J. Jance - Desert Heat

She had thought about running away often, fantasized about it for months. If she was ever going to do it, now was the time to put her plan into action. Later she would figure out exactly what to do after she was free of him, but for now, escape was the only issue. If she didn’t get away clean before Tony came back to get her, she never would.

She closed the briefcase and hefted it with one hand. It was heavy, but manageable if she wasn’t carrying much else. On legs frail as toothpicks she raced back down the hallway the bedroom. There, forcing herself to calm down, she went into the bathroom for a self-inflicted make-over. She applied her makeup unerringly and pulled her blonde hair up on top of her head. Then she dressed in a stylish red silk jumpsuit with a matching hat which she wore at a rakish angle.

From the back corner of her closet, she pulled out one of the few possessions that had made the transition from L.A. to Tucson -an old, frayed straw beach bag. She emptied the money into it except for a selection of bills, large and small, which she wadded into her pocket. On top of the money, she loaded in two pairs of shorts and two nondescript shirts as well as her makeup kit and a pair of thongs. She zipped the bulging beach bag shut and placed it inside a medium-sized, tapestry-covered suitcase.

She took the briefcase back to the entryway closet and then walked through the living room. For only a moment, she felt a twinge of regret. Angie Kellogg had been a prisoner here, but it had been a very nice prison, a comfortable one, better than any place she had ever lived. At times, when Tony was out of town, she had almost been able to pretend it belonged to her. Now she found herself dreading leaving it. Prison or not, at least it was familiar. She was plunging off into the unknown.

It wasn’t until then that she ventured into Tony’s office. What she wanted was there, concealed in the top drawer of his locked desk. Using a nail file, she quickly picked the desk lock and removed the little black leather-bound notebook. It seemed like such a small thing, really, hardly worth the trouble, but Angi eknew instinctively that the collection of names and addresses and phone numbers contained inside it was her one real insurance policy, her ticket out. She hadn’t quite thought through how she could use such a thing, but sheunderstood beyond a doubt that the note-book was valuable. Somewhere there was a willing buyer for such an item, and once she found him, Angie Kellogg could probably name her own price.

With the book safely in her purse, Angie made one last tour of the house to see if there was anything else she wanted to take. Picking up her worn copy of the Field Guide to North American Birds, she slipped that into her purse as well. For her personally, that was the single item in the entire house that she couldn’t bear to leave behind.

Finally, after checking in the phone book, she called a cab. Taking a deep breath, she gave the dispatcher the address of a neighboring house, one three doors down the street which she had memorized for just such an emergency. When he asked where she was going, she told him the airport.

As Angie put down the phone, wild trembling once more reasserted itself. She had irretrievably set her plan into motion. If Tony came home and caught her now, she was doomed for sure.

Clutching the suitcase, her beach bag, and a pair of three-inch, red high heels, she hurried out of the house and dashed across the back-yard to the place where the dry wash ran under the fence, the place where she had watched the rabbits come and go, and had envied them their freedom. She had measured the opening with her eyes, but she had never dared approach it with a measuring tape for fear Tony might catch her at it and guess her intentions.

Weak with relief, she found it was easy to push the suitcase, hat and high heels through the high spot under the fence. It was much harder to wiggle under it herself. Once, as she squirmed along, she felt the fabric of the pant-suit hang up on the bottom of the fence, but she managed to free herself without tearing the delicate cloth. At last she found herself standing upright outside the fence, brushing sand and gravel from her clothing and hair and laughing uproariously. She had done it. Despite all of Tony’s deadbolts and alarms, despite all his precautions, Angie Kellogg was Out. The funny little rabbits had shown her the Way.

She may have been out, but she wasn’t home free. Even now, Tony might drive up and catch her waiting beside the road. Resolutely, she crammed her feet into the heels and went tripping across the rough terrain that led to the road and to the house where she was supposed to meet the cab. If anyone saw her like this-and she hoped someone would-they were bound to remember. That was the whole idea. She wanted them to notice. It was Important that Tony pick up the trail and follow her-up to a point.

Her feet were out of practice wearing high heels ,and she was limping by the time she reached the place where she was supposed to wait. The cab arrived after what seemed like an eternity, although Angie’s watch said that only twenty minutes had elapsed. “Where to, lady?” the driver asked.

She threw herself into the back seat, letting her head fall as far back as possible so her face was less visible to other cars they might meet along the way.

“The airport,” she said. “As fast as possible. I’ve got a plane to catch.”

The cab driver took her at her word and rove to Tucson International at breathtaking speeds. “What airline?” he asked her, as they approached the terminal.

“United,” she said, hoping that was an air-line that actually flew into Tucson. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the air-line’s sign in the departing passenger lane.

“Are you gonna check your luggage?” the cabby asked.

“No. There’s not enough time.”

Angie Kellogg had been to O’Hare once, and she had been a regular commuter to L.A.X. She was shocked at the size of Tucson International. It was tiny by comparison.

Once she was in the terminal, she scanned the listed departures. The next plane scheduled to depart was one for Denver that was due to leave within fifteen minutes. With an astonishingly expensive one-way ticket in hand, one she purchased with a fistful of Tony’s cash, she headed for the gate. This was the part she wasn’t quite sure about.

The flight was already boarding when she reached the gate. She hurried inside and found her seat. Then, when the flight attendants were coming down the aisles, closing the over-head luggage doors in preparation for departure, Angie suddenly leaped to her feet, grabbed her bags, and with one hand covering her mouth, bolted for the door. The flight attendants were only too happy to let her go. After all ,the flight would be busy enough without taking along a passenger who was clearly too sick to fly before the plane ever left the run-way. When she wasn’t in the jetway by the scheduled departure time, the attendants didn’t spend any time waiting for her, either.

Angie didn’t stop running until she was in-side the stall of the nearest ladies’ restroom. There, she stripped out of the pantsuit and hat in favor of a T-shirt, shorts, and thongs. She pulled off the single identifying luggage tag and left the suitcase in the locked stall by slipping out under the door when the coast was clear. With her purse inside, she carried only the shabby beach bag. She shoved her former finery into the nearest trash container then set about letting down her hair and scrubbing off the deftly applied makeup.

Angie Kellogg had entered the restroom as a distinctively dressed fashion plate. She left twenty minutes later disguised as a dingy young woman who might have been a harried housewife or an impoverished graduate student. With the addition of a large pair of sun-glasses, it was possible not even the cab driver who had picked her up would have recognized her, but Angie wasn’t taking any chances.