The Surrogate (35 page)

“I won’t try to take him away from you,” Amanda pleaded. “I understand why you left. Really I do. But I need to be part of the child’s life. Please. In God’s name,
please.
” She looked in Gus’s direction. “Tell her, Gus,” she called to him. “Tell her that we won’t take the baby away from her. But we have a right to know him and to love him.” Then she turned back to Jamie. “Please, in God’s name, just let me hold him.”

The bald young man, still cradling Buck in his arms, was now standing beside Jamie. He shifted Buck to the crook of his left arm so that he could put his right one protectively around Jamie’s shoulders. She was looking questioningly into his face. Into Joe Brammer’s face.

Joe Brammer leaned forward and the two of them touched foreheads. Such an incredibly sweet gesture. One of complete trust. Complete love. Gus felt his heart give a painful lurch. What he wouldn’t have given to have had such love and trust in his own empty life.

Then Jamie looked at Amanda and nodded her head.

Suddenly Gus took off running toward the center of the stage. He reached the cluster of people standing there just as Jamie was placing her baby in Amanda’s arms.

Gus turned toward the front row and screamed, “No.” At the top of his voice, he screamed.

“No,” he screamed again as he threw his arms around the mother of Sonny’s child.

But the shot rang out anyway as per his own instructions to shoot the girl the instant that the baby was no longer in her arms.

A
PLEASANT-LOOKING
middle-aged woman answered the door balancing a sturdy baby boy on her hip.
The
baby, Bentley assumed. He would be about eight months old by now.

Wearing a very serious expression, the child regarded him with large blue eyes.

“You must be the lawyer from Austin,” the woman said.

“Yes, ma’am. Bentley Abernathy.”

“I’m Joe’s mother, Millie. And this is Billy, of course,” she said, kissing the baby on his cheek. “Joe and Jamie are out back. They’re expecting you,” she said over her shoulder as she led the way through the house. A nice comfortable house, he thought, as he walked through the family room with its reclining chairs, oversized leather sofa, and big-screen television set. No such amenities would be found in the restored Victorian mansion that eventually would be his home now that Brenda had almost returned the house to its former glory. He was thinking about adding a retreat for himself over the garage except that, while he wanted to separate himself as much as possible from Victorian furniture and its accompanying bric-a-brac, he did not want to retreat from his wife.

Millie Brammer slid the patio door open for Bentley but didn’t follow him outside. The large deck was covered by a lattice roof that had been completely engulfed by a very aggressive wisteria vine—a vine that Joe Brammer and a man Bentley assumed was Brammer’s father were attempting to tame, with Jamie gathering up the cut branches and piling them on a tarp. The three of them stopped midaction, guarded expressions on their faces—expressions that Bentley understood. He was, after all, here representing Amanda Hartmann, and he had gotten Jamie into a situation that had almost ended her life.

Joe Brammer’s father stepped forward to introduce himself and offer a perfunctory handshake. Then he announced that he was going inside to help Millie with the baby. Joe didn’t bother with a handshake. He simply nodded.

As did Jamie. She was wearing jeans and a black, sleeveless shirt, with no jewelry, no discernible makeup. Her hair was back to its natural blond but shorter than before.

“You’re looking well, Jamie,” Bentley said. Which was true. She was lovely to look at—like before. But he realized that he was looking at quite a different person than the hopeful young woman who had come to his office almost a year and half ago. This new Jamie would be forever wary, the innocence with which she had once met the world gone forever.

Bentley felt perspiration collecting in his armpits and under his collar. He was a bit nervous, and the air was muggy and still. He would have liked to remove his jacket and loosen his tie but decided it was best to maintain a professional appearance.

He did, however, accept Jamie’s offer of iced tea. He watched while she poured three glasses and seated herself at a glass-topped table. Joe sat by her and Bentley sat across from them.

He took a swallow of the tea, then set down the glass and picked up his briefcase. He pulled out the yellow legal pad on which his notes were written, placed it in front of him, and cleared his throat.

But Jamie spoke first. “I want to thank you for intervening that night. If you hadn’t contacted that judge and convinced her that I was Billy’s mother and his sole legal parent, she would have taken him away from me and put him in foster care until a custody hearing could be held. I would have lost my mind if they had taken him away from me.” She spoke calmly, but Bentley realized that her statement was meant to be taken literally.

