Runner

23

Ruby didn't serve lunch at noon that day, as she always had every other day. Christine stared at the clock and waited, trying to prepare herself for Ruby's arrival, and the conversation that was sure to come with it. She had been persuaded that Ruby wasn't evil. Ruby wasn't cruel or spiteful like Christine's stepmother, Delia. She was just crazy, deluded into thinking that she had a right to things she couldn't have. Today Christine was determined to be less bitchy about things. She couldn't be completely nice about being held captive, or Ruby would know she was up to something.

Christine planned exactly what she would do as soon as Ruby brought the tray and left. Christine was becoming very efficient now, making her movements economically and without having to stop and think. Today her goal was to expose the first of the bolts that held the bars over the windows. It was the lower left one that was hidden by the bed. She was sure that if she bared one, the others would be much easier to expose and remove. She would know how to get directly to the others without unnecessary digging, and she would know what the next steps would have to be. Christine might need to fashion a wrench of some kind to remove a nut that held the bolt on this side of the wall. Or she might learn that the bolt was the pointed kind, just a big screw that bit into a two-by-four and held tight.

Her main goal was to use every second. She would only have about a half hour to work and ten minutes to clean up and hide what she accomplished. She had to exert all her strength and speed during that brief period. The three mealtimes constituted her whole workday. She thought about the sharp, serrated knife she had kept after breakfast. No, she couldn't use that to scrape plaster. The knife was too precious to use that way. She might need a sharp blade before this was over.

It was nearly one before Christine heard the sound of footsteps coming up the hall, and the sound was wrong. It was bigger, heavier than Ruby. Christine looked around her to see if there was anything to clean up, anything to hide, anything she needed to keep people from seeing. The key slid into the lock and the door swung open.

Richard. He stood in the doorway, smiling. "Hi, Chris," he said. There was an amused, ironic look in his eye, as though he were the one who had a secret, and not Christine.

"Why are you here?" she said. "What do you want?"

He stepped in and closed the door, but he didn't lock it. Christine kept her eyes on his, hoping he wasn't aware of the opportunity he was giving her. She thought about the loose maternity dress she was wearing, and the open-toed shoes. If only she'd worn something she could run in. He said, "It's really not necessary to use that nasty tone with me, Chris. It doesn't help you, it doesn't help me. Whether we like it or not, that baby means we're going to be involved with each other for life."

"I wouldn't count on that. The baby and I aren't likely to go to jail with you."

Richard shook his head. "I don't think that's going to happen. I brought you home, but I wasn't trying to hurt you. I just wanted you back."

"Richard," she said. "You hired Steve Demming and the others to kidnap me. They set off a bomb in a hospital. They did all kinds of terrible things along the way, and finally got me. It was wrong. It was also big-time illegal. You're acting as though if I stop making a big deal out of it, then it will be like it never happened. It won't. People got hurt. There were dozens of cops. They don't just forget."

"There's nothing I can do about it now," Richard said. "I've got to concentrate on things I can change. I can make sure you're safe. I can try to make things more pleasant for you."

"How about getting me to a doctor? Have you thought about that?"

"Of course we have. Don't worry about any of that."

"Please," she said. "You're just so full of it."

"I'm here to tell you it's lunchtime. Come on," he said. "We're going to eat in the garden."

"Don't you know they won't let me leave? That I've been locked up in here for a week?"

"You need to get some air and sunshine. It'll put you in a better mood."

Christine was surprised, and she was suspicious. There didn't seem to her to be any reason for them to let her go outside. Everything about the idea was to her advantage, not theirs. It really would be better for her health and the baby's. She could try to figure out where this house was, where the cars were parked, and how to get out when the time came.

Richard repeated, "Come on."

"Now?"

"What? You got another date?"

"I wish." She followed him to the door. She was a bit disappointed to realize that leaving the door unlocked had not been inadvertent. Richard had been planning to take her outside all along.

They walked along the corridor, with Richard slightly ahead because the space was too narrow to walk comfortably together. Christine hung back more and more. They had brought her here at night, and the combination of the blindfold and the tape across her mouth made her worry more about her breathing than about trying to peek. She saw that the corridor had four more doors at regular intervals, so she assumed they were all bedroom suites, but the doors were closed.

The corridor spilled them into a huge open room that had a three-story ceiling with exposed beams and a second floor with a loft walkway running the length of the room and disappearing into halls on both ends. Facing Christine on the far end was an enormous stone fireplace and chimney, and on the near end a whole wall of shelves that looked as though they had been designed to hold books, but instead held the same arty junk that decorated the realty office lobby. There were rows of pots that looked Central American, a few small statues of stone, wood, or metal, a few hideous wooden masks from various countries. She wondered if she could hurl one of the statues through one of the glass windowpanes beside her to get out. As she walked she looked out the wall of windows to see high, impenetrable hedges and acres of lawn ending in a grove of trees. The vast, lake-shaped swimming pool and the bubbling spa dominated the paved areas near the house.

When Richard saw her looking at the water he said, "We've already got the crew set to put in fences and gates to keep the kid safe. They start work in a couple of weeks."

"Don't bother. The baby and I won't be visiting this place."

"Oh. Right," he said, and rolled his eyes.

