her laptop and resumed checking the locations for shelters and medical help. Then she searched online news sites focusing on reports about the flea market, scanning them for one thing.

Nothing surfaced in the stream of stories until a certain picture blurred past. Remy went back to a photograph of a woman holding an empty, beat-up stroller and a child standing with her before the devastation. The cutline read: “Jenna Cooper holds her daughter, Cassie, and the empty stroller of her five-month-old son, Caleb, who is missing after a tornado destroyed the Saddle Up Center where scores of people were killed.”

The article with the picture was by Newslead, the wire service. The section on Jenna Cooper was only a few short paragraphs. Remy scrutinized every word.

Among the tragic stories emerging from the Saddle Up Center is that of Jenna Cooper, who lost her five-month-old baby, Caleb, when the tornado hit.

“I had him, but I couldn’t hold on.”

Cooper’s baby vanished in the fury along with a man and a woman, the two strangers who’d helped Cooper, her son, and daughter, Cassie, to what they believed was a safe corner of the center.

Officials have listed Caleb as missing, acknowledging that the baby could’ve been located and taken to a hospital. There is also fear that Caleb, along with the people who’d helped his mother, could be among the injured or dead still buried under debris.

“I’ll keep searching for him until I find him,” Cooper said.

Remy glared at Jenna Cooper’s picture.

That’s right, keep searching, like the fool you are. I went to that market looking for someone like you. You weren’t fit to be his mother. I’m sending him to a better place.

“Hey, are you going to do something about that?” Mason asked.

Remy had been so absorbed by her work she’d been oblivious to the crying from the far side of the room. She closed her eyes and sighed. Then she looked at her laptop.

“Mason, read this article while I take care of him.”

Massaging her temples Remy went to the area where she’d taken extra blankets, towels and sheets to fashion a crib on the floor where Caleb Cooper was stirring. He was a beautiful baby, she thought, still wearing his blue-and-white-striped romper with the tiny elephant. She blinked at the small bloodstains near the neck of the fabric. Now he was turning his little bandaged head, opening his mouth, bringing his tiny fist to it and making sucking motions.

“Hungry again?”

Remy went to the kitchenette and prepared a fresh bottle of formula. As it warmed, she thought of how things had gone at the market. It was her determination that had led her to the right baby. They’d hunted the previous nights in vain at a mall and the bus depot before Remy had considered a flea market, where right off she’d found a suitable candidate. She’d stalked the mother, talked with her, winning her trust so she could do what she had to do.

And the tornado?

It was scary. But it was a godsend.

As the winds waned after it had destroyed the Saddle Up Center, Remy saw that the mother and daughter weren’t moving. Remy was stiff and pinned under some wood, but she was okay. She took the stroller with the baby. It was hanging upside down but the baby was strapped in. Mason had a cut on his arm and a bruised left leg. She screamed at him to dig them out. The baby was bleeding. She soon tossed the stroller because it was useless in the mess. With Remy carrying the baby in her arms and Mason limping, they hurried through the wreckage, seeing bodies everywhere.

It was gruesome.

Mason stopped to check on a few. “To help,” he said, but he was taking cash and credit cards from dead people. “They ain’t going to need it,” he said. They continued on to the far end of the market and their pickup truck, hoping it was still there and still working. They found it with a broken side window, a spiderweb fracture on the upper right corner of the windshield, and the rear left quarter was crumpled, but otherwise it had survived undamaged.

Now, in the motel room, the baby’s crying was getting louder.

“Shut that kid up!” Mason barked at her from the computer.

“You shut up! What do you think I’m doing? His bottle’s not ready.”

Remy had been prepared for the baby.

Days earlier she’d bought the essentials: formula, the ready-to-use kind, rice cereal, applesauce, diapers, wipes and hair dye. But driving away from the destruction at the flea market she’d worried about the baby’s little wound on his forehead. She got Mason to stop at a drugstore for bandages and disinfectant.

Still, she had a feeling that she’d forgotten something.

