Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,9
in the gravity of his expression.
The sheriff apologized again. “It’s procedure,” he said. “Routine in these cases,” he added.
“Routine?” Abby said. What about any of this was routine?
* * *
It was after midnight when Kate led Abby into her guest room and made her lie down.
“I won’t sleep,” Abby said.
“At least close your eyes.” Kate pulled off Abby’s borrowed tennis shoes and lifted her sock-clad feet onto the bed.
“I should call Mama and Louise.”
“It’s late. Why don’t you just rest now?”
Abby looked at Kate. “I don’t care what the sheriff thinks or that reporter. They’re way off base.”
Kate took Abby’s hand. “But it would be so much more interesting if they weren’t. Nadine especially would love it. The biggest thing she ever gets to report is when someone’s cow gets loose. Now a celebrity is missing.”
“Nick isn’t a celebrity. Why do you say things about him like that? Why did you say that before, that he wasn’t perfect? Why would you put it that way?”
Kate groaned softly. “I knew you were mad.”
“I’m surprised you don’t believe he robbed the settlement fund, too.”
“Oh, Abby.” Kate sounded hurt and half annoyed, and she had a right to be, but Abby wouldn’t yield. She rose on one elbow to peer hotly at Kate. “Maybe you know something about where Nick was going. Is that it? Do you?”
“I wish I did, but he’d never confide in me.”
Abby fell back, crooking her elbows over her eyes. She felt sick with rage and the effort of steeling her nerves to take the next blow. She wondered if she would survive, if she was strong enough. “What if no one finds them, Katie?”
“Oh, Abby, don’t. Don’t go there.”
How could she not go there? Not conjecture? What if Lindsey had been chattering a blue streak or complaining? What if Nick’s attention had been drawn from the road? Abby started to see images and plastered her hands over her eyes, but the curtain in her mind rose in spite of her. She saw Nick, distracted, looking at Lindsey. A wider shot of the car picking up speed, sliding into a black, rain-slickened curve. Now, before Abby’s horrified gaze, her Jeep slammed through a guardrail and flew for what seemed like forever before it plummeted, bounced end over end between canyon walls until finally it struck the bottom, where it sat with Nick and Lindsey dead inside it. By the time the SUV came to rest, it would have taken on the same contouring as the boulders it had fallen among. Boulders the color of iced champagne. The color of limestone baking in the sun. The same color as Abby’s Jeep. It would blend in so beautifully with the rock that no one would ever see it, much less the treasure it contained.
Abby turned on her side, jerking on the sheet, cramming a corner of it into her mouth, and when the cry broke from her ribs, it wasn’t louder than a whimper.
* * *
She woke later in a panic, unable to believe she’d slept, uncertain of where she was, and then the sound of the rain reminded her. It peppered the window in wind-driven gusts. Abby pressed her fingertips to her ears, and still she could hear it; its rattling insistence...the never-ending drops forming rivulets, the rivulets making streams, the streams combining into rivers. Rivers rising over their banks. Endless flooding and drowning and dripping and wet. Water sloshing everywhere. She lay staring at the ceiling. Why was she here safe and warm and dry, while her family was out there shivering and alone in the cold and the dark and—
But she couldn’t do this, couldn’t lie here with her mind spinning through the endless and terrifying loop of her own thoughts. Flinging aside the bedcovers, she got up. There was light coming from the great room, and she went toward it. A man was there, one of the paramedics she’d met earlier. Abby thought his name was Billy. Billy Clyde Coleman. He was sitting on the floor, eating a bowl of chili Kate had made earlier, and watching television. Abby imagined most everyone else was bedded down in the campers she’d seen parked everywhere or else in the bunkhouse. They’d get what rest they could before resuming the search effort at daybreak. But Billy was like her, Abby thought. He couldn’t sleep. She started to speak, to make him aware of her presence, but then she heard her name, Bennett, and her eyes jerked to the TV screen.