The Escape Artist (24 page)

She was glad it was too dark for him to see the misery in her face. She wanted to speak, to say something kind and loving, but she knew her voice would fail her if she tried.

Adam put his arm around her and gave her a hug. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Fine.” She pressed her fist to her mouth to hold in her crying. She wanted Linc to be the man lying next to her. She’d wanted Linc to be her lover for the rest of her life.

“You made me feel wonderful,” Adam said. “You completely cleared my head of anything negative.”

“I’m glad.” She quietly wiped her eyes with the sheet, then raised her head to kiss him before snuggling close to him for the night. She would try to clear her own head as well.

ADAM WAS ALREADY AWAKE
when she opened her eyes in the morning, and he was watching her.

“Where’s your sketchbook?” he asked. “You need to sketch your dreams.”

She groaned. “I told you, I don’t remember my dreams.”

“Before you go to sleep at night, you should tell yourself that you will remember them.” He stroked her hair back from her forehead, and she felt affection in his touch.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll try it tonight.”

She looked over at the crib where Cody was still sound asleep, a splash of sunlight shimmering on his blanket. Then she looked at Adam and felt a smile form, unsolicited, on her lips. To her surprise, she was not at all unhappy to wake up with him beside her.

They ate breakfast—toast and orange juice—at her small kitchen table.

“Jessie’s going to be upset,” Adam said as he poured himself a second glass of juice.

Kim knew he was alluding to the fact that he’d spent the night at her apartment. “Do you have to answer to Jessie for everything?” she asked, as she untied Cody’s bib from around his neck.

“She worries about me, that’s all. And she’s had good reason to. I need to convince her that I’m okay and I know what I’m doing.” Adam reached across the table for her hand. “Thanks again for your honesty last night,” he said. “For telling me about…you know, the other guy.”

She smiled, but said nothing. She deserved no praise for her honesty.

“Well.” He let go of her hand and stood up. “I’d better let you do the work you were supposed to do last night.”

She walked him to the door, and as she kissed him good-bye, she tried not to regret anything she’d done the night before.

EXCEPT FOR ONE SHORT
walk to the park with Cody, Kim spent the entire day at the computer. Every once in a while, the television images of the bombing swept into her mind, and panic rose in her chest at the thought of what she knew about that catastrophe. She’d brush the thoughts away, telling herself she had time to figure out what to do with the information. Still, those images kept barreling their way into consciousness each time she let down her guard.

She put Cody to bed around seven that evening and was sitting once again at the computer when she heard the slamming of a car door. She looked out the window to see a police car parked at the curb and a male police officer on the walk leading up to the house.

She jumped up from her seat and switched out the overhead light before returning to the window to see the man disappear beneath her onto the porch. She thought she could feel the vibrations of his steps on the floor of the porch, but she didn’t hear him ring the bell to be let in. She tiptoed over to her door and pressed her ear against the wood.

The front door creaked open, and she heard the man’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. She checked the lock on her door, then moved quietly to the sofa and sat down, her heart pounding in her ears.

She would hold very still. Pretend she was not here. How did he know? The doctor? A private investigator? Had someone been watching her every move?

The knock came, and although she’d been expecting it, she jumped. It was a soft knock, muffled, and only when he knocked again did Kim realize the officer was knocking on Lucy’s door, not her own. Holding her breath, she walked quietly to her door again and pressed her ear against it. She heard Lucy open her door and a mumbled exchange of greetings. Lucy’s door shut again. She had let him in.

Kim lowered herself to the floor. What was going on? Had Lucy figured out who she was? Had she turned her in? Would it be a matter of minutes before the officer left Lucy’s apartment and knocked on Kim’s door for real this time?

She’d taken two thousand dollars out of her bank account the day before and stuffed it under her mattress so she’d be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Was this the moment? Did she have the time to pack up a few things and leave quietly before the police officer knocked on her door? It would not take them long to find her though. People knew her car, and she’d forgotten to buy a marker she could use to change her license plate number.

