Panic wasn’t going to accomplish anything. She had to think, and there was no time to waste. Emergency vehicles were arriving on the other side of the river, and the shouts and calls of the searchers intensified, though their words were harder to make out now that rain had begun to fall heavily.
She had no time to scour the riverbank for her lost possessions, even if by some miracle they’d fallen clear of the water. It was important to get away from here before people came around to the other side of the river and launched a search in the brush.
Again she tried to think, to assess all the possibilities.
If the bit of torn jacket had gone into the water along with the car, would that alert police investigators to what she’d done?
Not necessarily, she decided.
They weren’t going to find a body, of course, so they would be likely to assume part of the jacket had torn free when the body washed out of the car. The bus ticket was printed on such flimsy paper a dousing in the river would turn it to unrecognizable pulp. And a wad of money would carry no significance to anybody. People probably assumed women like Isabel Delgado carried wads of money around with them all the time.
It would be worse, though, if the jacket fragments had fallen free of the car on this side of the river and somebody found that bus ticket. Then someone might work out what she’d been trying to do. But the brush was so thick here at the base of the cliff. And the rain was torrential now—one of those storms that seemed to blow out of nowhere during autumn in the Hill Country.
Though she was starting to feel chilled and sick, Isabel was still grateful for the rain. It fell like a dense silver curtain, soothing her wounds and hiding her from view as she made her way though the brush.
She was almost a hundred yards downriver, away from the shouts and sirens, before the full enormity of her situation hit her.
Without the contents of her jacket pocket, she had no way of surviving. She had no money and no way to get herself—unseen—to Abilene to reclaim her careful stash of identification papers.
When she realized this, she sank to her knees on the carpet of rotting leaves and wrapped her arms around her shivering body.
Her hair was wet and dirty, plastered to her neck and face, and she was gripped by uncontrollable spasms. Moisture dripped from her cheeks, frightening her, but when she touched her face, no trace of blood stained her hands.
High above and upriver she heard calls from the summit where she’d been and the sound of people descending the slope.
Panicking again, she got up and set off once more, crouching low and running along a leafy path in the brush made by deer and rabbits. Rain was still pouring and night had set in with alarming suddenness. She could barely make out the path and stayed on it mostly by instinct. Whenever she blundered into the surrounding thickets, cruel branches and thorns grabbed at her shredded jogging pants and stabbed her legs.
After what seemed like several hours, she slowed her pace. The heavy rain was letting up, and the night was silent except for the rustle of dripping trees and the mournful hooting of an owl somewhere nearby. The clouds separated and a partial moon drifted out from the lacy screen.
Isabel crawled in among the lower branches of a cedar tree and paused to catch her breath. She was chilled through, badly winded, weak from loss of blood. Her arm had begun to throb painfully. She wondered if the gash could have become infected so soon.
But in spite of the cold and the pain of her injuries, she was most distressed by the fact that she no longer had a plan. Her only thought was to put distance between herself and anybody who might be searching the riverbank. Beyond that, she didn’t have the slightest idea what to do, or how to make her way to Abilene so she could use the key that was still safely tucked in her running shoe.
Various possibilities presented themselves, none of them very rational.
She could knock on the door of a farmhouse along the river, tell the owner she’d been in an accident and ask to call her father.
No. Pierce Delgado was in Europe on business.
Maybe she could ask for help from her brother or one of her father’s personal staff, but after what she’d seen a few weeks earlier, she didn’t really trust any of them. And she didn’t want anyone to know Isabel Delago was still alive.
Besides, even making a phone call would mean revealing her identity. Nobody in their right mind would let a stranger into the house to use the phone, even an injured one.
Maybe she could claim amnesia, saying the trauma of her accident had driven all memory from her mind.
But then they would call the police, and that prospect was so distressing that Isabel, who never cried, began to sob aloud.
Suddenly weary beyond endurance, she stretched out and lay full-length on the soft carpet of leaves. Her head and arm throbbed, and her body ached with fatigue.
I’ll just rest for a minute, she thought. After a little rest I’ll feel better, and then I can decide what to do.
It was her last conscious thought for many hours. Almost at once she fell deeply asleep and didn’t wake until the morning sun was high in the sky.
CHAPTER TWO
THE IRRIGATION PUMP had broken down again. Dan Gibson knelt and prodded it carefully with grease-stained fingers, wondering if all it needed was something simple like new washers, or if this was going to be another expensive overhaul. Maybe he’d even have to replace the creaky old piece of machinery.
He couldn’t afford a new pump without getting another operating loan. And even Bill Hendricks, the sympathetic bank manager in Crystal Creek, was probably going to tell him that was impossible.
Wearily, Dan sat back on his heels and squinted into the fading sunlight where his children played along the river.
Twelve-year-old Ellie was in the water, wading up to her knees, bent almost double as she searched for arrowheads in the bright shallows.
Chris was four years younger than Ellie, and she wasn’t allowed to go into the water unless Dan was with her. She was dragging their red wagon along the river’s edge, and she and little Josh were filling it with mounds of colored pebbles they intended to use for some mysterious game of their own.
Josh was only two, chubby and energetic in a blue-denim romper suit. His sisters were in sandals, but Josh wore heavy miniature boots to protect his feet from the rocks along the shore. His golden curls shone in the sunlight, and his voice drifted on the wind, as happy as a little bird’s.
Dan grinned briefly and tipped his cap back, watching the children. But his smile faded when he looked around at the hay meadow behind him, then at the stalled irrigation pump.
At least a heavy rainfall the night before had provided some moisture for his rapidly maturing crop. It gave him a little breathing room while he worked on the pump. But if he couldn’t harvest this final hay crop and pay back a few loans, his financial prospects for the coming year were going to be damned bleak.
“Ellie,” he called, “it’s time for the kids to have a bath and go to bed.”
The
