Whirlwind. Rick Mofina

      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.