Texas…Now and Forever

by Merline Lovelace

  Shoving her aside, Luke dived for the wheel. The movement destroyed Haley’s already shaky balance. She made a frantic grab for the windshield, the seat, anything to anchor her, but her flailing, spray-slick hands found nothing but empty air. With a little cry, she tumbled over the side.

  “Haley!”

  Luke’s shout was the last sound she heard before she sank into the water. She plunged downward, her movements jerky and uncoordinated until she conquered her momentary panic. She’d spent hours as a toddler dog-paddling in this lake. Many more as a youngster jet-skiing and water-skiing across its vast surface. The lake was her friend.

  Her escape.

  Tucking her legs, she righted herself and shot toward the surface. Her ascent was as smooth as her descent had been wild and tumultuous. For the first second or two, anyway.

  She was still four or five feet below the surface when something scraped along her neck and jerked her to a halt. Fright almost stripped the last of her air from her lungs. Thrashing, twisting, she fought a long tentacle of the submerged tree she’d swerved to avoid. The tip of the branch had slipped right under the neck strap of her halter. Her body’s buoyancy and her own frantic movements kept the damned thing securely lodged.

  Her chest burning, Haley tore at the knot tied just under her breasts. Air bubbles were escaping her aching lungs by the time the knot finally gave. Abandoning the scrap of fabric, she scissor-kicked frantically. She burst through the surface a second later. Gasping, choking, she dragged in huge gulps of air.

  When she gathered her strength enough to make a quick spin, what she saw almost sucked the air right back out of her lungs.

  “Dear God!”

  She felt as though she’d been under water for hours, but it must have been only a few seconds. Not long enough for Luke to regain control of the speedboat, which now tipped even more precariously to one side. Water flew up in white sheets as it cut a crazy swath toward the flickering lights.

  “Luke! Tyler!” Treading water, Haley screamed a desperate warning. “Flynt, she’s going to flip. Get the heck out of there, guys!”

  They were too far away now to hear her shout. Or too busy throwing their weight against the up-raised side. The maneuver might have worked on a sailboat tacking into the wind. On a speedboat with one of its dual engines still churning at full power, it had little effect.

  As Haley squinted through the darkening shadows, horrified, the fiberglass hull raised even higher. A second later the entire boat went over and hit with a crack that rifled across the lake like gunfire. Her heart stayed lodged firmly in her throat until she saw dark shapes bob to the surface.

  One. Two. Three.

  Where was the fourth? Oh, God, where was the fourth!

  She kicked, launching into a desperate stroke, but knew she’d never cover the distance that now yawned between her and the men thrown from the speedboat to do any good. They were closer to the far shore than they were to her. The people running down to the pier of her parents’ lakeside cabin would reach the capsized boat long before she could.

  Still, she swam doggedly, desperately, until a fourth dark shape broke the surface. Half choking, half sobbing with relief, Haley slowed her stroke until she was again treading water.

  They couldn’t see her, she realized, when she shoved her wet hair out of her eyes. The last, dying rays of the sun illuminated the far shore, but shadows were deeper out here. Darker. None of the figures on the far shore could spot her from that distance.

  But they’d come looking for her. As soon as they reached Luke and the others and learned Haley had been in the boat, too, they’d come in search of her. Her father. Her brother.

  Frank Del Brio.

  The heat generated by Haley’s frenetic swim evaporated. Ice crystals seemed to form in her veins. Her arms grew as heavy as the gray granite boulders lining the shore, her heart even heavier.

  She’d intended to disappear tonight. Not in such a dramatic manner, perhaps, but… Well, a drowning was a drowning.

  She swallowed. Hard. With little finning movements with her hands, she brought her body around. The closest spit of land was a hundred or so yards away. Several miles from the secluded cove where she’d planned to park her car to go for her last swim, but within walking distance of the judge’s isolated fishing cabin.

