Amanda picked up the whip. “And tell me, what happens to bad boys?” she cooed.

It was well past midnight when Gus placed his call to Ann Montgomery. But her voice was alert. “Gus,” she said immediately. “How are you, my darling boy?”

Gus felt a smile tug at his lips. Good old Montgomery, he thought. His mother might have gone loony in her old age, but Montgomery never changed. He counted on that. “Not so good,” he admitted.

“Tell me,” she said.

“You were right. It looks like Amanda plans to pass off the baby that Jamie Long is carrying as her own-as the rightful heir to the family ministry and the family fortune. We had guests for dinner tonight, and Amanda made a great show of only nibbling at her food and not drinking anything alcoholic.”

“I believe that the baby Jamie Long carries truly is the rightful heir to all things Hartmann,” Montgomery said.

Gus sat up straighter in his chair. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

“I believe that she is carrying Sonny’s child.”

“But that’s impossible.”

“Is it?” Montgomery asked.

Gus drew in his breath. “What makes you think such a thing? Did Amanda tell you?”

“No, but I know my Amanda. She was at the ranch the night before the insemination procedure was done on Jamie. She flew in, then turned right around and left first thing the next morning. She said she needed to pray at Sonny’s bedside.”

“Did she bring someone with her-a doctor or technician?”

“Nurse Freda was with her,” Montgomery said.

“Are you saying that she…”

“Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying.”

Gus rubbed his forehead, trying to think, trying to decide what the implications would be if what Montgomery believed could actually be true.

“I’m not sure about the legality of harvesting sperm from an unconscious man,” he said, “but I don’t suppose anyone is going to arrest Amanda for somehow managing to have that done. After all, Sonny is her only child.”

“Probably not,” Montgomery agreed. “But I assume that the contract Jamie Long signed with Amanda and Toby specified that he would be the natural father of the child. If the true circumstances of this child’s conception were ever to become known, the contract could be declared null and void, and Jamie could be awarded full custody of the child.”

Gus picked up a letter opener and stabbed at the blotter on his desk. He already had some idea where Montgomery was going with this and didn’t want to hear it.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot, Gus,” she continued. “If Jamie ever realizes that the baby she is carrying is Amanda Hartmann’s grandchild, she is certainly not going to give up her parental rights to the sole heir to the Hartmann family fortune.”

“But there is no way for her to know that,” Gus insisted.

“At this point, Jamie thinks that Amanda may be pregnant. But she does watch a lot of television and is bound to hear that Amanda has put the word out that she herself is expecting a baby. Then, when Amanda and Toby end up with just one baby to raise-one that Amanda claims is her natural-born child-Jamie will wonder what happened to the baby that she had carried and delivered. What if she hires a private detective or starts snooping around herself? What if she finds out that Amanda doesn’t have a uterus, and Sonny was still alive when he was taken from the hospital in Amarillo? What if the girl demands that she and Toby and the baby undergo DNA testing? What if she sues to get her baby back?”

“Then I would make sure the judge awarded custody to the baby’s grandmother,” Gus said, rubbing his forehead, wanting desperately to reject Montgomery’s line of reasoning.

“Perhaps,” Montgomery allowed, “but in the process, Amanda would be exposed as a fraud.”

Gus drew in his breath. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

“Don’t be blasphemous,” Montgomery said, her voice stern. “Your mother and I raised you better than that. I want this baby, Gus. It’s Sonny’s baby. And you will want it, too, when you think about it. This baby is a gift from God.”

Gus stared at the lighted statue of Christ in the meditation garden. For years he had been telling himself that he was going to have the damned thing carted away. But his mother had put it there. And moving it would upset Amanda.

Gus had always found it strange how easily devout people were able to convince themselves that the evil things they wanted to undertake were somehow the will of their one true God. If there were a God, Gus knew that he or she would have to spend all his or her time weeping.

Being an atheist meant that he was unable to rationalize or pray away evil. He had to look it square in the face and acknowledge it for what it was.

He wished that he had never insisted that Bentley Abernathy send him a photograph of the girl. Wished that he had never seen Jamie Long’s lovely young face.

Gus shook his head in an attempt to refocus his thoughts.

“And what about Toby? Does he know what’s going on?”

“I really don’t know,” Montgomery admitted, “but he’s nothing more than a lap dog. He’ll believe whatever Amanda tells him to believe.”

“I don’t know how we’re going to manage this,” Gus said.

“The Lord will provide,” Montgomery said.

BENTLEY SELDOM SAW Gus Hartmann in person. Mostly the man existed for him as a disembodied voice on the other end of a telephone. He had to remind himself at times that the authoritative utterances of this extraordinarily wealthy and powerful individual came from a man who stood no higher than Bentley’s chest.

When Gus called, everything else was put on hold. The conversation was transferred to speakerphone, and Lenora hurried into his office to take notes.

This time Gus had called to discuss issues dealing with real estate. He wanted to purchase the mineral rights for several tracts of land in the Texas Panhandle. But his main concern was the county road that crossed the Hartmann Ranch. The road’s official designation was Rural Road 12 but locally was known as Hartmann Road. It continued north of the ranch for thirty-two empty miles until it eventually intersected a state highway. Buck Hartmann’s original landholdings were all to the east of RR 12, but with additional acquisitions to the ranch over the years, the road now divided the Hartmann property almost in half.

Bentley doubted if more than a few dozen vehicles a day traversed the gravel road, which was used mainly by other county residents and an occasional hunter. Gus complained that Hartmann City had become a stopping place along the road, with people expecting to buy gas and soft drinks at the ranch store.

“Why is this an issue?” Bentley dared to ask.

“Privacy,” Gus’s voice had boomed over the speaker. Bentley reached over and turned down the volume.

“I’ll cede the county land along the western boundary of the ranch and reimburse whatever it costs to build a new segment of the road there,” Gus continued. “I want this taken care of, Abernathy. I told the county commissioners two years ago that I wanted this done. You remind those yokels that I pay more goddamned property taxes than anyone else in the county and that Hartmann Ranch is by far its largest employer. You remind them that Hartmann money built their high school gymnasium and put a new roof on the schoolhouse. And let them know in no uncertain terms that I want this project implemented immediately. You let them know that the only reason my sister and I have hung on to the ranch is for the privacy it provides. I want to maintain tighter security around the ranch house, and I can’t do that if there is a public thoroughfare passing right in front of it. And you remind them that Hartmann City is not a ‘city’ at all. It is private property. We’ve had people driving onto our property looking for Amanda and expecting her to heal their lumbago or pray with them. And reporters come snooping around. I had to install a security fence to keep people from driving right up to the ranch house and knocking on the door.”