Deadline (Sandra Brown)

tooth and nail over it. Jeremy has to go to school. It will be good for him to make friends with other boys and do the things they do. Baseball and stuff. But, all the same, when I had to let go of him for the last time, I thought I would die. No mother should have to go through that.
Randy is a good choice to play his daddy. He helped us out that one time down in MS. I guess he formed an attachment to Jeremy then, because Jeremy was sick and had a terrible cough. Randy is kindhearted and still thinks the world of Carl. He shares the same ideas, but he doesn’t have the “guts,” he says, to do the things Carl is willing to do for our cause.
I thought he was going to faint when Carl asked him to raise our son. He said he was honored. He even cried a little and said he felt “anointed.” I thought Carl would laugh at that, but he didn’t. He told Randy he was playing his part, that he was as much a Ranger of Righteousness as anybody who carried a gun. He just wouldn’t be fighting on the battlefront, so to speak.
Randy’s gotten married since that time we stayed with him in MS. Patricia is also one of us, because she hates cops and everything government related. Here’s her story: Her stepdaddy abused her and wound up killing her mother when she stood up to him. He went to the pen for it. Patricia was put into the foster care system. I gather it wasn’t all that good for her. She doesn’t talk about everything that happened to her, but her face turns hard and mean-looking whenever the subject is brought up. (Usually she’s pretty.)
She’s been on her own since she ran away at fifteen. She also doesn’t talk about the things she did in order to survive, but I don’t hold anything against her, because look at what all I’ve done. Anyhow, for being such a slight little thing, she knows how to take care of herself.
People Carl knows faked IDs for them. They’ve got new identities. They’re going by the name of Wesson, which Carl picked out of the phone book. They’ve rented a house in a town in Ohio.
Patricia, who’s also smart as a whip, is going to school to learn to be a court reporter. We laughed our heads off about that! What an inside joke. Here she’ll be, sitting in courtrooms recording the words of lawyers, cops, and judges, while we’re out breaking every law there is. Or just about.
But that job will be a good cover. Randy could sell ice cubes to Eskimos because of his easy, soft-spoken way. He got a job at a car dealership. His coworkers like him. They wouldn’t believe it if somebody told them that mild-mannered Randy was raising the child of Carl Wingert and Flora Stimel, two of the FBI’s Most Wanted!
Carl told them to go to church like the faithful. Randy was okay with it, but not Patricia. She said she wants no part of a God who’d put a kid through the shit she’d been put through. But she finally agreed to pretend to worship, because she knows it makes them look like ordinary folks, and Carl says that’s the main thing.
They plan to join the PTA the day they enroll Jeremy in kindergarten in the fall. It breaks my heart that I won’t be there to see him off on his first day of school. I hope he doesn’t cry. Carl says he won’t. He calls him his “good little soldier” because even when we were hugging him good-bye, his lower lip was trembling, but he didn’t shed a tear.
He knows Carl has big plans for his future. He understands why we can’t all live together. He also knows—because I’ve told him often enough—that even though he’ll be living with Patricia and Randy and pretending to be their little boy, I’m his real mother and Carl is his real daddy. He’ll call Patricia and Randy Mom and Dad, but he’s our flesh and blood. Nothing will ever change that. We love him.
I hope he grows up understanding how things must be. I’m not sure I do.
     

Chapter 8
    T he boys had had such a full day, they practically fell asleep at the dinner table, and didn’t object to an early bedtime. After getting them down, Amelia took a glass of wine out onto the porch and settled into one of the rocking chairs.
    Stef joined her a few minutes later. “Kitchen’s done. Unless you need me for anything else, I’m going up to bed.”
    “No Mickey’s tonight?”
    “I’m bushed.”
    “Same here. Sleep well.”
    Stef hesitated on the threshold. “Are you okay?”
    “Why wouldn’t I be?” Realizing how snappish that sounded, she softened her tone. “I’m fine.”
    “Are