Suddenly she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle.
“Oh, hell,” she muttered, looking around wildly. “Now what?”
There was nowhere to hide among the scrub mesquite and boulders, and the sound was growing closer. In fact, it sounded like two vehicles, possibly a couple of kids on dirt bikes.
If somebody spotted her up here trying to push the car over the cliff, all her careful plans would be ruined. Worse than ruined, because Eric would know what she’d tried to do, and from now on he’d dog her movements even more relentlessly.
The man was bent on possessing her. If he couldn’t, he would surely kill her. And after this, nothing would stop him.
With a despairing sob, Isabel gave one great heave and finally sent the small vehicle over the edge. As it fell she closed her eyes and jumped into the void just behind it.
The next few moments seemed to take hours. She was conscious of space and weightlessness, of the sun blinding her and of the wind that tugged at her clothes and sang in her ears.
Then she was crashing down through tree branches and rustling leaves, rolling among thickets of brush that scratched her face and hands. At the same time she heard a mighty splash, followed by a chorus of startled cries from across the river.
Isabel lay facedown in the heavy brush, cradling her head in her arms like a woman awaiting a blow. Her chest heaved and her heart raced. She was gasping so hard that she was sure her breathing must be audible all the way across the river.
Gradually she began to realize her body was still in one piece and that, for the moment at least, she was safe. Through the screen of brush she could hear the people across the river, their voices clear and distinct on the evening air.
“It was a car!” somebody shouted. “A little blue car. I saw it just when it hit the water!”
“Was anybody in it?”
“I couldn’t tell,” the reply came as Isabel strained to hear, trying to calm her noisy breathing.
“Somebody call the fire department! Jimmy, get one of those trucks and drive downriver. See if you can find anybody in the water.”
Slowly her panic ebbed. Apparently the people on the opposite bank hadn’t noticed her body when she’d jumped off the cliff behind the car. And whoever had been driving up to the summit behind her wouldn’t have arrived in time to see her jump.
Isabel sat up and did a cautious assessment of her physical state.
She was covered with dirt, had a lot of scrapes and bruises, and was bleeding freely from a gash on her right arm where the jacket sleeve had been torn to shreds. Her face felt moist, and when she touched her cheek, her fingers came away red with blood.
“Damn,” she muttered, her thoughts racing. “Damn!”
It would be impossible to get on the bus in this condition without being noticed. Somehow she had to figure out a way to get herself cleaned up and find a change of clothes.
Maybe when darkness came, she could steal something from a farmer’s clothesline. But did anybody even use clotheslines anymore?
Isabel didn’t have a clue. She’d never done laundry in her life.
Meanwhile the confusion on the other side of the river seemed to be growing. She heard sirens approaching in the distance, then the frantic barking of a dog.
“Oh, God, I need to get away from here,” she said, looking around wildly.
The witnesses clearly weren’t sure the car had been occupied when it went into the water. But even if nobody had seen her falling behind it, they would still come over here and search the riverbank in case a driver or passengers had fallen out while the car was in flight and were lying injured in the bushes.
Shivering in the evening chill, Isabel pulled off her jacket, gripped the hem between her teeth and tore a ragged strip from the front to bind her arm, then twisted the length of cloth with a stick until the bleeding stopped.
She wondered if her arm needed stitches and how she was going to get proper medical attention. But when she removed her makeshift tourniquet, the flow of blood was just a trickle, already clotting.
The sky darkened, and Isabel looked up to see clouds massing overhead. Lightning split the air, and a low rumble of thunder came shuddering across the hills. At the same time, raindrops began to land on her face and patter in the bushes nearby.
The rain was a stroke of good luck, Isabel realized. A heavy rainfall would soon wash away any trace of her presence on the riverbank, even if they came and searched with dogs.
But she had to find some shelter. Maybe she could pay somebody to—
With sudden, heart-stopping terror, she paused and looked down at her torn jacket. For the first time she realized that not just the sleeve but most of the jacket’s right front, including the pocket, had been completely torn away.
Slowly, numb with dread, Isabel tried to make her sluggish mind work out what had happened.
As she’d pushed the car, her jacket must have caught on it somewhere, maybe the door or the rear bumper. Her pocket had been ripped free, possibly even carried into the water with the car.
And that meant her money and her bus ticket to Abilene were both gone.
She whimpered, then buried her face in her hands and struggled to compose herself.
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