Page 98 of The Texas Murders

She yanked her arm free, and in doing so, lost her balance. She stumbled near the cliff edge. It wasn’t a sharp drop-off, but a sloping, gradual one. Her feet slipped, and she fell to her knees, sliding away. She flung her arms out to stop her slide, but she couldn’t. Tina stepped forward to grab her, but Isabella was already past the point of no return.

She tumbled off the cliff wall, screaming as she fell into the darkness.

CHAPTER 90

ISABELLA WOKE UP to daylight, her leg broken to pieces, a large gash in her head. She screamed for her friends.

They were gone.

They’d left her to die.

Ten days later, after she had crawled—dehydrated, starving, sunburned, snake-bitten—down the creek bed to the highway, she claimed that she couldn’t remember what happened.

None of the girls ever came forward.

But Isabella did remember. She remembered all of it, and as she lay in the hospital, as she went through hour after excruciating hour of rehab, she planned her revenge.

Every year, on the solstice, she brought one of the girls out to the cliff where they’d last been together. She used the year in between to track down the next girl, figure out where she was living, and come up with a plan to abduct her.

Isabella had won her Order of the Golden Eagle dreamcatcherfor archery, and the girls all knew how good she was. So when she aimed her bow at them and told them to back up toward the cliff edge, all four had done as they were told. The slope is gradual at first, and as the girls inched backward, they probably thought they could keep their footing. But, as Isabella knew too well, eventually the ground became too sandy, the angle too steep. Their feet slipped out from under them and they slid off the edge, screaming just as Isabella had.

Each of the girls cried and apologized and offered an excuse for why they’d left her behind. The versions changed slightly from year to year, but the stories were similar enough that she understood.

Like before, it was Tina’s idea.

After Isabella had fallen, the girls yelled her name, but only silence echoed back to them. They wanted to get help, but Tina questioned whether that was wise. At first, the other three couldn’t believe what Tina was proposing. Just drive away? Leave her?

But Tina explained that no one knew that Isabella had been with them. They could return to the powwow, act like they’d been there the whole time, and pretend this never happened. The alternative, she said, was that they all get in serious trouble. They’d run off; they’d drunk alcohol; they’d used cocaine. Their parents would be the least of their worries. They weren’t on tribal land—who knew what the white authorities would do to them? Maybe they’d try to call it manslaughter.

Maybe murder.

The girls fought and cried and screamed, but one by one Tina wore them down. Fiona, the youngest, was the last to hold out. When Tina argued that Isabella was obviously dead and they couldn’t help her—they could only hurt themselves—Fiona finally relented.

The four girls made a pact, sealed by tossing their dreamcatchers into the fire, to pretend they’d never come out here—to forget they’d ever known each other.

The four of them drove back in silence, the desert air chilling them. They made it back to the powwow, and besides a few inquiries from family and friends, no one thought anything of their absence—not even when news of Isabella’s disappearance surfaced the next day. Besides the brief ceremony where they were handed their dreamcatchers, the girls, as far as anyone else knew, had never had any meaningful interaction.

The powwow organizers had planned to make a big deal out of the competition winners—send out news releases and publish their names in the Tigua tribal newsletter—but when Isabella went missing, the tribe didn’t want to draw any kind of attention to the powwow. They wanted everyone to forget it ever happened, so the names of the five girls were never connected in writing.

Never linked in anyone else’s memory.

CHAPTER 91

AS ISABELLA NAVIGATES the SUV on a winding gravel road, a coyote darts in front of the vehicle, its eyes glowing in the headlight beams.

“I left behind the feathers thinking that maybe the other girls would hear about what was happening and figure it out,” she says. “If they were afraid enough, maybe they’d finally come forward and admit what they did. But I don’t think a single one of them knew that the others had gone missing. They hadn’t kept in touch. And no one connected them together. When an Indian girl goes missing, it’s not like it makes national news.”

I’ve managed to loosen the twine behind my back as Isabella talked. My wrists are raw and my fingers are tingling from a lack of circulation, but a few more minutes and I might be able to squeeze my hands free.

Isabella pulls the vehicle to a stop and shuts off theheadlights. She takes Ava’s gun, leaving mine in the cab, and climbs out. She opens our door for us and gestures for us to exit. She takes several steps back, ensuring that neither of us can rush her without giving her plenty of time to pull the trigger.

We’re on a high plateau, near the edge of a cliff overlooking rolling high-desert hills. I can hear the faint trickle of a streambed below. El Paso is a distant glow on the horizon, its light pollution far enough away that above us the sky is filled with stars and a bright half moon. The storm forming earlier has dissipated to a few lingering clouds, and the moonlight illuminates enough of the valley below that I can make out brush and trees and distant plateaus—in other words, a whole lot of nothing for as far as the eye can see.

“So you brought them out here?” I say, working against the rope restraints behind my back. “You aimed your bow at them and told them it was either the cliff or an arrow?”

“And that’s what you plan to do to us?” Ava asks.

“Since I have this,” Isabella says, holding up Ava’s gun, “I left my bow at home this time.”

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