He thought of the frantic middle-of-the-night phone call from Lenora. It had taken Bentley a while to comprehend what she was telling him. That someone named Joe Brammer had called her. That Brammer and Jamie Long had been on the run with her baby. That Gus Hartmann was dead. And some judge in Dallas was about to put Jamie’s baby in foster care. What had gotten Bentley’s attention was the statement about Gus.
Dead?
If that was true, then his own life had just been irrevocably changed. It was hard for him to concentrate enough to piece together Lenora’s tale of her meeting with Brammer and the young man’s insistence that Gus Hartmann was trying to have Jamie murdered. With all the publicity about Amanda having a baby, Bentley had assumed that Jamie must have returned to the ranch and that the baby in the newspaper pictures was the one that had been contracted for. “You’ve got to do something,” Lenora kept saying. “You can’t let them take Jamie’s baby away from her.”

The judge he contacted in Dallas had been a law-school classmate of his. “But I thought you worked for the Hartmanns,” she said, puzzlement in her voice.

Bentley had explained that Jamie Long was the birth mother and that no matter what Amanda Hartmann was claiming, Miss Long had never relinquished legal custody of the child. The judge had given temporary custody to Jamie until a hearing could be held. In the meantime, with the help of Toby Travis, Bentley had been able to convince Amanda that all sorts of ugly things would come out if there were any sort of legal proceedings.

“It was the least I could do,” he told Jamie then glanced down at his list. “I assume you’ve been in touch with the district attorney’s office in Dallas,” he said by way of inquiry, glancing from one to the other. They made a handsome couple. Both were tan, young, and athletic-looking. Joe’s head was no longer shaved; his dark hair was longish and curled around his ears. Joe had scooted his chair closer to Jamie’s and moved his arm so that it touched hers.

“Yeah,” Joe said. “We were informed that the shooter agreed to a plea bargain but that the information he gave didn’t amount to much. As we understand it, he and the other three men who joined Hartmann’s people in Dallas were Honduran nationals and apparently had been hired through a third party in Tegucigalpa. The four hired guns who arrived in Dallas on the Hartmann jet have not been apprehended.”

Bentley nodded. “The man known as Zubov apparently worked for Gus Hartmann, but he was off the books. No one knows his real name or those of the woman and two men he brought with him.”

“We were amazed at how little media coverage the shooting garnered,” Jamie said.

“Yes,” Bentley agreed, “even in death, Gus Hartmann has remained a very private person. There are those in high places with a vested interest in keeping anyone from probing too deeply into his life. And his death.”

“But all those people saw him die,” Joe protested. “Thousands of people. And two television stations were there filming the event, yet it barely got a mention on the morning news—just something about a crazed shooter killing the brother of evangelist Amanda Hartmann. The Dallas television reporter covering the assignment resigned the next day, and we later learned that she had accepted a position as a network correspondent in London. The newspapers weren’t any more forthcoming than the television broadcasts. The AP story said that a Honduran man in the country illegally went berserk and tried to kill Amanda Hartmann and that her brother died trying to protect her. Which wasn’t what happened at all. And Amanda isn’t being held accountable for anything. Or her dead brother. Gus Hartmann had Jamie’s money stolen from her bank account. He had God knows how many people’s telephones tapped. He used government agents to track us down, and he brought in illegal aliens to
kill
us. A baby in Oklahoma City was mistakenly kidnapped because of him. And the men he hired killed Jamie’s dog. She has been through absolute hell because of the Hartmanns, and no one knows it.”

“Perhaps it’s just as well,” Jamie said, reaching for Joe’s hand. “I certainly don’t want the notoriety. This way Billy can maybe grow up as just a normal kid.”

“That would be nice, but he is not just a normal kid,” Bentley pointed out. “He will be forever linked to Amanda Hartmann.”

“Not unless Amanda goes public with the unusual circumstances of his conception,” Joe said.

“What about the baby she adopted?” Jamie asked.

“Amanda Hartmann and her husband plan to raise him and see that his future is assured. But understandably she desperately wants a relationship with her grandson. And I must point out that by shutting the boy off from her, you could be denying him a vast inheritance. However, if you grant her partial custody of the child, she is willing to pay you…”

“Stop,” Jamie said, holding up her hands. “All I want from Amanda Hartmann is for her to leave us alone.”

“And if she doesn’t,” Joe said, “we will file charges against her for knowingly entering into an invalid contract, unlawful imprisonment, conspiring to murder Jamie and kidnap her child, and anything else I can think of.”

Bentley sighed. He really had no taste for this at all. “You realize,” he said to Jamie, “that when your son reaches maturity, Amanda will legally be able to contact him.”

“We’ll deal with that when the time comes,” Joe said hotly. “You tell that woman that if she attempts to call us or to contact us by mail or have us followed or interfere with our lives in any way whatsoever, I will file those charges.”

