She didn’t loosen her hold until the man was completely still. Then she let go of the handles of the bag and pushed to her feet, her legs trembling, her arms weak.
Immediately, she went to her children, gathered them into her arms, sank her face into their soft necks and sobbed silently.
They were okay, but she doubted she’d ever be okay again. She’d just killed the man. He had friends who would make sure she spent the rest of her life in jail.
A moan sounded behind her.
Her heart leaped into her throat. She laid her babies in the crib, lifted the lamp again and smashed it once more over his head. Again, he lay still. If he could live through being choked and having multiple head injuries, he might yet survive, and she wouldn’t go to jail for murder. But she and the babies couldn’t stay with him.
Though he hadn’t succeeded in killing one of the twins this time, he might, as punishment for her having fought back.
She ran into their bedroom, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and pulled on a pair of sneakers. She dug out the wad of cash she’d been stealing from his wallet over the past year from behind the loose baseboard in the back of the closet. She considered taking his credit cards, but decided against it, knowing he could trace her if she used them.
She found his car keys on the nightstand. To guard against him coming after her too soon, she grabbed scarves from her drawer and hurried back to where he lay on the floor, moving occasionally, but still unconscious.
First, she tied a scarf to one of his wrists and secured it with the other wrist behind his back, pulling the fabric tight to keep him from breaking free too easily.
Once his hands were secure, she bound his ankles together. Finally, she wrapped a scarf around his head and mouth, tying it at the back of his neck.
She gathered her babies, wrapped them in blankets and stepped over her husband.
Another moan made her steps quicken until she was running for the front door. She stopped in the kitchen for a screwdriver. Her carefully packed gym bag was the last thing on her mind. Getting as far away from the man tied up on the floor of the home they’d shared for the past five miserable years was her number one goal.
He’d promised to find them and make her babies pay for her decision to leave him. She had to make certain he would never find them.
If he remained tied up for several hours, she could get as far as her money would take her.
She laid the babies in their car seats in her older model, beater of a car and buckled them in. On second thought, she unhooked the safety seats and secured them in the back seat of her husband’s newer vehicle. He kept the tank full and had the engine on scheduled maintenance. It was faster, safer and would get her away from him with more reliability.
She went back to her car and dug the little box she’d hidden under the seat. It contained the little necklaces she’d had made with the first initial of each child engraved on a silver disk. Tucking the box into her pocket, she returned to the car with the babies.
Once she was sure the babies were settled in the back seat, she pulled every bit of documentation out of the glove box and the console and tossed it onto the garage floor. If she were stopped or the car was found, they wouldn’t be able to identify it quickly. When she had a moment, she’d find a way to scrape the VIN number off.
Then she removed the license plate from the front and rear bumpers and laid them on the front floorboard. She’d toss them into a ditch in the middle of nowhere. She couldn’t risk rolling past automated collection cameras of the toll roads in Texas or any other state.
He had access to systems that could identify license plates from toll road cameras, and he could mobilize law enforcement to apprehend her. He’d say she was abducting his children and have her arrested. If she was arrested, she couldn’t protect the twins.
Once she was ready, she opened the garage door and backed out into the dark, empty street. Free of the building, she lowered the garage door and drove away without looking back.
If she was lucky, she’d have all night to get as far away from him as possible.
First, she had to ditch her cell phone. Her husband could track it. Better yet, she needed to send it in a different direction.
Before leaving Dallas, she stopped at a busy truck stop, parking as far away from the building as possible and in the shadow of a tractor-trailer rig. She tossed a blanket over the car seats in the back and got out.
She found a ball cap on the floorboard of the back seat and stuffed her long, dark hair up into it, pulling the bill down low over her forehead. If cameras were monitoring the truck stop, she hoped to avoid having her face caught on video.
Carrying the screwdriver and license plate tucked under her arm, she found an old car at the back of the lot. With fingers shaking, she removed the plate and replaced it with the one from her husband’s car. As she walked back toward her vehicle, she overheard a man talking to another man as they walked toward a pickup truck, each carrying a bag of ice.
“You want me to drive?” one guy asked the other.
“Nah,” his friend responded. “I’ll drive to Amarillo. You can sleep and take it from there to Fort Collins.” He opened the back door of the king cab truck and pulled an ice chest toward him.
“Deal,” his partner said, tore open the bag of ice he carried and dumped it into the cooler.
While they were distracted and making noise with the ice, she dropped her cell phone into the truck bed between a couple of boxes.
By the time her husband revived and got free of the scarves, her phone would be somewhere between Amarillo and Fort Collins.