Remy tested the temperature of the formula by squirting some on her wrist, then took Caleb in her arms. She had given him a bottle when they arrived yesterday afternoon. He fussed at first when she held him and rooted around for her breast, but eventually took the bottle; then another one in the night. He was a good eater, she thought, watching him suck hard, almost chomping, on the nipple.

As she held him, inhaling his sweet baby scent, a wave of hormonal emotion rolled through her, and she shuddered.

He was such a beautiful baby boy.

My baby was a boy.

Caleb nuzzled against her. Remy was growing increasingly concerned about the bump on his head from the tornado. Was it a scrape, a surface cut or something nastier? After she was done feeding and changing him, she cleaned his cut and put on a fresh bandage.

Mason was still at her laptop, reading news stories and rubbing his lips a little harder. Remy braced for what was coming. She knew his cravings, his mood swings and his irritability.

He’d made her a lot of promises about their future and struggled to keep them. Remy and Mason didn’t always see eye to eye, but deep down they were welded to the same philosophy: whatever life takes from you, you take it back.

“What’re you thinking, babe?” she asked him.

“I never thought you’d do it. You’re seriously going through with this?”

“We have to.”

He blinked hard, the way he did when he was battling not to lose it with her, especially because of all they’d endured lately. He strained to keep his temper and his voice gentle.

“We’ve got a lot at stake here, and this doesn’t help, Remy.”

“We’re running out of money. We’re running out of time. Do you see any other options? I had to do something. Besides, the article says they think we’re likely all dead. It’s perfect for us.”

“This kid is five months old. You think you can pass him off as a one-month old?”

“Yes, because it’s all meant to be. We’ll just say he’s big.”

“All right, are you going to make the call?”

“Not just yet.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve got a plan. We need to keep him a little while longer.”

“What for? If we’re going to do this, let’s move fast, get it done.”

“First, I want to have a doctor look at the bump on his head. To make sure he’s healthy, so nothing will come back on us.”

“What? Where? That could be dangerous. We’ve already got people looking for us, Remy. I think we should just get away from here, now.”

“You gotta trust me, babe. Let me play this my way. We’re going to do this—it’s going to work. Then we’ll be done running. It’ll be over and we’ll get our little place in the sun. We’ll start our new lives, our real lives, and make all of our dreams come true.”

Mason ran his hands over his stubbled face.

“Hey.” She touched his shoulder. “I’m hungry. Why don’t you go get us some breakfast, babe? Then we’ll get rolling.”

He looked at her, internally confronting their situation. Then he washed up, dressed and left.

Remy returned to Caleb, lowered herself to the floor, smiling at him.

“You’re so lucky. Yes, you are. Your mother was weak, unworthy. She couldn’t face up to her responsibilities to protect you. You’ll never have to worry about seeing her again. You’re so lucky I was there to save you from certain death in that storm. Yes, you are. Now, very soon I’m going to put you in a better place. Yes, I am. It’s all meant to be.”

12

Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas

Sitting behind the wheel of his battered pickup truck at the traffic light, Mason Varno gritted his teeth.

Everything’s gone to hell. Everything’s closing in.

He looked at the surrounding traffic, checked his mirrors.

Sure as shit more people would be looking for them now.

He hammered his palms against the wheel.

I’m not going down for this. I’m not going back to prison for some whacked-out—

The light changed.

Calm down. Think this through. Take care of first things first.

He looked around. Other than a scattering of branches and trash, he saw no storm damage in this neighborhood. He wheeled into a McDonald’s parking lot, taking a spot out of sight in a far corner, under the shade of a maple tree. He fished out a small glass tube and a stamp-sized square of tinfoil. He unfolded the foil to reveal the small heap of crystals, almost tasting the anticipation as he heated the underside with his disposable lighter. The crystals crackled, liquefied and vaporized. He savored the smell as he inhaled the rising smoke through the pipe.

Sweet Jesus, yes.

In seconds, Mason floated on a euphoric cloud. All his troubles lightened and drifted away as he shut his eyes to embrace the bliss.

That’s what I needed. Now I can think.

