Delgado was a true golden girl, and not just because of the enormous wealth and privilege she’d been born into. She was blond and tanned, slim and dainty, with the finely drawn, muscular frame of the dedicated runner. Her tanned skin, her French-braided hair, even the highlights in her hazel eyes were a rich golden-brown.
As a small child she’d been a source of pride to her father, but nowadays Pierce Delgado hardly ever came home, and her old friends were all busy with their growing families. Unless the police came here directly with the news of Isabel’s death, it could be a long time before anybody even noticed she was gone. Except for one person…
When Isabel realized how little impact the news of her death would have on almost anybody, she felt chilled and deeply sad.
If her sister, Luciana, had still been around, she’d care about Isabel. But their father’s anger and coldness had driven Luce away years ago. By now nobody even knew where she was, though Isabel often thought about her beautiful older sister.
“Well, goodbye, everybody,” Isabel said aloud to the silent house, bending to pick up her water bottle and a leather waist pack from the bottom of the stairs. “Hey, it’s been great.”
She left the house, locking the door carefully behind her, and ran down the walk to her little blue Mercedes convertible, which was sitting at the curb with the top rolled down.
Isabel got in, pushed a cassette into the player and looked back at the stately pile of cut limestone that was her father’s house, with its grounds so massive that the equally opulent homes of the neighbors were barely within view.
For the first time she had a stirring of doubt about her plan. But then she remembered the escalating dread of recent weeks, the sheer heart-stopping terror that pervaded most of her existence.
Her life was intolerable, and the fear had to stop. Nobody could live this way.
Isabel squared her shoulders, put the sleek little car into gear and headed down the street.
She drove northwest on the freeway leading out of San Antonio, then took an off-ramp and went up through Fredericksburg, deep into the heart of the Hill Country west of Austin.
Out here, far away from the city and the freeway, the summer evening was beautiful, though it was chilly enough that she was tempted to put the top up.
But that wasn’t part of the plan. On the off chance that somebody happened to see her car in the Hill Country and testify about it later, it was important for them to notice that the convertible top had been down as she drove.
So she turned up her jacket collar for warmth, enjoying the way the fading light spilled across the hills, and the mesquite and live oak trees rustled and whispered in the breeze.
Heavy clouds massed behind her to the south, threatening a rainstorm, but by the time that storm arrived, she would be well on her way.
Isabel smiled and tapped her fingers on the steering wheel in time to a country song, looking with pleasure at the countryside rolling by. She’d always loved the Hill Country.
Her mother, Pierce Delgado’s second wife, had been friends with the J.T. McKinney family at Crystal Creek, whose successful ranching and more recent wine-growing operation was one of the jewels of Claro County. Isabel had spent many of her summers there as a child. In fact, the family warmth and hospitality at the Double C ranch had been one of the best things in Isabel’s lonely childhood. The McKinneys gave her a view of a life so different from her own, with her absent father, brittle alcoholic mother and a half brother and half sister who were both almost a decade older and busy with adult lives of their own by the time Isabel entered adolescence. The memories brought a hot prickle of tears to her eyes.
But this was no time to give way to emotion. She had to stay cool and alert, or she’d never be able to pull the whole thing off.
North of Fredericksburg she turned off the highway and drove up a side road to park on a rocky outcropping, a lookout point high above the Claro River, known as Rimrock Park.
At this time of year the Claro was a lazy sparkle, reflecting the rich colors of the sunset. It gave no hint of the raging torrent it could become in the spring when it flooded and went thundering through the valley like a freight train, sweeping away everything in its path.
Isabel had selected this particular point because the banks narrowed here; the Claro was certainly deep enough to cover a car and had a current powerful enough to carry a body into the Colorado and on toward Lake Travis.
Also, there was a well-used picnic area below, about a hundred yards upriver on the other side. Even from that distance she could see a couple of families with little kids and pets, their food spread out on tables while a group of men nearby played horseshoes.
She drove her car forward on the lookout point, as far as she could without slipping over the edge and plunging into the water a hundred feet below. When she turned off the music, a clink of metal on metal from the game of horseshoes drifted up to her, along with the muffled shouts of children and barking of dogs.
The sweet everyday sounds seemed unbearably precious and reminded her painfully of everything she’d lost.
Isabel’s jaw set in determination. She drew off the terry-cloth headband and pulled on a navy baseball cap, tugging it low enough over her forehead to obscure most of her face.
Then she took her waist pack and wedged it firmly under the front seat. The leather pouch contained all her ID, including her passport and credit cards.
At first she’d been reluctant to include her passport, because it had been such a hassle to get the new one that now waited for her in that bus-depot locker in Abilene. But Isabel needed to make it look as if she’d been leaving the country and had accidentally driven her car over the cliff while taking one last look at the Claro River.
Probably she’d gone to some unnecessary effort, but the whole scene had to be completely believable.
After all, no one who was faking her own death would choose to sacrifice her social-security card, her passport, driver’s license and credit cards.
Time was running out. She had to do it now, while the people were still in the picnic ground and could attest to seeing a small blue car plunge into the river from the opposite cliffs.
Her hands began to tremble with nerves and she clenched them into fists, then checked her jacket pocket one last time to make sure she had her wad of cash and the bus ticket she’d bought in San Antonio. In her shoe, under her heel, she could feel the hard shape of the key to the locker in Abilene.
Finally she got out of the car and stood holding the door open.
One more time Isabel checked to make sure the leather pack was wedged under the front seat. For a moment she considered putting it in the glove compartment for safety, but decided that might look a little too staged.
Nervously she patted her pocket, the one containing her money and her ticket to a new life, then tugged the cap even lower over her eyes.
At last she reached inside to slip the car into neutral, gripped the door frame and began to push it toward the edge of the precipice. As soon as it went over the cliff among the scrub mesquite and cactus, she would set off down the road in the opposite direction from the way she’d come, like a jogger out for a run in the cool of the evening. In the unlikely event that anybody asked, she could say she’d already passed the lookout point and hadn’t seen a car there.
Her plan was to jog about four miles—an easy distance for Isabel—to the bus depot in Crystal Creek, which was the nearest small town. There she would use the ticket in her pocket to board a bus, ride up to Abilene, about a hundred miles away, and collect her stash of money and her ID.
She would have to lie low for a while in Abilene, of course, until she knew Eric had finally given up searching for her. Then she could devise some way to get safely out of the country. Maybe she’d try going to Mexico again, or to Canada…
But just as the front wheels of the Mercedes hung in space, ready to plunge