Christine stopped, turned all the way around, and tried to memorize everything she could see. The view through the front windows was not what she had hoped. A paved area in front of the main entrance stretched all the way from the house to a high hedge. There was a break in the hedge for a tall iron gate. There was a six-car garage to her left, but all six doors were closed and, she presumed, impossible for her to open without a remote control unit. There was nothing she could see that she was able to associate with a particular street or use in an escape.

"What do you think of the place?"

Christine turned her head. It was Richard's father. She had always thought of him as Mr. Beale when she had worked at the company, but somehow his crimes against her made her feel it was wrong to call him Mister. "Oh. Hello, Andy. It's very big."

Andy Beale resumed his progress across the room toward the door. "And how are you feeling?"

"Like a prisoner. It's not a good feeling. You'll see."

"I'll pass it on to the complaint department. Just take good care of yourself." He pulled open the front door, stepped out, and closed it.

"Jesus," said Richard. "That was rude." He started walking again. At the end of the great room there was a corridor that led off to the left, and he took it.

Christine hesitated once more to examine the latches on the big windows, scan the room to see if there was anything she could use as a weapon, and look out the front window again. Andy Beale had one of the garage doors open and he was driving a black Mercedes out and through the gap in the hedge. There was no way she could see how the gate opened from here.

Richard's hand clamped her wrist. "Come on."

"What?"

"Pay attention. We're heading for the garden."

"Did you grow up here?"

"In this house?"

"Yes. Did you?"

"No. In fact, I was the one who found this place and arranged for the purchase a few years ago. It was built by a guy from the east who wanted to retire from his law firm and have a lot of parties. I think he forgot that he didn't know anybody here. But it was too much house for him anyway, and people in Rancho Santa Fe don't like the noise and traffic from big parties. If he hadn't sold, they probably would have kicked him out."

"I'll bet the big attraction for you was the land."

He looked at her in surprise. "It was."

"Must be at least five acres."

"Twenty," he said, and there was pride in his voice. "Eight in the back here, and twelve more beyond that fence. It's not just the fact that it's a single twenty-acre parcel that makes it valuable. It's that this is Rancho Santa Fe. Every parcel is big, a lot of them much bigger than this. This has both privacy and status. And because every landowner is a member of the covenant, you get control over zoning and public works, so you can protect your investment from politicians."

Christine had manipulated Richard into complacency with a couple of words. Talking about real estate, money, and control distracted him. The rest of the news wasn't so good. The night she had been brought here she could not even have guessed what state she was in. Rancho Santa Fe wasn't a good place to be locked up. It was rich—she had once heard it was the richest community in the whole country—and the properties were huge. She could scream until her jaw got tired, and nobody would hear her. The houses were hundreds of yards apart, most of them owned by people who also owned other houses in distant places and so were gone much of the time. The roads wound among gentle hills wooded with low California oaks, and there wasn't much traffic. If Christine made it to the road, she wouldn't necessarily meet any rescuers before she got caught.

Richard took her hand, this time less roughly, and led her out one of the glass doors into the garden. If he had called it "the secret garden" she would not have thought it was a joke. On one side was the wing of the house where her room was located. On another was what seemed to be a pool house, and the third was blocked by a windowless wall that must be the back of the garage.

There was a table set for two people on a small stone patio surrounded by rock gardens. There were summer flowers and native plants—agave, Mexican sage, and matilija poppies. It was a beautiful spot, and so isolated and private that she felt an impulse to look around for witnesses to be sure Richard wasn't about to kill her. He sat at the table and waited until she sat in the chair opposite him. She saw pitchers of water and fruit juice, a basket of bread, and a large wooden bowl of salad. She said, "Did you make this lunch?"

"No," he said. "My parents have a cook. I just wanted to be alone with you for a while and let you enjoy being outside without a lot of people around." He paused. "And I wanted to talk to you about our future."

She frowned. "Isn't this getting tiresome for you, too? We don't have a future. I spent a couple of years trying to make things work. They didn't, and I left. It's over."

"You didn't really think it was over, or that I'd let you do that."

"You're right. I thought you'd do something crazy, and you have. I tried to be very hard to find, but I blew it, and you found me. That doesn't mean we have a future."

"Step back about five paces in your mind and look at us," he said. "We're married. You may not like the way it happened, but if you go to the county clerk's office you'll see ours is the same as anybody else's marriage. We're going to have our baby in a couple of weeks. I know it's my baby, and a DNA test can prove it. We're sitting in a garden at a beautiful house my parents own in one of the most desirable places in the country."

"Richard—"

"No, let me finish. I made mistakes with you. I took you for granted, and I didn't make enough of an effort when we were together. I apologize. I've apologized a hundred times. I'm planning to make it up to you. I know you're mad at me, but we've got to be able to deal with each other."

The way he had raised his voice and talked over her to force her to listen to his apology was like a recapitulation of the changes in their relationship. He had always been overbearing, but now his vehemence had become frightening. Christine tried to speak calmly, to choose her words with great care so he wouldn't lose his temper.

"Richard," she said. "I didn't leave because I was mad at you. I left because I was scared to death. You hit me a lot of times. I didn't know how you would react when you found out I was pregnant, but I knew I no longer had the right to take the chance and find out."

"If you're so scared of me, why are you trying to piss me off? If I hit you now, then you're right? Is that it?"

