Roswell Fanatics

It was twelve days later - at 2AM - and Isabel had been asleep for almost four hours. The first thing she'd done - as she always had for the last year or so - was go looking for Liz's dream-orb. She hadn't found it - hadn't really expected to - it had been nearly three months since she'd last seen her sister-in-law in the abyss. The second thing she'd done was to go looking for Max. Not finding him wasn't really surprising either. If he was still on his old schedule he'd be awake right now - though God alone knew what schedule he did keep now that he seemed to be working twenty hours or more a day.

Her third task had been to go find the dream-orb of either Michael or Maria. That had puzzled her for awhile until she tried one that ' felt' like them. Just how close they must have been in the physical world to actually be combining their dream-orbs - given Michael's meager skills at dream-walking, Isabel hadn't even wanted to think about. They almost certainly had fallen asleep in the very act - or likely the final act of a multi-act play. At least things were going well in their lives.

Isabel hadn't tarried in their dream-orb- she'd never felt more like a fifth wheel in a dream-orb - she'd talked to them only long enough to confirm that they HAD gotten the materials needed for this mornings delivery in place, and make sure precisely where they'd placed them. She'd then retreated to her own comfort zone - which was why she was slowly dancing in dim light with her body pressed tightly against Alex's in his dream-orb.

She knew it wouldn't last much longer - but she stayed pressed against him - drinking in every second of his presence. It felt like ... like her very soul was being renewed. Unfortunately, that's when the vibration started.

The vibration was her cell phone - with the alarm on it selected for silent/vibrate mode and set to go off at 2 AM. She had to fight the temptation to stay cuddled up to Alex - but she would after all be seeing him physically in an hour or two she rationalized - and slowly peeled herself away from his chest.

"I'll see you soon," she promised, as she disappeared from his orb by evaporating into nothingness.

With luck she figured he might get another hour or so of sleep before his own alarm clock got him up. Within seconds she was back in her own body - in her own room - where her cellphone was vibrating against her side like an angered baby rattlesnake. She grabbed it and punched one button to silence it before climbing out of bed.

Isabel dressed quickly and silently - then slipped out of the window. She coasted the jeep out of the driveway before starting it. She'd gone half a block when she looked in the rear-view mirror saw the car start to follow her,

'Hmm - another unmarked Crown Victoria. you'd think they'd be more imaginative.'

Of course, not everyone would have agreed with Isabel about law enforcement being unimaginative – and certainly not if they were to look in the Roswell Sheriff's Department's vehicle maintenance yard.

Already the two men had scrambled in to their nomex coveralls, nomex gloves, and were getting ready to put on their full face helmets. Nomex was a flame resistant material commonly used in racing cars and the full face helmets would be necessary in the Baja racer since – absent a windshield – coming up behind another off-road vehicle meant eating an awful lot of dirt. Both Jim and Jaime had night vision goggles that clamped on to the full-face helmets for night time use – the flip down visors were adequate during the day. They had taken the racer out a dozen times in the previous 10 weeks – four times at night successfully guiding the vehicle by the NVGs alone – and had become quite proficient in the use of the small powerful vehicle.

“Tonight she's headed south apparently,” said Jaime, a hand held radio held to his ear. He quickly tucked it in the holster on his belt opposite his own service automatic and strapped in to the vehicle. With Jim Valenti driving, they were quickly off in a cloud of dust and bluish-gray smoke from the spinning rear tires. Within minutes they had turned off onto main street which quickly merged into 285 south.

Ahead of them Isabel was speeding toward the southeast, having already turned off on the Old Dexter highway. A mile before Dexter she would take off over the desert to lose the car tailing her and turn east to pick up county road 49 where Michael and Maria had stashed the supplies. Then she'd again head back into the desert - north three miles where she would parallel the Pecos river and work her way further north to where she could cut back over to the west where she could intersect the Old Albuquerque road north of the podchamber and come south to drop off the supplies where Max could retrieve them easily. The patrol car would be easy to leave behind in the desert. What Isabel was more afraid of was the Search and Rescue Jeep that had almost caught her the time before last. She wasn't too worried, however. Michael had scouted the area well on his bicycle and there were several places where the modified vehicle would be either too high or too wide to follow the little jeep.

But Isabel had not been the only one to have an alarm go off this morning. As soon as she had hit the edge of town Jeff Parker's own beeper had gone off – although he too kept it on vibrate mode now, to avoid alerting Nancy. Jeff hadn't even bothered to log on to his computer. Where she was going right now, he knew, didn't matter. What did matter was where she would drop off the supplies.

