Evidence of Life. Barbara Sissel Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ Kate asked the sheriff.

      “I had a call from the San Antonio DA’s office. Obviously the local media got wind of it, since Nadine was here asking questions.”

      “Nadine Betts?” Kate rolled her eyes. “She’s an idiot.”

      “A call about what? What does any of this have to do with Nick and my daughter?” Abby demanded.

      “Sandoval, or a man resembling him, was caught on some surveillance tape on Tuesday outside a bank in San Antonio. He was with another man matching Nick’s description,” Dennis said.

      “No,” Abby said, shaking her head emphatically. “There’s no way it could be Nick. He was in Houston, working. He was home for dinner that evening.”

      “You were with him at his office?” the sheriff asked.

      “No, but I—”

      “I think the drive between Houston and San Antonio is, what? Three, three and a half hours?”

      “Dennis, you do realize this is ridiculous.” Kate wasn’t asking.

      He rubbed a line between his eyebrows.

      “This is just another ploy,” Abby said. “Another way the Helix Belle legal team is trying to get the spotlight off themselves. It’s what they did before. They tried to implicate Nick.” She spoke strongly over the sound of Lindsey’s voice that vied for her attention: We spent last night in San Antonio, Lindsey had said. Dad says we’re taking the scenic route. But the two things, the possibility that Nick had been in San Antonio on Tuesday and again with Lindsey on Saturday, weren’t related, Abby told herself. They couldn’t be.

      “I’m sorry to have to question you this way,” the sheriff said, “but it’s part of my job to look at all the angles.”

      Kate slipped her arm around Abby’s shoulders. “I’m telling you, I’ve known the Bennetts a long time, Dennis. Nick may not be perfect, but he wouldn’t take money from sick kids and run away with it, trust me.”

      “He wouldn’t run away, period.” Abby pulled free of Kate’s grasp. “Not with my daughter. You can’t stop looking for them. Please—” Her voice broke.

      The sheriff stepped toward her; he kept her gaze and reassured her the search would continue. Abby had the sense that he was moved by her plea, that he meant to touch her. He was close enough that she could feel his warmth and smell the starch rising out of the damp creases of his uniform shirt. It was an odd moment, out of time, but Abby was comforted by it. And then it was over. He stepped back, recovering in an instant the aura of his authority, his natural suspicion. He was paid for that, Abby thought. He was a cop, after all, conducting a cop’s business. Nevertheless she wanted to believe him, to believe it was kindness she saw 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.

      Catching СКАЧАТЬ