"I'm not trying to piss you off. I really don't want to make you mad. I'm just trying to get you to accept the situation as it is."

"That's just the situation as you think it is. You're young, practically a kid. You'll learn more about life as time goes by, and then you'll feel better about the one you have." He watched her for a second, then sighed and picked up his fork.

Christine stopped looking at him while he ate. She looked at the silverware on the table, but saw it was actually good silver, so it would be soft metal, useless as a tool or a weapon. She looked at the shadows on the lawn to figure out which way was west. When she slipped out of here, it was probably going to be night, and west was the best direction. Interstate 5 was just to the west of Rancho Santa Fe, and that would be where all the traffic was. If she made it to the freeway shoulder and started waving her arms, she wouldn't have to wait more than a minute or two before she got picked up, or maybe even arrested.

She studied the trees, the hedges, the buildings. What she would need was luck. If only one of the gardeners had been careless and left a trowel or a pair of clippers lying around, she might have a chance to conceal it under the big, loose top she was wearing. She studied the rock garden. Where was everybody? What if Richard really was alone? She had seen Andy Beale leave. The cook Richard had mentioned wasn't visible anywhere. The whole estate was silent except for the chirping of small brown birds with off-white breasts. Maybe this moment was her last opportunity. If she could get behind him and pick up one of those rocks, she could hit him on the head with it. Richard always had his car keys in his right front pocket. She could grab them, run around the far side of the garage away from the house, find the black Porsche, get in and drive. She would be free.

But she thought about how horrible it would be to crack somebody's skull with a rock. It could kill Richard, or leave him paralyzed or something. As she tried to visualize it, she raised her eyes to gaze across the table at him. He gave an insincere smile, and behind it, there was a smirk of self-satisfaction. He thought he had charmed her, fooled her into some relapse of bad judgment. She felt a tightening in her chest. He wasn't trying to get her back. He was trying to fool her, to destroy her life, and then laugh at her for it. Yes, she decided. Yes, she could hit him. She looked past him and chose a smooth oval rock about the size of an ostrich egg. If she were behind him she could probably lift it in one hand and bring it down hard.

How would she get behind him? She was nearly finished with her salad. Maybe she could get up, go pick a flower, and tell him she wanted a few of them to put in a glass of water for her room. She played the whole conversation in her mind, and decided she could be convincing. The only remaining problem was forcing herself to act.

His cell phone rang. He still had the same irritating little tune for a ring tone. She watched him snatch the phone out of his shirt pocket and flip it open. "Yes?"

The phone call was like a message to Christine that she should act. She had been reluctant, but the call took all of Richard's attention. He was scowling down at the table, not even looking at her. Christine stood up and slowly, casually walked a couple of steps away from the table with her hands clasped behind her. She saw him look up at her for a second, but somehow he satisfied himself and stared down again.

"Of course it's me. What's the problem?"

She looked at the house. It still seemed quiet and empty. She walked a few more steps, pretending to look at the flowers in the rock garden, until her course led her around behind Richard. She moved her eyes to his back as she dug the rock free of the soil and started to pry it up.

Richard suddenly stood and pivoted, and his hand jumped to her throat like a striking snake. He clutched the front of her top so it tightened on her neck. "What the fuck have you been doing?"

"Nothing," she said. "I just stood up to look at the flowers. I thought maybe—"

He shook her. "In your room!"

She understood. Her eyes flicked to the window of her room. Behind the bars she could see the heads of two people moving around in there, and after a second she recognized them. As one of them passed close to the window and the light fell on blond hair, she could tell it was Claudia Marshall, and then she saw the long black hair of Sybil Landreau. They were searching her room, and they must have found her secret.

Christine considered trying to reach for the rock, but Richard's grip on her blouse was too tight, the fabric almost choking her. She could barely move.

His face was close to hers, and she could feel the puffs of wet air on her face as he spoke. "I left you alone," he said. "I made them give you some space to yourself. I trusted you!"

He started to walk, dragging her along by the front of her blouse. She was bent over, unable to quite keep up with him and afraid she would trip and fall on the uneven flagstones of the patio. He jerked her inside, then sped up as he hauled her down the long hallway to her room.

Christine was bent forward, looking at the floor and trying to keep from tripping and hurting herself, trying to hold back a bit to slow their progress. Her resistance seemed to make him more angry and rough. When they reached the slightly open door to her room he gave it a kick so it swung open the rest of the way. Richard yelled, "Shit! I can't believe this!" The curtains had been taken down and tossed on the floor, the bed had been pulled away from the wall and the mattress flipped over. Every drawer and all the cupboard doors were open. She could see that the top was off the toilet tank in the bathroom, and Steve Demming was kneeling in front of the sink searching the cabinets.

Staring at Christine with distaste were the two women she had gotten used to thinking of as bad angels. They were tall and attractive and stylish like the mean girls at school, and they looked at her the way those girls used to—as though she were less than human.

Christine felt her strength draining from her as soon as Richard pushed her inside the room. The damage she had done to the plaster wall and the mess the two woman had made reduced her to shame and humiliation. She hated herself for being so vulnerable that these enemies could make her feel anything, but she couldn't seem to overcome her discomfort.

Sybil Landreau arched an eyebrow and said, "You're no housekeeper, honey."

Claudia Marshall gave a bark of a laugh, just a single harsh sound. Then her mouth returned to the familiar smirk as she watched Christine.