  Judge Carl Bridges. The one man she could trust. The lawyer who’d been both longtime friend to her family and calm advisor to an increasingly desperate Haley. With his cloak of client-attorney privilege, the judge knew how deeply Johnny Mercado had become entangled in his brother Carmine’s deadly web. He also knew that Frank Del Brio’s threats were anything but idle. He suspected the smooth, handsome thug of complicity in several vicious killings. He understood Haley’s wrenching decision to protect her father in the only way she could—by removing herself completely from the equation. If she was gone, Frank would have no reason to threaten her father.

  During the past weeks the judge had obtained a forged passport and purchased airline tickets that would send Haley crisscrossing three continents and, hopefully, cover her tracks from even the most determined scrutiny. Everything was ready. Tonight was the night. And, with this bizarre boating accident, she’d never have a better opportunity to make her death look real.

  Her heart splintering, Haley threw a last look over her shoulder. In a ragged whisper she said goodbye to her home and to her family.

  “I love you, Mom,” she whispered. “You and Daddy both. Keep safe, and keep Ricky safe.”

  Dragging off Frank’s engagement ring, she threw it as far as she could. Then she slipped beneath the cool, dark waters once more.

  Three

  Half-naked and totally exhausted, Haley dragged herself out of the lake. She didn’t look back. She didn’t dare.

  Twenty minutes later she stumbled down the path to a small, ramshackle fishing cabin tucked among a stand of scrub pine. No lights showed at the shuttered windows. The judge hadn’t yet arrived at the agreed-upon rendezvous site. But he would. Soon, she guessed.

  Once inside the back door Carl Bridges always kept unlocked, she grabbed a blue plaid flannel shirt from the hooks on the wall and hunched on one of the sturdy chairs drawn up to the scarred plank table.

  The immensity of what she’d just done—and what she was about to do—almost overwhelmed her. Shaking from head to toe, she wrapped her arms around her middle and rocked back and forth. Lake water dripped from her hair and ran down her legs to puddle on the scrubbed pine floor.

  She done it. She’d completed the first phase of her plan. Not the way she and the judge had envisioned it, precisely, but the speedboat accident would certainly make things more realistic. Now she just had to find the courage to take the next step. Could she really put her parents through the agony of believing she’d drowned? Really leave Texas and start a new life, away from everything and everyone she knew?

  Away from Frank?

  With a little moan, Haley dug her fingers into her sides. She had no choice. Frank would destroy her father. He was that determined. And that vicious.

  She’d find a way to let her parents know she was okay, she swore. Later, when she was sure it was safe.

  The thought gave her the strength to make it through the wait for Judge Bridges. As an old and trusted friend of the family, he’d been invited to celebrate the boys’ homecoming. He would have been one of the crowd gathered under the flickering lights. One of the witnesses to the accident out on the lake. When Luke and the others made it known Haley had been a passenger in the boat, Carl would guess that she’d altered the schedule.

  Sure enough, tires crunched on the dirt-and-gravel road leading to the cabin less than a half hour later. Haley was a bundle of raw nerves, but her rapidly developing self-preservation instinct kept her out of sight as she peered through the bedroom window. She almost wept with relief when Judge Bridges slammed the car door. His prematurely white hair shining like a beacon in the darkness that now blanketed the earth, he rushed to th
e cabin.

  “Haley? Haley, are you here?”

  “Yes!” She ran in from the other room. “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Thank God!”

  His lined face was a study in worry and relief. Opening his arms, he crushed her against his chest. Haley clung to him with everything in her. He was her last link with her family. The last link between the woman she was and the stranger she would soon become.

  Finally his hold loosened. He eased her away a few inches. “I thought… We all thought…”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. Behind his old-fashioned black-rimmed glasses, his watery blue eyes glistened. Blinking furiously, he glared at her with a combination of anger and admiration.

  “Why the dickens did you flip over Luke’s speedboat? That was a dangerous stunt and not part of our plan.”

  “I didn’t flip it! Well, I guess I did, but not on purpose. I swerved to avoid a submerged log and lost control.”

  “Well, it sure adds a grim authenticity to our plan. They’re searching the whole lake for you, missy.”