“I don’t think you understand what a sheltered life Amanda has lived,” Bentley said. “Gus kept anything distasteful from her. She really had no idea…”

Jamie slapped her hands down on the table and leaned forward, glaring at him. “Don’t you try to tell me that Amanda didn’t realize what was going on. She would caress me and kiss me and tell me how much she and God loved me, all the while knowing that I was to be killed after the baby was born. Her mother isn’t playing with a full deck, and Mary Millicent certainly understood what was going on. And by the way, we contacted the sheriff’s office in Marshall County about Mary Millicent, and they ignored us. So we have contacted the state department of health and the victim services office in the state department of public safety to report the conditions under which Amanda Hartmann’s mother is being kept. So you better tell Amanda that she’s going to have to get that old woman down from the tower and start treating her like a human being. I’m just sorry that Ann Montgomery is dead so that we can’t include her name on the complaint we have filed on Mary Millicent’s behalf.”

“Have you no pity at all for Amanda?” Bentley said, forcing himself to make eye contact with the impassioned young woman. “After all, there never would have been a Billy if Amanda hadn’t hired you to have a baby for her.”

“You expect me to have
pity
for Amanda Hartmann?” Jamie asked, her tone incredulous. “How can you even ask such a thing? She wanted me
dead,
Mr. Abernathy, so she could turn my baby into what she wanted him to be. She would have paraded him around while people screamed Hallelujah and wept when they touched the hem of his robe. Sometimes I wonder if Sonny didn’t end his life intentionally so he wouldn’t have to live the life his mother had laid out for him.”

Bentley had wondered the same thing himself.

He sighed and slumped back in his chair, signifying defeat. He hadn’t wanted to come here, but Amanda had insisted. And he was, after all, her attorney. He had become a wealthy man representing the Hartmann family. But those days were drawing to a close. Amanda’s husband was in the process of engaging another law firm, and he pretty much ran the show now, which was somewhat amazing except that Amanda had never had a head for or interest in business, and she was no longer the same woman as before. She was totally passive and did whatever Toby Travis said. Travis claimed that he wanted Amanda to continue with her ministry. But at least for the time being, she had retired to the ranch and backed away from saving souls and raising money for the Alliance of Christian Voters, which had already brought a new spiritual leader onboard—a woman named Aurora. No last name. Just “Aurora.” She was a longtime friend of the vice president, who would probably run for the presidency in four years if he and the president were reelected in November. And it certainly looked as though that was going to happen.

“I never liked Gus Hartmann,” Bentley admitted, “or people like him—people who think this country should be run to benefit the few on the backs of the many. But, then, in many ways I am as guilty as Gus. I never broke the law for him, but I certainly bent it. But in the last few seconds of Gus’s life, he did the right thing. The shot that was meant for Jamie’s heart blew his brains out. I suppose that if there is such a thing as redemption, Gus Hartmann earned it.”

“Yes, and it leaves me in a terrible quandary,” Jamie admitted. “I can’t begin to add up all the grief and pain and fear that he caused Joe and me, but in the end, he apparently had a change of heart. It’s hard for me to know if I should curse his evil life or be grateful for his few seconds of atonement.”

Silence fell over the table. The only sounds were the chirping of birds and the distant sound of traffic. Then Jamie stood.

Bentley and Joe followed her lead.

Bentley felt their watching eyes while he put his yellow legal pad back in his briefcase.

“I’m sorry for all the grief I’ve caused you,” he told them.

“But out of all that grief came Billy,” Jamie said. “There’s no point in looking back or even in casting blame, I suppose. The only place we can go is forward.”

She extended her hand across the table, and Bentley hastily grabbed it. “You are a remarkable young woman, Jamie Long. I knew that the first minute I laid eyes on you. A remarkable woman.”

“It’s Jamie Brammer now,” she corrected, withdrawing her hand and taking a step toward the patio door.

“Yes, of course,” Bentley said. “I believe that I knew that. I wish you both the very best. Will you make your home here in Houston?”

“Maybe someday,” Joe said.

“We’re proud to be Americans,” Jamie said, “but until I know that sort of abuse of power can no longer happen in this country again, I think we’ll feel safer raising our family someplace else.”

Joe put an arm around his wife’s waist. “We’re expecting Billy’s little sister in March, and we both like the idea of raising our children as citizens of the world. I have an inheritance that will allow us to float for a time. I may take another course or two in international law at Oxford. Or we’re thinking about studying Italian and attending the university in Bologna. Jamie wants to study medicine, and medical education was invented there.”