But Richard didn't see anything amusing. He seemed stung and outraged by the damage she had done to the plaster. She had seen little reaction to her angry words in the garden, but the gouged plaster of the wall had thrown him into a rage. "You little moron," he said, and pulled her closer to the wall. He changed his grip to the back of her neck. "Look at it." He thrust her face close to the damaged wall. "What the fuck did you think you were doing?"

Christine sensed that if she gave in now, in front of these smirking women, she would be lost. "I was doing what anybody would do—trying to get out."

Richard increased the pressure on her neck until he had pushed her face against the plaster. "There's no way you could get out. Didn't you pay any attention when you were working for me? Didn't you see how old houses were built? There are wooden laths and plaster, then two-by-fours and insulation, then sheets of plywood, then siding."

He didn't seem to see that she had been trying to reach the bolts that held the bars over the window, but she didn't want to use that to defend herself. She was beginning to fear he would break the bones in her face against the wall. "I guess I didn't pay that much attention."

"I guess you didn't." He jerked her backward and pushed her so she fell onto the bed. He said to the others, "Take her to the other room, will you? I don't trust myself with her anymore." He didn't stop on his way out the door.

The two women pulled Christine to her feet. They seemed to think she was resisting. Claudia bent her wrist and twisted her hand to make her walk beside her. Sybil Landreau held her other arm. They steered her out of the room, down the hall two doors to another bedroom. This one was smaller and plainer, with very little furniture. They released her in front of the bed, and she sat down, fighting back tears.

Sybil said, "You stupid cow. You don't know when you've got it good, do you?"

"Maybe not."

Sybil bent slightly so her black eyes held Christine's. "There's something you ought to think about. We're working for Richard. If we weren't, there wouldn't be anyone to tell us what to do and what not to do."

"What does that mean?"

Claudia Marshall was standing a few paces back with her arms folded. "You still don't get it? What's happening here is what Richard wants to happen. You think that without him you'd be free. The truth is, all you'd be is dead."

Christine said nothing.

"You haven't paid for what you've done, because our client wants that baby you're carrying to be born. That's all that's kept you alive. As long as he wants you here, you will be here."

The two women turned and went out the door. Christine heard the door lock. No one returned with food or to check on her. A few hours later, a bit after seven in the evening, her water broke and contractions began. At seven the next morning the contractions were making her strain to keep from screaming, so she was sure her labor must be nearly over. Ruby came into the room, saw what was going on, and ran out.

At nine a man that the women addressed as "Doctor" arrived with a bag full of medical supplies and equipment. He spoke little, and when he did, it was in Spanish. He took Christine's temperature and blood pressure, listened to her heart and lungs, and then went away. The woman he brought with him as an assistant spoke no English either. She wore tight jeans, high heels, and a black top that was extremely low cut to show the gold chain with a heavy cross on it that rested between her breasts. The woman read Spanish-language magazines about movie stars, which she put down once every hour to examine Christine. Afterward she would go outside for a while and return smelling strongly of cigarette smoke.

After her fourth trip, in the late afternoon, she brought the doctor back with her, and together they pushed the television set from Christine's old room in on a cart. The woman watched shows on the Spanish-language stations in which people were invited down from the audience by young women in bikinis to participate in some kind of competition, while Christine's pain almost made her faint.

After midnight Christine went into the final stages of labor, and only then did the woman in high heels seem to wake up and become active. The baby was born, and as soon as the doctor cut the umbilical cord and got the baby to breathe, the woman washed it and wrapped it and took it away. Christine did get to see that it was a boy, and that it was big and seemed healthy. She cried for joy and relief. After a few minutes Sybil and Claudia and Ruby appeared and moved Christine to her old room, which had been restored and rearranged. There was a white crib pushed up close to the bed, and a changing table by one wall. The Mexican woman gave Christine an injection, and she lay in the bed, still crying, until she fell asleep.

When Christine awoke, Ruby Beale was in the room with her. "Good morning," she said. "How are you feeling?"

"Where's my baby?" Christine said. She was overcome with a feeling of panic. Was he dead? Had they already taken him away?

"Ready to see him?"

"What have you done with him?"

Ruby went out the door, and a moment later, the Mexican woman came in carrying the baby wrapped in a soft cotton blanket and wearing a small cap, so only his little reddish face peeked out, his puffy eyes like slits. The Mexican woman seemed to have softened since the baby was born, and as long as all of her attention was on the baby, she was cooing and making little sounds with her lips. When she looked at any adult, she seemed to bristle and glare. But she brought the baby and set him at Christine's breast, and kept rearranging him until he began to nurse. This was the strangest feeling of all for Christine.

"He's a little bit early," said Ruby, "but I wouldn't even call him a preemie. He's over five pounds—just about normal weight."

After a few minutes the two women left, and after that, the world was populated only by Christine and her baby.

When they had been together for an hour, the door opened again and Ruby and the Mexican woman returned. The woman lifted the baby off Christine and took him out of the room. "Let me hold him," said Christine, but the woman didn't seem to hear or understand.

"Don't worry," said Ruby. "He'll be back soon enough. He just needs to be changed, and you need breakfast. If you're going to nurse, you've also got to eat."