  “Oh, Judge!” Wracked with guilt, Haley almost abandoned the scheme right then and there. “My parents must be frantic. Maybe I should go home. Maybe I should just marry Frank.”

  Her tortured doubts acted like a spur on the judge. The steely resolve that had sustained him through fifteen years at the bar and ten on the bench stiffened his spine.

  “No, Haley, you’re doing the right thing. You’ve got to get away. Your parents did everything they could to give you and Ricky a different life. If you go back now, you’ll nullify all their years of sacrifice and worry.”

  She knew he was right. Carl Bridges had been both friend and advisor to Johnny and Isadora Mercado for decades. If Haley had at times suspected the hint of sadness in the judge’s eyes when they rested on Isadora went beyond friendship, beyond regret, she never let on. Only after she’d turned to him to help her escape Frank Del Brio had she learned how much of a role he’d played in both her and her brother’s life.

  Carl Bridges hadn’t been able to keep his old friend Johnny from sliding into his brother Carmine’s web, but he’d added his voice to Isadora’s when she’d pleaded with Johnny to send Ricky off to a military school to keep him away from Carmine’s thugs. The judge had also encouraged Haley to go up to Austin to attend his alma mater, the University of Texas, to keep her from discovering her father’s growing entanglement with the Texas mob.

  The ploy had worked. Until Haley spent two summers working in her father’s office, she’d remained oblivious of the shady operations Carmine Mercado had dragged his brother into. Even after curiosity had led her to dig deeper into the family business than her job as a receptionist warranted, she’d pretended ignorance. She loved her father too much to confront him with the startling bits of information she’d picked up. She bled a bit inside whenever Johnny Mercado tried to bluster and disguise what he’d become from his family, but she kept his secrets tucked in a deep, dark corner of her heart. Now she’d take those secrets to the grave with her.

  With a ragged sigh, she buried her doubts in the same watery grave. “You’re right. I’m just…nervous now that it’s really happening.”

  “We’ll have to move fast,” the judge warned. “I said I was going to drive around the lake and search for you. We’d better get you away before someone else decides to do the same. Stay here. I’ll get the suitcase from the trunk.”

  He was back before Haley could once more start to question what she was doing again. Mere moments later she’d changed into the outfit she’d bought and stashed with the judge in preparation for this night. The baggy tan slacks and loose-fitting top completely disguised her generous curves. Tucking her still-damp, shoulder-length hair up under a pixie-cut wig, she changed her brown eyes to a smoky green with tinted contacts. There wasn’t much she could do about the little bump in her nose she’d inherited from her mother until she made a visit to a plastic surgeon, but the oversize glasses she slipped on would detract attention from it.

  The judge was pacing the front room when she emerged. Running a critical eye over her, he nodded. “I hardly recognize you. Ready to go?”

  She swallowed the bitter taste of guilt and regret. “Yes.”

  “Okay. Let’s get you on your way.”

  Taking her elbow, he hustled her out to his car. “Your temporary ID, credit cards and passport are in the dash. I’ll send new ones when…if you decide to go ahead with cosmetic surgery.”

  Gulping, Haley retrieved the documents and fingered the embossed passport. She could only guess the favors the crusty jurist had been forced to call in to manufacture her temporary identity.

  “I’m sorry I pulled you into this mess, Judge.”

  “I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life, missy. I don’t count helping Isadora’s daughter as one of them.”

  “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”

  “I don’t expect you to. Now duck down and stay out of sight until I get you to the rental I parked down the road earlier this afternoon. It’s only a few miles.”

  The wily judge had thought of everything, even obtaining a nondescript sedan from a rental agency. Judge Bridges had made sure there was no way the car could be traced to him, or to the woman who’d park it at the San Antonio airport later tonight.

  The drive to the hidden vehicle seemed to take forever, yet was all too brief. Haley crouched low in the seat, trying desperately to blank her mind to the frantic search she knew was taking place out on the lake. She’d made the wrenching decision to leave. For her father’s sake, she had to follow through with it.