Paralysis set in as she tried to think through her limited options, and she jerked back to attention when she heard Lucy’s door open again. She waited stiffly for the knock on her own door, but instead, the man’s footsteps thudded on the stairs once again. She listened as he opened and closed the front door. A moment later, his car engine coughed to life.

She leaned back against the door, breathing hard. What the hell was that about? Was he getting some backup? Or might he have been seeing Lucy about something totally, blessedly, unrelated to Kim Stratton?

Thirty minutes passed before she could make herself get up. She turned off the computer. There was no way she could work anymore tonight.

Moving mechanically, she packed her duffel bag and filled a couple of garbage bags with other things she didn’t want to leave behind. She would wait until the middle of the night to carry her computer out to the car. The thought of leaving was suddenly appealing. She’d gotten herself in too deep here in Annapolis. She knew terrible, incriminating information she did not want to know. She’d gotten involved with a man she seemed destined to hurt. It would be so easy to simply pile up her car with her belongings and drive away. She could leave before sunrise.

In her bedroom, she leaned over the side of the crib to look at her sleeping son. He’d adjusted so beautifully to the move from Boulder to Annapolis, and he seemed to love his little world: the apartment, the park, the wonderful long walks around a town filled with charm. How could she uproot him again so soon?

She stroked her hand over Cody’s hair, breathing in his scent. She’d wanted more for her child than she’d ever had for herself, and she was well on her way to giving him less.

“You always run away from your problems,”
Linc had told her, more than once.
“You’re always looking for an easy way out.”

She hadn’t wanted Kim to be that way. She turned the garbage bags upside down on the bed and shook out their contents. Susanna Miller had been the escape artist; Kim Stratton would have to be stronger than that.

KIM AWAKENED TO THE
sound of Cody crying. It was dark in her bedroom, and for a moment she couldn’t remember where she was or even
who
she was. She guessed she was at Linc’s house, until she reached over to the other side of the bed and felt the empty space next to her.

She could hear the dripping of the leaky faucet in her bathroom and began to get her bearings. Leaning toward the window, she raised the shade. The sky was black above the roof line of the darkened houses across the street, and the clock on her radio read 5:14. Far too early for Cody to be awake. In an instant she was out of bed, maternal alarm bells clanging in her head.

She felt the heat of Cody’s fever beneath her hands even before she’d lifted him out of the crib, and her heartbeat accelerated. Fever terrified her. Ever since Cody’s surgery, after which he’d had to be monitored carefully for symptoms of infection, fever had become an enemy, the harbinger of dire news.

She carried Cody to her own bed and turned on the night table lamp. The baby rolled away from the intrusion of light, irritably rubbing the side of his head and neck with his fist. An ear infection? That was probably all it was. She took his temperature—103 degrees—then gave him some water and rocked him in her arms, waiting for eight o’clock to roll around. It was Sunday morning. She didn’t dare call Dr. Sweeney before eight.

Cody was quiet as he lay in her arms, but he wore a small frown she had never seen on his face before. She pressed her lips to his warm forehead, thankful she had not tried to flee in the middle of the night. She’d be stuck on the road with a sick baby. Right now, she could not even remember the reason for her urge to run.

It came to her slowly. She recalled the police officer’s visit to Lucy the night before as if she’d dreamt it. If only she had. Soon, though, the memory was sharp and clear. She recalled with a shiver every footfall on the stairs, the knock on Lucy’s door. What had Lucy said to him in the privacy of her apartment?

She called Dr. Sweeney at eight o’clock, and the answering service told her he was out of town for the weekend and was being covered by another doctor. This other doctor called her back at eight-thirty. He must have picked up the worry in her voice when she told him about Cody’s heart problem, because he suggested she take him to the nearest emergency room to be checked out. Obviously, the doctor himself had no intention of working that day.

Kim hung up and returned Cody to his crib, then pulled her checkbook from her purse to study the sad reality of her account balance. She had to admit that a lack of health insurance was one problem she had not thought through before leaving Boulder. Insurance was one of those things you tended to take for granted when you were living a normal life.