Christine said, "I want him. You have no right to take him away." She felt terrible fear and love for the baby. "Can't you hear me? I want him with me."

"Have you figured out what to name him yet?"

"I'm sure you have."

"No. The mother gets to do that. I have some suggestions, though. Andy might be a good name."

"His name is Robert."

"Robert," repeated Ruby. "Robert Andrew Beale."

"Robert Monahan. His name can't be Beale because it's not a legal marriage. And I'm not naming him after your husband."

Ruby patted her, but her expression was cool and distracted, and not nearly as gentle as she had been before the birth. "Please yourself."

Routines developed over the next few days. At first the Mexican woman brought Robert in only to be nursed. But then Christine began to spend more and more time with Robert, and to change and dress him and hold him.

It was when she was alone, without Robert, that Christine was forced to think. A big healthy boy was just what the Beales had wanted. Maybe if he had been a girl, the Beales would have been disappointed in Christine and decided she wasn't suitable, and would have let Christine take her baby and go. But Christine reminded herself that during the past two weeks she had spent many hours listening to Ruby and Andy Beale talk about the baby, and neither of them had ever expressed any interest in whether it was a boy or a girl. They wanted a baby, period. The thought made Christine panicky, and sent her mind off again on its circular course. She kept remembering what Claudia and Sybil had said about Richard keeping her alive. Maybe they would be allowed to kill her now that Robert had been born. The thought made Christine's heart pound and her head ache, but she couldn't think of anything she could do to stop them. Whenever she heard a sound in the hallway, she jumped, then tensed her muscles and waited, listening intently.

After a week she said to Ruby, "Richard hasn't been to see me."

"Do you want him to?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Has he asked if I was okay?"

"Sure. I told him you were fine."

Christine came to the part that worried her. "Has he been to see Robert?"

"That he did," said Ruby. "The first day. Or at least the second. He came in and looked him over."

"He hasn't been alone with him, has he?"

"No. He knows nothing at all about babies. He's not going to be the sort of father who changes a diaper. Get that out of your mind."

At around that time they began to grant Christine more freedom. She was allowed to sit with Ruby, Robert, and the Mexican woman in the gardens, and sometimes to walk with them on the grass or dip her feet in the pool. The one thing that nobody would ever allow Christine to do was be outside with the baby alone.

"Why don't you let me be alone outside with Robert?"

"Too much sun isn't good for him."

"Or for anybody else. We're never outside for long, and he's always shaded."

Ruby eyed Christine wearily. "Let's just say it helps the rest of us to feel at ease. If he's inside, you can wander around out here pretty much as you please. We know you won't go anywhere. The gate is locked anyway."

"Then what are you worried about?"

"Honey, this is for your own good. For everybody's good. You must know that I have some control over certain things around here, but not others."

"Then who does have control of them?"

"Mostly my husband, Andy. But there are complicated issues here. Everybody has his own set of concerns. Getting into trouble, for instance. Richard and his hired people have a say in those areas, whether I want them to or not. None of them wants to be vulnerable, and I don't think any of them will tolerate much risk."

"They didn't mind the risk of kidnapping me."

"If you were to take off and run to the police, then by the time you got back, Robert wouldn't be here anymore."

"You mean they'd kill him?"

"I mean exactly what I said. I didn't say dead. I said gone. His crib and his toys and his clothes would be gone. You would never, ever know what became of him." She stared at her with what looked a lot like compassion. "I think you and I have got to team up and be sure that never happens. Don't you?"

It was only a few days after that conversation that the rules changed again. Christine was still nursing Robert every couple of hours, and soon it felt like too much work for someone to hear the baby cry, pick him up, and carry him down the hall, unlock the room, and bring him to Christine. They let Robert stay with her. She liked it much better that way. At first she did what she was told and had Robert sleep in his crib until he woke up crying for milk, but then she brought him to bed with her and kept him there until daylight.

She got up one day and began to take stock of the world outside Robert. She needed to escape—now more than ever before. Now that he had been born, the Beales really didn't need her. She was a threat to them, a dangerous person who just might sneak out of her room sometime and get them arrested. The two women, Claudia and Sybil, were longing to be allowed to murder her. Richard certainly had no affection for her anymore, and he didn't even seem to have a sexual interest in her.

It occurred to her that there was a way, and a time, to escape. She realized now that she had been foolish to try so hard when she was nine months pregnant. There never had been a way out then. Everyone had been watching her, expecting her to try. Even if she had made it out of this room into the sunlight, there was no way a woman near the end of a pregnancy was going to outrun anybody who thought his life might depend on catching her.

But now Robert had arrived and changed everything around him. Ruby and Andy Beale were absolutely enthralled. Nothing mattered to them anymore except their grandson. Ruby never talked about Richard anymore, and barely noticed Christine. She would come into the room and head straight for Robert, not even looking directly at Christine even though she was nursing him.

Richard was still lurking around the premises part of the time. He went to work as usual, and Christine was under the impression that he still slept at the house where he and she had lived together. But he was sometimes visible through the window or down the hall in the late afternoon or evening. He would sit at the outdoor table smoking cigarettes with the Mexican woman. Other times he would be on the back lawn talking to Steve Demming, Pete Tilton, Claudia, and Sybil. The two men just came here to meet with him, but the two women were here all the time. Apparently they had moved in to guard Christine, but they seemed to spend more and more time with Richard. Once the three of them went swimming in the pool, and it occurred to Christine that it was the only time she had seen anyone go near it, although she had been here for two weeks.

