For a few moments Rachel sat absolutely still. Stunned. Then the first coherent thought came:
Terrified, she held her breath and took stock.
Nothing seemed amiss. In fact, thanks to that last-minute stomp on the brake pedal, she’d evidently landed in the wash with so little impact the air bag hadn’t even deployed. And her seat belt had kept her belly from hitting the steering wheel. Still, she was pressed up against it. Which couldn’t be good.
She opened the door-which required little effort, thanks to the angle of the car-released the seat belt and half slid, half fell onto the steeply sloping bank of the ravine. She pulled up her feet and sat there braced and hugging herself, waiting until she felt her legs were steady enough to hold her.
She’d never be able to get the car out of the ravine without a tow truck. But of course she had no cell phone, no way to call for help. Hopefully, a car would come along, but then…what if… In her vulnerable state, the paranoia of the night before returned.
No, she didn’t dare flag down a passing stranger. She had to get to some sort of settlement-one of those tiny dots on the map. Surely there would be someone there with a telephone. She could walk-it couldn’t be that far. She’d been driving for what seemed like forever. She had to have already covered most of the distance to the next one.
Holding on to the open door, she pulled herself to her feet. Though it was a tight squeeze, she managed to stretch across the seat and retrieve the map and what remained of her water and snacks from where they’d slid onto the floor during her wild ride and final descent into the ravine.
So far, so good. But now she became aware of the sun beating down on her unprotected head, and any idiot knew about the dangers of walking in the desert without proper protection.
Then she remembered the habit. Izzy’s habit, that she’d tossed so casually into the trunk after she’d made her escape from the Delacorte estate. It would be rather like the robes desert Arabs wore, wouldn’t it?
She pulled the trunk release-gratified to discover it still worked-then managed make her way back up the dirt bank, pulling herself along the side of the car, until she could reach the trunk. She lifted the trunk lid and gathered up the pile of fabric that was Izzy’s habit, then had to bend over with it clutched to her chest as pain unlike anything she’d ever known before gripped her back and pelvis like a giant vise.
For a moment she bore it in stoic silence, before she remembered there was no one to hear her, so what did it matter. She let out a primal roar that surprised her almost as much as the fact that it actually seemed to help.
But then, as the pain diminished panic rushed in to take its place.
She leaned against the back of the car and took deep breaths to calm herself. She’d had enough medical training to know that, for the moment, at least, she was in no real danger. This was her first baby. Labor could, and probably would, go on for hours and hours. Plenty of time. Her original plan-to walk to the nearest site of human habitation-would still appear to be the best option. And if she kept reasonably close to the road, she could still flag down someone if it came to that.
If worse came to worst. If she absolutely had to take the chance.
But she wasn’t there yet. So far, just that one contraction, and as long as the contractions stayed far apart she’d be okay. No need to panic. She had water, and protection from the sun. She’d be fine.
Determinedly putting all the terrible thoughts and possibilities out of her mind, Rachel stood on the edge of the wash, gazing at the endless panorama of desert and mountains stretching away to cloudless blue skies.
As if in contradiction of the thought, a little breeze came skirling along through the brush and picked up the wings of her long black hair, tugging it gently at first, then with more urgency.
Oddly enough, the knowledge that she was indeed on her own, and completely dependent on her own devices, made her feel stronger. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened them again and began to methodically sort out the folds of the habit.
A few minutes later, Rachel set out across the desert, with Izzy’s rosary beads clutched in one hand and her last bottle of water in the other.
Sheriff’s Deputy J. J. Fox did not take lightly the 911 dispatcher’s report of someone walking alone in the desert-nun or otherwise. Fact was, the desert killed people. All the time. Maybe not as often as before cell phones and GPS, but it still happened. Maybe less likely now when the weather was relatively benign as compared to the coming heat of summer, which would be just plain suicidal.
“Some people are too damn stupid to live,” he said to his passenger, who was sitting upright on her haunches in the middle of the backseat of the sheriff’s department patrol vehicle, drooling on J.J.’s right shoulder. “Too bad we can’t just let nature take its course…Darwin’s Law, you know? Weed out some of these idiots.” Getting only panting sounds in reply, and considerably more dog drool, he gave a gusty sigh. “Yeah…s’pose not. But just between you and me, Moonshine…”
He hoped it was a false alarm, a mirage or…maybe wind-blown clothing hung up on a cactus. But he had a feeling it wouldn’t be; the notion of a woman-a nun!-walking alone in the desert was just nutty enough to be true.
“Really,” he said to the drooler, “you couldn’t make this stuff up.”
As he approached the mile marker the dispatcher had given as the approximate location of the nun sightings, he slowed down and turned on his lights. Crawling along the shoulder at walking speed, he scanned the terrain on both sides of the highway. Nothing he could see, except for the usual scrubby bushes-he was no botanist, so as far as he was concerned they all came under the heading “sagebrush”-now afloat in a sea of golden flowers, with here and there a clump of cholla cacti or Joshua trees to break the monotony. If there had been anybody walking out there, he couldn’t see her now, and that wasn’t good news.
Swearing to himself, he pulled to a stop on the sandy shoulder. In the backseat, the hound dog of undetermined pedigree licked her chops lustily and wriggled in anticipation while J.J. unhooked his seat belt. He spoke briefly to his shoulder mic, then opened the door of the vehicle and stepped out onto hot white sand. “Okay, Moonshine, how about you and me go and do what they pay us for?”
Rachel dreamed of Nicholas again. They were together at the beach, a rare hot day in Malibu. She was hot, unpleasantly so. She wanted to get up and run down to the waves to cool off, but for some reason she felt heavy… so heavy she couldn’t get up. Then she saw that Nicky was laughing, laughing because he’d buried her up to her neck in the sand. He thought it was all in fun, but she began to be frightened and she begged him to dig her out of the sand and let her up. But he just kept adding more sand, and it was heavy, and the pressure was weighing her down, and then a wave came and splashed her in the face and she woke up, gasping.
Except she thought she must still be dreaming, maybe that twilight dreaming where you are almost awake but not quite enough to make the dreaming stop. Because now, instead of a mountain of sand weighing her down, there was something big and heavy and warm-and
Terrified, she tried to lift her arms to fend off whatever it was, but found she couldn’t move because it was sitting on her arms, too.
“Moonshine! That’s enough-come ’ere, girl. What are you trying to do, drown her or smother her?”
