tasting it at the corners of her mouth. If she kept pouring at this
rate, she’d dehydrate dangerously.
Already she saw whirls of color at the periphery of her vision, felt a
flutter of nausea in her stomach, and sensed incipient dizziness that
might abruptly overwhelm her.
But she kept pumping her legs, streaking across the barren land, because
there was absolutely nothing else she could do.
She glanced back again.
Eric was closer. Only fifteen yards now.
At great cost, Rachael reached into herself and found a little more
strength, a little more energy, an additional measure of stamina.
The ground, no longer treacherously soft, hardened into a wide flat
sheet of exposed rock. The rock had been abraded by centuries of
blowing sand that had carved hundreds of fine, elaborate whorls in its
surface-the fingerprints of the wind. It provided good traction, and
she picked up speed again. Soon, however, her reserves would be used
up, and dehydration would set in-though she dared not think about that.
Positive thinking was the key, so she thought positively for fifty more
strides, confident of widening the gap between them.
The third time she glanced back, she loosed an involuntary cry of
despair.
Eric was closer. Ten yards.
That was when she tripped and fell.
The rock ended, and sand replaced it. Because she had not been looking
down and had not seen that the ground was going to change, she twisted
her left ankle. She tried to stay up, tried to keep going, but the
twist had destroyed her rhythm. The same ankle twisted again the very
next time she put that foot down. She shouted-“No!”-and pitched to the
left, rolled across a few weeds, stones, and clumps of crisp bunchgrass.
She wound up at the brink of a big arroyc#a naturally carved water
channel through the desert, which was a roaring river during a flash
flood but dry most of the time, dry now-about fifty feet across, thirty
deep, with walls that sloped but only slightly. Even as she stopped
rolling at the arroyo, she took in the situation, saw what she must do,
did it, She threw herself over the brink, rolling again, down the steep
wall this time, desperately hoping to avoid sharp rocks and
rattlesnakes.
It was a bruising descent, and she hit bottom with enough force to knock
half the wind out of her.
Nevertheless, she scrambled to her feet, looked up, and saw Ericr the
thing that Eric had becomestaring down at her from the top of the arroyo
wall.
He was just thirty or thirty-five feet above her, but thirty vertical
feet seemed like more distance than thirty horizontally measured feet,
it was as if she were standing in a city street, with him peering down
from the roof of a three-story building. Her boldness and his
hesitation had gained her some time. If he had rolled down right behind
her, he very likely would have caught her by now.
She had won a brief reprieve, and she had to make the best of it.
Turning right, she ran along the flat bed of the arroyo, favoring her
twisted ankle. She did not know where the arroyo would lead her. But
she stayed on the move and kept her eyes open for something that she
could easily turn to her advantage, something that would save her,
something..
Something.
Anything.
What she needed was a miracle.
She expected Eric to plunge down the wall of the gulch when she began to
run, but he did not. Instead, he stayed up there at the edge of the
channel, running alongside the brink, looking down at her, matching her
progress step for step.
She supposed he was looking for an advantage of his own.
With the help’ of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, which
provided a patrol car and a deputy to drive it, Sharp and Peake were
back in Palm Springs by four-thirty Tuesday afternoon. They took two
rooms in a motel along Palm Canyon Drive.
Sharp called Nelson Gosser, the agent who had been left on duty at Eric
Leben’s Palm Springs house. Gosser bought bathrobes for Peake and
Sharp, took their clothes to a one-hour laundry and dry cleaner, and