She realized that people weren't very interested in her anymore. They were only watching Robert. And they were all so arrogant and sure of themselves. She needed to keep them that way.

During the night Christine got everything ready—two receiving blankets, two one-piece outfits, two little knit caps. Andy and Ruby had begun bringing toys when Christine arrived, and Robert was still just "the baby," a theoretical person who might be male or might be female. One of the toys was a cute baby doll. When Christine had seen it, she had wondered if Ruby had lost whatever weak hold on reality she'd had. No child would be able to play with that for two years or more. The odd thing was that now that Robert was born, the doll seemed to bear a faint resemblance to him. It had the same light skin and the same cap of dark hair. Christine supposed that Ruby had looked at her and at Richard and made a fairly accurate guess at what the baby was going to look like. She hadn't done as well at guessing the sex.

At ten in the morning Christine opened the window of her room. She had dressed the doll and wrapped it in a blue receiving blanket, then put the little stocking cap on it. She opened the window, looked to be sure nobody was outside, pushed the doll between the bars, and let it drop to the ground behind the thick shrubs. Then she closed the window again.

She fed Robert, dressed him in a one-piece suit exactly like the suit she had put on the doll, and wrapped him in an identical blue receiving blanket. At ten-thirty Ruby came to her room just as she had been doing for the past few days.

Ruby said, "Our boy is looking pretty good, isn't he?"

"Robert is doing great," said Christine. Sometimes it had occurred to her that Ruby said things that appeared to test her acceptance of her life of captivity, but were really meant to test her sincerity. If Christine had suddenly acted as though she was getting used to this, then Ruby would have known she was about to try something. She had to be very careful with Ruby.

Ruby said, "Want to take him out for a while?"

"I don't know," said Christine. "Is it hot out there? I don't want him in the sun."

"So sit in the shade with him. A little fresh air and indirect sunlight will be good for both of you." Ruby held the door open. As Christine walked to the doorway past her, Ruby said just above a whisper, "And if you don't mind my saying it, honey, there's nothing wrong with a little exercise for you, either. The sooner you get rid of that weight, the better things will seem. Nobody feels her best with an ass like a tugboat."

Christine carried Robert down the hall. Her jaw muscles were working, but she didn't realize it until the muscles suddenly felt tired. She artificially relaxed them and blew a breath out through her teeth. When she reached the first sliding glass door she opened it and stepped outside.

Christine walked toward the back of the yard, keeping Robert's face in the shade of her shoulder. When she got a few yards from the house she realized that Ruby had followed her.

Ruby said, "I hope I didn't hurt your feelings, Chris."

Christine gave her a look she hoped was withering. "What hurts me is being a prisoner. I don't really care what any of you think about my ass."

Ruby pursed her lips and moved closer. "I apologize. Sometimes I'm a little too quick to talk without thinking. But I'm just trying to be your friend. I've been watching Richard. It's possible he's gotten over the shock of everything that's happened, and he'd be receptive to some sort of reconciliation if you made the right move."

"I didn't do anything to him—before I was kidnapped or after. If he's unhappy, that's his fault."

"That's not the point. Robert deserves a father. Don't you want to know why I think he might be interested?"

Christine shrugged. "No, but if you want to tell me, I can't stop you."

"I saw him watching you with Robert yesterday. He was in the house while you were out here. He didn't come out to talk to you or anything, but I could see there was something going on in his mind. The two of you just looked so pretty—you with Robert in your arms around sunset. You and I talked about this before. I know that you cared about him once. Loved him, even."

"You mean I'm supposed to try to get Richard to take me back?"

"I know that isn't on your agenda right now," Ruby said. "But sometime you might feel less bitter. You've also got to realize that looking your best isn't giving in to anybody. It gives you the power." She patted Christine's shoulder and stepped back. "Well, I've got to get going. I've got shopping to do, and the cook wants some help picking out dinners for the next few days. We've got so many more people living here now."

Christine began to feel her heart beating faster and faster as Ruby crossed the lawn. Could she be forgetting that Christine was alone out here with the baby in her arms?

Ruby went inside and started to close the door, but before she could do it, Sybil and Claudia both slithered outside and started across the yard toward her. As they came she could see their eyes were like the eyes of cops, full of suspicion and yet detached, confident that they would detect her hidden intentions and be able to block them. They turned their heads this way and that to scan the yard to be sure Christine was alone, then stared at her to be sure she wasn't up to something and wasn't planning to move.

The fact that they would be the ones to watch her this time made her frightened, but she also felt eager. Fooling them would make her revenge even better. Then she wondered if she had been unconsciously feeling reluctant to fool Ruby, or maybe afraid she'd have to hurt her to get away.

As Sybil and Claudia stepped in her direction, Christine pretended not to notice them. She held Robert and turned to walk along the grassy edge of the garden, being sure to turn only to the right so when they arrived she was innocently moving away from the gap in the hedges that led to the driveway.

Sybil stationed herself between Christine and the driveway, and Claudia stopped about twenty feet away, ready to move to the right or left if Christine changed course. Christine kept her face close to Robert's, and murmured to him musically about the green grass and the blue sky and what a beautiful boy he was. And she kept walking. But she could see from their dull expressions and their slouching posture that Claudia and Sybil were already finding this guard duty dull. Christine would pit her love of Robert and her determination to escape against the two women's ability to fight their boredom and laziness.