She was certain there was not enough money in her checking account to cover whatever the emergency room might cost, so she dipped into her beneath-the-mattress fund. She took two hundred dollars, hoping it would be no more than that. Kitty Russo was supposed to have more work for her this week, and she was counting on it.

She had Cody dressed and was heading for the door when Adam called.

“Cody’s sick,” she said. “I have to take him to the emergency room, since it’s Sunday and his doctor’s not in.”

“I’ll go with you,” Adam offered.

“That’s not necessary,” she said, although she was hoping he’d insist. She wanted him there.

“I know it’s not necessary,” he said. “But I’d like to go.”

“All right,” she said. “We’ll wait for you on the porch.”

He arrived within minutes. They took her car to the hospital, since it had the car seat, and she described Cody’s symptoms to him on the drive.

“Ear infection, definitely,” Adam said. “Liam used to get them all the time. You’ll need antibiotics. And drops.”

“I wish you could prescribe as well as diagnose,” she said. “It would save me a bundle.”

“Won’t your insurance cover it?”

“I don’t have any,” she admitted.

He looked at her sharply.

“That’s crazy, Kim. You’ve got to have insurance for him, not to mention for yourself. What about through Cody’s father?”

“I don’t want anything to do with his father.”

“But for Cody’s sake. He needs to be covered.”

Her eyes stung. She knew he was right, and if she’d turned Cody over to Peggy and Jim, there would be no worry over insurance, over money, over medical care. At a stoplight, she turned to look at her miserable baby, his face red from crying, and pressed her palm against his warm cheek.

She felt Adam’s hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s none of my business.”

“No, you’re right. I’ve got to find a way to get insurance for him.” Her voice was thick and she brushed the back of her hand across her eyes.

Adam squeezed her shoulder. “Is it the money that’s got you upset, or are you worried about Cody’s heart?”

“Both,” she said, although the real answer was neither. Right now, she was simply weighed down by guilt. She couldn’t protect her son the way she wanted to. The way a good mother would. Certainly not the way Peggy would.

“I get my insurance through an organization for self-employed people,” Adam said. “I’ll give you the information and you can apply.”

She knew all about those applications. They would want detailed medical information, doctors’ names. Things she couldn’t tell them. But she nodded as though Adam had come up with a way to solve her problem.

They waited in the emergency room for nearly two hours. Half the children in Annapolis seemed to have taken ill that morning, and she held Cody protectively on her lap.

Adam entertained Cody with the stuffed monkey, while Kim nursed her guilt and her fear. Here was yet another doctor she would have to inform about Cody’s heart surgery. And wasn’t it more likely that a doctor in a hospital would have been alerted to be on the lookout for a baby with his heart condition? She thought of the police officer thumping up the stairs to her apartment the night before, and the thought of escape tempted her again. Maybe she should leave Annapolis once she had medication for Cody. But then what? Where would she go? She’d heard of parents who ran off with their children and then moved from place to place, staying one small step ahead of being caught. She didn’t think she could live that way, although she would if she had to.

Across the room from her sat a blond woman and her two lethargic-looking toddlers, and Kim was suddenly reminded of the receptionist at Sellers, Sellers, and Wittaker and her ill-fated children. Maybe there was no way she could have predicted that explosion, but she could predict the next one, most likely with perfect accuracy. Even if she ran away from her new life in Annapolis, she would not be able to run away from what she knew.

“Hey.” Adam looked at her with sudden concern and she knew her worry must be showing in her face. He put his arm around her shoulders to give her a hug, and she let herself lean against him.

“It’ll be all right,” Adam said. “It’s only an ear infection.”

The doctor was a young woman who seemed intrigued but not alarmed by the scar on Cody’s chest and the explanation behind it. “What a lucky little boy,” she said simply, and proceeded to check his ears and throat and listen to his lungs, only to verify Adam’s diagnosis of an ear infection and prescribe antibiotics and ear drops.