With dogs and helicopters after her. Tracy could feel the bullets from the guns of the guards tearing into her. She shuddered. “What are the other ways?”
“The second way’s a breakout. That’s where you use a gun and take a hostage with you. If they catch you, they’ll give you a deuce with a nickel tail.” She saw Tracy’s puzzled expression. “That’s another two to five years on your sentence.”
“And the third way?”
“A walkaway. That’s for trusties who are out on a work detail. Once you’re out in the open, girl, you jest keep movin’.”
Tracy thought about that. Without money and a car and a place to hide out, she would have no chance. “They’d find out I was gone at the next head count and come looking for me.”
Ernestine sighed. “There ain’t no perfect escape plan, girl. That’s why no one’s ever made it outta this place.”
I will, Tracy vowed. I will.
The morning Tracy was taken to Warden Brannigan’s home marked her fifth month as a prisoner. She was nervous about meeting the warden’s wife and child, for she wanted this job desperately. It was going to be her key to freedom.
Tracy walked into the large, pleasant kitchen and sat down. She could feel the perspiration bead and roll down from her underarms. A woman clad in a muted rose-colored housecoat appeared in the doorway.
She said, “Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
The woman started to sit, changed her mind, and stood. Sue Ellen Brannigan was a pleasant-faced blonde in her middle thirties, with a vague, distracted manner. She was thin and hyper, never quite sure how to treat the convict servants. Should she thank them for doing their jobs, or just give them orders? Should she be friendly, or treat them like prisoners? Sue Ellen still had not gotten used to the idea of living in the midst of drug addicts and thieves and killers.
“I’m Mrs. Brannigan,” she rattled on. “Amy is almost five years old, and you know how active they are at that age. I’m afraid she has to be watched all the time.” She glanced at Tracy’s left hand. There was no wedding ring there, but these days, of course, that meant nothing. Particularly with the lower classes, Sue Ellen thought. She paused and asked delicately, “Do you have children?”
Tracy thought of her unborn baby. “No.”
“I see.” Sue Ellen was confused by this young woman. She was not at all what she had expected. There was something almost elegant about her. “I’ll bring Amy in.” She hurried out of the room.
Tracy looked around. It was a fairly large cottage, neat and attractively furnished. It seemed to Tracy that it had been years since she had been in anyone’s home. That was all part of the other world, the world outside.
Sue Ellen came back into the room holding the hand of a young girl. “Amy, this is—” Did one call a prisoner by her first or last name? She compromised. “This is Tracy Whitney.”
“Hi,” Amy said. She had her mother’s thinness and deep-set, intelligent hazel eyes. She was not a pretty child, but there was an open friendliness about her that was touching.
I won’t let her touch me.
“Are you going to be my new nanny?”
“Well, I’m going to help your mother look after you.”
“Judy went out on parole, did you know that? Are you going out on parole, too?”
No, Tracy thought. She said, “I’m going to be here for a long while, Amy.”
“That’s good,” Sue Ellen said brightly. She colored in embarrassment and bit her lip. “I mean—” She whirled around the kitchen and started explaining Tracy’s duties to her. “You’ll have your meals with Amy. You can prepare breakfast for her and play with her in the morning. The cook will make lunch here. After lunch, Amy has a nap, and in the afternoon she likes walking around the grounds of the farm. I think it’s so good for a child to see growing things, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
The farm was on the other side of the main prison, and the twenty acres, planted with vegetables and fruit trees, were tended by trusties. There was a large artificial lake used for irrigation, surrounded by a stone wall that rose above it.