She knew that they would tire of this job in a few minutes. It had surprised her at first to see that Sybil and Claudia had absolutely no interest in Robert. Most women were fascinated with new born babies, wanted to look at them and touch them and hold them, but these two didn't. The only attention they paid to Robert was the attention necessary to keep him and Christine imprisoned at this house.

Christine kept walking, looking at Robert's face and cooing to him, and that was something she already knew she could do for hours at a time. She never looked at the two women, never talked to them, but kept herself intensely aware of where each of them was.

Christine kept at it for an hour and a half before the two women decided it wasn't necessary to stand while she walked. They sat down, Claudia beside the gap in the hedge and Sybil near the spot where the grass gave way to the grove of trees. Christine waited, and gradually the two began to let their eyes stray and look elsewhere—at the house, the gardens, and each other. When she saw them step close together so they could talk, Christine slowly made the course of her movements take her closer to the house. She picked a poppy at the edge of the lawn and held it up so Robert could see the bright orange flower. She sat on an Adirondack chair overlooking the pool and concentrated on keeping the sun out of Robert's eyes and off his baby skin. She knew that thinking about him would make her able to outlast Sybil and Claudia. Robert was awake, and it seemed to Christine that he was looking with curiosity at the light and shadows as the wind made the trees sway back and forth near the buildings.

The two women were more comfortable now that Christine was away from the forbidden places—the gap in the hedge, which Christine could now see was an open wrought-iron gate, and the pathway around the garage to the cars. As long as the pair were between her and those places, they felt comfortable enough to sit talking. When Robert cried for milk they looked up for a second, saw Christine lifting her shirt to nurse him, and looked away again.

After Robert was fed, Christine began to walk again, holding him upright to burp him with his face resting on a cloth diaper on her shoulder. This time she walked along the side of the house. Robert was happy and full, and after a few minutes he fell asleep. Christine continued walking along in the shade of the house looking in the windows at the deserted rooms, and then came to the barred window of her own room. She used the diaper from her shoulder to wipe a little milk off Robert's lip, but then dropped the diaper. She knelt down, and checked to be sure she was behind the Adirondack chairs and out of sight of the women.

Christine's heart began to speed up as she lay her beautiful, perfect son in his blue blanket on the bed of cedar chips under her window, picked up the diaper and the baby doll wrapped in the same kind of blue blanket, cradled it in her arms just the way she had cradled Robert, and walked along the side of the house in the direction of the sliding door.

She was confident that Claudia and Sybil would never offer to take Robert in to the nurse or to watch over him while he slept. But she was not so sure they wouldn't move close enough to see what she was carrying. She had to dawdle just enough to let them notice that she was taking the baby into the house.

In the reflection in the glass wall she caught the glance that Sybil gave her, saw her say something to Claudia, and then the two got up off the lawn and began to move toward the house behind her. She resisted the temptation to hurry in order to stay far enough ahead of them. They were predatory creatures, unconsciously cruel like a pair of wide-eyed feral cats, and any tiny sign of fear or nervousness would be like the shriek of a wounded bird. They would be on her in a second.

Christine went inside and left the sliding door open, hoping it looked as though she simply didn't care enough to shut it. She forced herself to walk slowly down the hallway with the doll wrapped in the blanket, swaying gently from side to side to rock the lifeless piece of rubber to keep it asleep.

As she reached the open door of her bedroom, she turned back and let herself see first Sybil, then Claudia step in through the sliding door and then move beyond her sight into the great room. She slipped into the bedroom and quickly arranged the doll in Robert's crib. She placed it on its side and pushed a small, firm pillow behind its back to keep it on its side, facing away from the doorway, then covered it with another receiving blanket.

Every second that passed, Christine was listening for the sound of Robert's little voice to rise from outside the window a few feet away. She already knew him so well that she could hear in her imagination the first, tentative cooing sound that he would make if he woke up on the ground behind the shrubbery along the house. Then there would be an inquiring noise, a sound that was intended to call her. If he didn't see, hear, or feel her after that, there would be a loud cry. Someone would hear it, and they would know.

She felt afraid to delay by even a second, and afraid to go on with this. She wished she had done more to prepare, wished she had tried instead to find the Beales' bedroom in this huge place and sneak into it alone. There might be an actual telephone plugged in, and not just empty jacks as there were in the rest of the house. But Christine dismissed those thoughts. She was already moving, and she had to think about what she needed to do.

Christine snatched up the magazine she had been reading the night before. The impression she wanted to make was that she had put Robert to sleep under the eye of the baby nurse, and was now taking a break by herself. She sauntered back down the hall, fixing a tired, bored expression on her face.

Where the hallway opened onto the great room, she walked along, aware of Sybil and Claudia. Each of them had arranged herself on one of the big white couches in feline repose. They paid little attention to Christine, but she knew they saw her, and had appraised how she walked and held herself, what she was carrying, how her face looked. If there was a tremor in her hand or a stiffness to her gait that she hadn't suppressed, she knew they had already detected it. She held her mind empty for a few seconds, waiting for one of them to spring up or yell or even shoot her. Nothing happened, so she walked on.

