No Sanctuary

She returned to the closet and noted more details—size six jeans, small T-shirts, the jogging shoes were a size seven…the powder-blue silk shift with matching three-inch pumps had her staring. Could she make it out of the house without breaking her neck, let alone navigate a church parking lot?

Although disconcerted that someone knew her body so well, the urge to rid herself of any physical link to Gatesville prompted Bay into stripping. Leaving her things where they fell, she went straight into the bathroom and took her first private shower since her arrest. The water smelled of chlorine, but the luscious peach-scented shower gel offset that. She used a quarter bottle of the fragrant goop repeatedly scrubbing her entire body until her blood hummed and her pale skin glistened.

The fluffy, white towel she wrapped herself in afterward was another first. Best not to get too fond of such luxury, she told herself. As soon as she was back to wrestling with stubborn engines and equally greasy metal, these towels would be relegated to the back of the closet and she’d be drying off in cheapo navy blue or black towels that would become shop rags soon enough.

Dry, she slipped into new panties, skipped the bra, and dragged on a bright-red T-shirt and jeans, then stood barefoot before the dresser mirror to stare at the skinny, spike-haired stranger before her. Was this what thirty-two looked like out there in the free world? Her gaze dropped to the mascara and lipstick set out on the dresser and she made a face. So she’d never been what her father and the good ol’ boy-types called “a show pony”; she couldn’t let that worry her now. Of all the things on her agenda, men and romance ranked last and off the list.

Scooping up her release clothes, Bay returned to the kitchen and dropped everything, including the loafers, into the plastic trash container by the door. Wasteful as that was, she needed to be physically separated from things that reminded her of prison. Then, to get her mind off what she had done, she started a serious inspection of cabinets and drawers, the pantry. The small four-pack of wine in the refrigerator startled her. Chardonnay.

“Your idea, Elvin?”

It would seem the church’s position on drinking was more lenient than the Baptists’ but in this instance bad judgment regardless. It would be too easy for her to fall into bad habits while in this early, vulnerable stage. About to close the door, she changed her mind, took out the carton and deposited it on top of the rejected clothing. Retracing her steps, she took a bottle of chilled vegetable juice out of the fridge and poured herself a glass.

Settling at the butcher-block dinette table, she tucked her legs into a lotus position and looked around the room and finally beyond the slats of the miniblinds, out to where the lush woods bordered the narrow yard.

Mine.

She still couldn’t believe it. As her eyes began to burn and her throat ached, she raised her glass. “Glenn…I don’t understand any of this, but if you can hear me, I haven’t forgotten, not you or the promise I made.”

The heavens didn’t smile with a rainbow of light, no chair fell over from some invisible hand. About to take a sip of her juice, the phone rang. Wincing as she clicked the glass against her teeth, Bay set it down and stared 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 office and began a more serious test of her memory of the design.

It was nearing noon before she stopped working. By then she was soaked with sweat and starving, and yet she felt better than she had in years. Not only did she have the initial cuts for the gate completed, she’d had her first walk-in customer, a man desperate to repair a broken headache rack on his truck. The small job earned her a fast seventy bucks—to be immediately spent on renewing her driver’s license and buying paint for a sign, she decided. Pleased, she locked up and returned to the house.

After devouring a turkey sandwich and a glass of milk, she showered and tugged on clean jeans and a white T-shirt, this time over a bra. Then she drove into town to get her license renewed.

By the time she reached the DMV some of her anxiety returned. She fully expected them to know her on sight, but having her prison record lingering on their computers would be as bad. To her surprise and relief, though, the clerk reacted like someone who didn’t watch TV, let alone subscribe to a newspaper, and when she brought up Bay’s file on the monitor, the woman’s expression remained passive.

“Okay. Uh…it’s been over four years since you were a Texas resident, you’ll have to take the written test again. Do you want to try it now or take a book home to study?”

Bay thought that was like asking how many shots you’d like at your execution. “I’ll give it a try,” she told the young woman.

She made only one error and after the eye test, the clerk instructed her to step behind the strip of yellow tape on the floor for a photo. Done, Bay signed the computerized form, paid the fee and pocketed her temporary license.

Thanking the clerk, she turned to leave…and looked straight into the eyes of Jack Burke. Jack Burke, the detective who’d arrested her for Glenn’s murder. Jack Burke who had grilled her for hours upon hours with relentless and redundant precision. Jack Burke who, when she was sentenced, had the nerve to say, “I’m sorry.”

Ducking her head and wishing for a pair of sunglasses to hide behind, Bay cut a sharper right. Time hadn’t affected his reflexes, though, and he countered her move, knocking her off balance.

“Whoa.”

At least he had no problem keeping her from cracking her jaw on the tile floor. Six years might have taken their toll other ways, but physically he remained as she remembered him, big enough to make her feel like a dry twig on a sapling and outweighing her by a good eighty-plus pounds.

“Sorry about that.”

“No problem.” Keeping her head low, she tried to move on.

His hold tightened. “It is you.”