Review and assess, as his counselor used to say.

Mason guided his pickup through the back of the long drive-through line.

He’d never expected Remy to kidnap a baby. All this time he’d thought that her odd behavior was a reaction to the stillbirth last month. That these past couple of weeks she’d needed to cozy up to other women and their babies in malls and such because it was a kind of therapy for her.

At the hospital, a few days after it had happened, the doctor had informed Mason that Remy was having trouble dealing with the loss and could experience “borderline postpartum psychosis.” It meant she’d sometimes have “delusions, hallucinations and other thought disturbances.” They gave her medication, but every so often Remy had a spell, a headache accompanied by a lot of crying.

Mason never thought her condition would go beyond her having the blues and ogling other people’s babies then—BAM—she grabbed that kid after the storm, then screamed at him that the mother’s dead and the kid’s bleeding and they have to get out.

But the mother ain’t dead, is she, Remy? She’s on the damn news looking for her baby, and we’re in a world of trouble.

He shook his head as he inched his truck along the drive-through line.

Oh, but Remy had a plan.

She had a way out of their situation, and she wanted him to trust her. Un-freaking-believable. She was an unstable psychotic, and he had to trust her plan?

He struggled to get hold of the situation, which was getting worse by the second. The baby’s got that bump on his head. That can’t be good. What if it dies? He’ll just dump the thing and Remy and run, find his way out of it all. I should do it now. Just hit the gas, he thought. Dump her now and never look back.

But he couldn’t.

He was handcuffed to her by circumstance.

How in hell had he let this happen? He had planned things so carefully while doing his eighteen months in Hightower Unit. His time was for a drug deal that involved a lot of players and went wrong. A lot of money was lost, and Mason took the fall with the understanding that he would be cut loose, left alone. Then word got to Mason inside that a wronged party, a guy by the name of DOA, might seek payback or retribution from Mason. DOA had a lot of associates. Mason knew some of them, and he could trust a few but not all of them. One thing Mason knew about DOA was that he was big on threats, liked to talk them up but didn’t always follow through. Still, as month after month passed, Mason kept his ear to the ground for talk about DOA reaching inside to seek vengeance on him. So far, nothing had come of his threat.

Remy had started writing to him through a social network. Then she’d started visiting. She was a looker, no doubt about it. And he’d decided that of all the women who’d written to him, she was the one he’d use for his plan.

In Hightower he needed to show the system that he had something stable set up on the outside to be eligible for early release and a minimum level of supervised parole. Inside, he stayed out of trouble, enrolled in carpentry school and took several reentry programs dealing with addiction, conflict and confrontation, learning how to “cage your rage.” His clear, stated objective was to settle into a stable life with his new woman, Remy Toxton, and get a carpentry job with the goal of eventually starting his own carpentry business in Oregon, where Remy wanted to get married and begin a family. It was what the Texas Department of Criminal Justice needed to hear from inmate #01286413.

But it was all bullshit.

Sure, once Mason got out, he’d play along with the straight life until he activated his real plan, which he’d kept secret from Remy. In prison, trusted friends told Mason that for $25,000 he could buy into an import-export start-up company run by an American player known only as Garza. This business would be based in Belize, then expand in the Caribbean and Central America. It was going to be huge. With the $25,000 investment Mason was guaranteed $250,000 return in the first two months.

Word got back to Mason that Garza would let him into the enterprise as a favor for a friend. Garza was moving fast so he’d set a deadline for Mason’s delivery of $25,000 cash: within three months of Mason’s release.

Trouble was Mason had lied about having the cash.

He’d said he had it stashed from the deal he was doing time for, just so Garza would hold a place for him in the deal when he got out.

Truth was Mason had no cash.

He’d told no one, but when Mason got out he intended to pull a few quick freelance deals to secure the cash for his investment. It was risky, but it was the best he could do.

Whenever Remy visited Mason at the prison he’d tell her he needed $25,000 to start his carpentry business. Then they could live their dream in Oregon. That’s when she stunned him.

“I can get the cash for us,” she said.