Christine wouldn't do anything but step outside through the same door they had just come in. It was the simplest, most direct route to the safe places, the ones where she was allowed to be. She went out and sat in one of the Adirondack chairs where they could see her without moving from their couches, and began to leaf through the makeup advertising at the front of her magazine.

All of her senses were raw, as though the skin had been peeled back and the nerves were exposed to the air, throbbing and waiting to be irritated. Robert wasn't making noises yet, and the women were lying still. Two cars went past on the road beyond the hedge, and Christine felt worried at first that they would pull into the driveway, and then devastated because they might have been the last cars to go by for an hour. She had missed them, and maybe they had been the ones that had been meant to find her and Robert by the roadside and save them.

Time was short and diminishing now, a lit fuse. She looked up, shaded her eyes from the sun petulantly, got up and moved to another chair, closer to Robert's place under the barred window, and invisible from the couches inside. She needed one of the two women to see her, so she waited. She counted to twenty, then counted fifty more, pretending to read her magazine but unable to concentrate on the sentences, which seemed to be lists of disconnected words.

She caught a movement in the corner of her eye, so she lazily lifted her gaze toward the grove of trees at the end of the yard like a person lost in thought, then half-turned her head and saw Claudia. She was standing on the inner side of the glass door, craning her neck slightly to look along the side of the house at Christine.

Christine sighed and half-turned her body to face away from Claudia, and turned more pages. She counted to seventy again, then glanced back at the door. Claudia was gone. Christine stood quickly, hurried around the Adirondack chairs to the shrubs under her window, and gently lifted Robert. He was still asleep, still peaceful and unharmed.

She followed the steps that she had been imagining in fragmentary form since she had been caught and brought here. She walked briskly along the edge of the vast green lawn toward the back. She had always known this would be part of her route, because she could see the grove of trees, the deep, cool shadows from her room. She had known she could make it all the way—or nearly all the way—to the grove before the angle of the path made her visible to the people behind the glass in the great room. But walking it in real life was an ordeal. It was much farther than she had imagined it to be, and the need to walk fast was a terrible temptation, because walking fast might wake Robert. She held him like a shallow bowl of water, keeping him level and never allowing him to tip or feel a bump. When at last she reached the shade of the trees, she was already breathing hard and sweating. She kept going farther from the house for another hundred feet, so the number of tree trunks between her and the house would make her harder to see.

Christine turned right when she got to the big brick wall at the back of the property. She could tell that she wasn't as hard to see from the house as she had hoped. If they missed her and began to look around, they would certainly be able to spot her within a minute or two. But she was far from the house now, and that would help. The grove was wide—at least as far as a football field—and she had to cross it quickly. The piled-up leaves were slippery and noisy, and once her toe hit a raised tree root, and she jolted Robert so hard that he gave a startle reflex. She hummed to him to make him aware she was there, and corrected the way she cradled him to make him more comfortable, and he sank back into sleep.

The sweat was pouring from Christine's scalp down her forehead now, and her breaths came in little huffs, as though she had been jogging. She could see the back of the long garage ahead through the trees. She kept moving as quickly as she could, corrected her course to go along the outer wall so close that she sometimes brushed it. And then she was there. She walked to the corner of the garage, slipped silently along the narrow passageway between the back wall of the property and the side wall of the garage toward the open brick pavement in front.

She approached the end of the passageway, and she knew there would be open garages and probably cars parked in the open. She stopped, leaned forward slowly and carefully, and looked. There was Richard's car. Her chest seemed to tighten and her eyes watered for joy. She knew the car, knew Richard's unbreakable habit of leaving a magnetic case with an extra key in it in the compartment that held the gas cap. She looked out farther, saw that the six garage doors were all open, and saw the front ends of cars, but saw no people. She stepped out.

Sybil Landreau stepped out of the garage beside her. "Where do you think you're going?"

She had failed. All of that effort had failed. Christine gave a wan smile. "For a little walk, that's all."

"Lying bitch."

She noticed for the first time that Sybil had a gun stuck into the waistband of her jeans. Sybil took a couple of strides toward her, and Christine turned and took two steps to get back around the corner of the garage. When Christine looked the way she had come, she could see Claudia standing at the far end of the passageway, walking toward her.

Claudia called, "This time you don't get another chance. Take a last look at him."

Christine's heart froze. They were going to take Robert away from her. She heard Sybil's footsteps, knelt quickly, set him down, and then leaped toward the sound. She threw her fist into Sybil's face, but somehow the face wasn't there when her fist reached it. She felt Sybil's first blow as a revelation. She had never been hit in that way before, a strike so fast and hard that her head snapped to the side and she felt dizzy. The second blow was a quick punch to her chest. She was down on the hard brick pavement, wondering if the paralysis she felt was permanent. She heard a door slam some distance away. She looked up to see Ruby's overweight, middle-aged body coming from the house, a great deal of arm-pumping and bouncing, but steps that were too small to bring her here in time. Christine heard Ruby's voice: "No! Don't!" and suddenly she knew. Claudia hadn't meant that Robert was the one going away.

Christine saw Sybil Landreau tug the pistol out of her waistband, and hold it out toward her with a straight arm. Christine saw the muzzle flash, heard the bang, and felt something like fire spreading over her upper body.