Page 96 of The Texas Murders

“In my truck,” I croak, my voice hoarse.

She lets out an annoyed huff, then takes a few steps away.

Now would be a good time to jump to my feet, to try to disarm her, but my body won’t listen to my mind’s commands. Feeling is coming back into my muscles, but not fast enough. Isabella returns and, at her direction—and with great effort—I roll over and cross my wrists at my lower back.

Isabella ties them together with twine, cinching the ropetight. She kneels and tears off a length of duct tape and presses it over my mouth. She tells me to get to my feet and points which way I should walk. I do as she asks, even though standing takes considerable effort, especially with my arms bound behind me. She walks me into the kitchen and directs me to a doorway. I shoulder my way through to a garage.

Ava’s SUV is parked inside.

With Ava locked in the back.

Isabella opens the vehicle’s door and gestures for me to get inside. I slide in next to Ava, who apologizes with her eyes. Her mouth is duct-taped, too.

Isabella opens the garage door and slides behind the wheel. She sets my gun on the passenger seat, next to Ava’s pistol and her handcuff keys. A Plexiglas barrier separates her from us, and the back doors of the SUV, like all police vehicles, won’t open from the inside.

As she pulls out onto the street, she says, “You two don’t try to get the attention of other drivers. If I hear any sirens, I’ll shoot you both and then myself.”

She drives in silence, heading southeast out of the city on I-10.

I’m furious with myself for getting into this situation. When Isabella answered the door, I had thought she looked flushed but happy, as if she and Ava had been having a laugh. Instead, she was excited, scared, nervous—but she put a smile on her face and disguised those emotions with cheerfulness. I was so ready to have my worries alleviated that I wasn’t paying attention as closely as I should have been.

Her smile disarmed me.

Behind my back, I strain against the twine around my wrists. Ava’s hands are cuffed—there’s no way she can get them free—but there might be a chance I can loosen my restraints.

As I pull against the rope, I can hear the twine whine, and I know I have to make some noise in order to cover the sound. I move my lips, try to stretch my jaw, and eventually get my mouth open. The flap of duct tape hangs off my chin.

“Isabella is the eagle feather killer?” I ask Ava, loud enough for Isabella to hear.

Ava nods. She moves her mouth and tongue, straining to break free of the duct tape over her lips. One corner of the tape is curling up.

“Forgive my intimacy,” I murmur, and I lean toward her, like I’m going to kiss her, and put my teeth over the tape. Biting hard, I tear it from her face.

She takes a deep breath and tells me that she found a picture of all five women, back when they were teenagers, and a dreamcatcher with a feather identical to the ones we’d found—missing four of its five feathers.

Isabella watches us from the rearview mirror, apparently unconcerned that we can now talk. The moment has passed when screaming for help might do us any good. Isabella pulls the SUV off the highway and heads into the desert to the north. The headlights illuminate nothing but a two-lane road with sagebrush crowding both sides.

“You killed all of them?” I say to Isabella. “Fiona? Chipeta? Rebecca? Tina?”

She eyes me in the rearview mirror.

“Why?” I say, keeping my voice calm. “I want to understand.”

She meets my gaze in the mirror.

“I didn’t do anything to them that they didn’t do to me first,” she says.

CHAPTER 89

IT WAS TINA’S idea.

She was the oldest and the most self-assured. They all looked up to her. Coming from different states and regions of Texas—the five of them had been brought together only by the luck that they’d each won in their respective categories at the powwow. The girls’ winners’ circle was dubbed the Order of the Golden Eagle. The boy winners were called the Order of the Bald Eagle.

After they’d gotten a passerby to take their picture together using Isabella’s phone, Tina had said they should celebrate, skip out on the event—go somewhere else, just the five of them.

Isabella was excited to have a new group of friends. She knew Rebecca, the other Tigua, but the others came from Colorado and Arizona and Houston, which was just as far away and just as exotic as the other states.

“No one will notice we’re gone,” Tina said. “Come on. We’ll come back before they miss us.”

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