A couple of months after that, she beamed from the other side of the glass, telling him that she was pregnant, how she’d answered an ad online to be a surrogate. When she delivered and signed off she’d get $60,000.

Mason couldn’t believe his ears.

But there Remy was, smiling, saying it was all legal, all handled by international adoption lawyers through a global network. They took care of everything. They’d flown her to one of their clinics overseas for the procedure. Remy would be due around the time of Mason’s release. She said giving up the baby was not a big deal for her. As a teen she’d had a baby and given it up to some couple. This time it was all planned, and again she’d help a childless couple.

“And I’ll be helping us get closer to our dream, too. It’s all meant to be, babe,” Remy told him.

This was a long way from the fifty dollars in gate money and the bus ticket the prison gave Mason when he got out. It left him thinking how now he wouldn’t have to pull off any risky deals. When Remy delivered the baby, he’d take $25,000 and dump her.

Hard.

Let her learn a valuable life lesson.

He had other plans that did not include carpentry, kids or any white picket fences in freaking Oregon.

When Mason was released from Hightower, Remy had things nicely set up. She already had a clean apartment for them in Lufkin where Mason started his first carpentry job, through a prison reentry program with a faith-based outreach group, the Fellowship of the Good Thief Society. They’d already helped him get the low-interest loan on his truck, which he needed for work, and they were very protective of an ex-con’s privacy.

As part of the surrogate deal, Remy’s agency would pay all her medical costs and ensure regular home visits by nurses, and provide a small living allowance. But, if the mother backed out of the deal, or lost the baby, all coverage would cease and the mother could be responsible for repaying the agency fifty percent of what they’d paid out to cover medical costs so far.

“They told me they deal with repayment by the mothers on a case-by-case basis,” Remy said.

Remy and Mason kept the surrogacy secret and kept to themselves. Everything went well until the night he woke to Remy’s screams as she held herself in agony.

“Something’s wrong, Mason! Take me to a hospital!”

His first thought was to alert Remy’s agency nurse.

“No! They can’t know! If I lose it, we lose everything! We’ve got to do this without them knowing at all! Hurry, call the people you work for. I saw in your file papers, the church fellowship that supported you, they’re connected to a medical network. There’s a twenty-four-hour emergency number.”

Mason’s people were helpful and discreet. They’d immediately arranged for an ambulance to rush Remy and Mason to the Beau Soleil West Medical Center, a faith-based nonprofit hospital in Shreveport, a little over one hundred miles away.

That’s where she lost the baby.

The church group quietly covered all the costs and arranged to bring them back to Lufkin, protecting Remy and Mason’s privacy while they mourned their loss. Few people knew what had happened.

Remy said they had to leave before the agency nurse came for her next visit. Once the agency found out what had happened, Remy would not only lose out on all that cash, but the agency would demand she repay them half of the thousands they’d spent on her.

“We have to get away, Mason, so I can decide what to do.”

He told his employer and parole officer what had happened and that they needed time away, for a “spiritual retreat,” to begin to heal.

They pulled together all the cash they had and hit the road. They both tried to find a solution in between Remy’s postpartum bouts of psychosis.

That’s how Mason got here.

The speaker atop the menu board crackled.

“May I take your order?”

He ordered, and as he moved on down the line he wondered if his situation could get any worse. While idling, he reached under his seat and felt his Smith & Wesson .40-caliber pistol and the magazine, taking comfort in the fact it was there if he needed it. Then he licked the residue off of the small square of foil as he always did in a bid to prolong his comedown. There was no shortage of challenges.

He glanced at the letters on the console, one reminding him of his monthly meeting with his parole officer, another from the Parole Division saying he’d been randomly selected for drug and alcohol testing. He had twenty-four hours to report to a District Parole Office to submit a urinalysis. Failure to appear would result in a case conference, which was not a good thing.

Mason stopped at the first window and paid for the food.

While waiting to pick up his order, he saw a new message on his phone. The number was blocked.

Heard you are out and got access to 25k—about what you owe. DOA’s comin for your ass.

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