  “Here we are.”

  Slowing, the judge pulled off onto a narrow track. Branches scraped against the sides of his car as it bumped down the path. When the headlights picked up the gleam of metal, he shoved the gear-shift into park but left the engine running.

  The hot Texas night wrapped around them as they made their way to the waiting Ford. Digging the keys out of his pocket, Carl passed them to Haley.

  “You’ll need some cash,” he said gruffly. “Here’s two thousand for immediate expenses. I’ll wire more when you get settled.”

  “Judge, I—”

  Her throat closed, tears burned behind her eyelids. This was it, the moment she’d both dreaded and planned for so meticulously. Her last seconds as Haley Mercado.

  No, not as Haley Mercado. Haley was already dead. Lost beneath the dark waters of Lake Maria.

  “You’d better get going,” the judge said gruffly, his own voice thick. “It’s a good stretch of road to San Antonio, and you have a plane to catch.”

  She couldn’t get a single sound past the ache in her throat. Awkwardly, Carl patted her shoulder.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll look after Isadora and Ricky. And I’ll do what I can to extricate your father from the mess he’s gotten himself into over the years. I can still pull a few strings ’round these parts.”

  Maybe then she could come home again. Clinging to that hope, Haley threw her arms around his neck and hugged him.

  “I hope so, Judge. God, I hope so! Keep me posted, okay?”

  “You know I will. Now scoot, girl, before we both start bawling like new-weaned calves.”

  She gave him another fierce hug, then slid into the sedan and waited while he backed his own car down the track. Its headlights stabbed into Haley’s eyes. Almost blinded, she turned onto the paved road. She idled the car for a moment, waiting for the black spots to fade, then slowly accelerated. A few moments later a turn in the road took her away from Lake Maria.

  In the weeks that followed, Carl Bridges was Haley’s only contact with Texas and the life she’d left behind.

  The judge’s assurances that her family was working through their shock and grief sustained her through long days and lonely nights in strange cities. After a circuitous journey across several continents to cover her tracks, she found refuge in the comfy flat Carl had leased for her in London. There she found funds
waiting to cover her expenses, including the cosmetic surgeon who altered Haley’s features.

  Under the surgeon’s knife, her nose lost the little bump she’d inherited from her mother, and her slanting, doelike eyes became rounded. She considered breast reduction and possibly liposuction to diminish her lush curves, but by then stress had carved off so many pounds that she carried a far more slender, if still subtly rounded, silhouette. Dying her hair a glowing honey-blond, she adopted a sleek, upswept style that gave her an unexpectedly sophisticated look.

  With her degree in graphic arts, it didn’t take her long to land a terrific job. She’d just begun to feel comfortable in her new skin when a call from Carl shattered her shaky sense of security. It came mere weeks after her supposed death. She could tell from his terse greeting that he was upset.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, her pulse kicking into overdrive. “Are my parents okay? Ricky’s not hurt, is he?”

  “No, no one’s hurt.” His voice took on an odd note. “No one we know, anyway.”

  “Tell me, Judge. What’s happened?”

  “They found your body.”

  “What!”

  “Some fishermen out on Lake Maria hooked on to a corpse. It’s badly decomposed, but it matches your height and physical characteristics with uncanny exactness.”

  “Frank!” she breathed. “Frank must have planted it.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking, too.”

  According to Carl, Del Brio had gone beserk when divers found his fiancée’s halter top still tangled in the branches of the submerged tree. In a bitterly ironic twist, he’d insisted the local authorities arrest Luke and the others for taking Haley out on the lake and operating a high-powered speedboat while under the influence. Tests had confirmed a high level of alcohol in the men’s blood, and now the four marines had been charged with reckless endangerment.

  “All hell’s broken loose ’round here,” Carl related. “Your father wouldn’t let Isadora view the corpse, but he and Ricky went down to the morgue. They both near about fell apart. Now even Ricky’s out for blood. He’s turned against Luke, blames him for taking you out in the boat when he was drunk.”