Texas...Now and Forever

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 the 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.