He'd dressed in his own camouflage gear and taken his own night vision goggles and weapons before loading quickly into his car and driving off. Unlike the Jeep, the patrol car, and the Baja racer – all of which were heading rapidly south – Jeff turned northbound. He knew – at least within a mile or so – where Isabel would wind up going - on the old Albuquerque highway – and he had every intention of being up on the ridge line with binoculars and night vision goggles when Isabel showed up. After that it would be a simple matter to watch the supplies until Max Evans arrived – then follow him back to wherever he was hiding.

'Tonight,' thought Jeff Parker with eager anticipation, '...Mr. Maxwell Evans is mine...'

The patrol car had followed at a discrete distance as the car headed south out of the city. It made no sense to try to actually intercept the girl until she had the incriminating evidence in the vehicle, it was not, after all, a crime for a seventeen year-old girl to be out driving on the public highways - or even the public desert lands for that matter - at 2:15AM, however unwise it might be. The trick was to keep her in sight and to be able to guide the off-road team - Valenti and Sanchez - into place to intercept the girl once she did have the supplies. Then they could bring her in with the incriminating evidence and start to sweat the truth out of her.

So when Isabel took the turn turn off into the desert a mile north of Dexter and headed east across the desert, this time the trailing patrol car did not even attempt to physically follow her. Instead they drove to the nearest high ground - a rise a quarter-mile away - where they could keep the jeep in sight with their binoculars in the cool clear desert morning air. They couldn't see it constantly but driving in the desert at night is not easy. At times the girl would need to apply the brakes - and each pulse of the brake lights let them track the jeep. Finally it stopped almost three miles away.

As Isabel was loading supplies from the cache that Michael and Maria had hidden in a culvert under a paved road, Jim and Jaime were already approaching the place on the Old Dexter highway where she had turned off onto the desert. There had been no traffic and the big running lights on the machine had lit up the roadway and it's five hundred plus horsepower had allowed them to make up a lot of distance on the much less powerful jeep. As they came to where she had turned off they doused the big driving lights and activated the infra-red illuminators. With their night vision goggles now in place they were able to pick their way across the desert floor at almost twice they speed that Isabel had managed. At over thirty miles an hour, they were now less than six minutes behind her.

Isabel had loaded the standard supplies first, then turned to the three other cartons. Obviously Michael had been very successful getting the IV solutions - there were two dozen IV bags in each carton. Even so, if Liz did wind up on IVs, Isabel knew she'd need two or three bags a day. The amount she was taking to Max - for all it weighed 50 pounds a carton - would scarcely be a one month's supply once Liz actually required them, reason enough - Isabel thought - for Max to ask for them before they were really needed. She just hoped that it wouldn't come to that and her sister-in-laws condition wouldn't deteriorate to that point before Max found the answer to the stasis chambers.

Although the Baja Racer was coming straight for her, it was lost in the darkness of the desert. The big mufflers cost the engine over 100 horsepower but they were pretty effective and even with that they left over 500 horsepower available. The muffled exhaust still had a low frequency drone to it - but If Isabel heard it at all she would most likely assume it was a truck on the distant Old Dexter road - not a racing vehicle racing through the night at almost 40 miles per hour without a single visible headlight.

As Isabel put the third IV carton in the jeep she reached to pick up her own bottle of water and take a sip. She had allowed herself extra time, knowing she was going south and knowing too that she might have to evade the SAR jeep again. Things were going very well tonight - too well perhaps - but she didn't worry. New Mexico has a lot of desert and not very many people. Besides, it was hardly like someone could sneak up on her in the dark and even if they could, she still had the box culvert right in front of her that would take her under County Road 49 - and it was too narrow for the larger county jeep to follow. In an hour this would be done - in ninety minutes she'd be in Royer Park snuggled up next to Alex looking up at the stars - at least that was what she was hoping. She looked up to the east - hoping to see Antares - the star she'd made her wish upon - but it was too early for Antares to be above the horizon.

A little over a mile away, Jim Valenti saw a small group of mesquite trees in his night vision goggles and adjusted the vehicles path to miss them, then headed back toward the spot he knew Isabel Evans' jeep was still parked. At this speed, they'd be there in less than 90 seconds and, according to the spotters in the car, she had shown no indication she even knew he and Jaime were out on the desert floor.

'This, he thought, '...is going to be easy.

The night sky was beautiful - Isabel found herself wishing that Alex was there to share it with her. There was Orion overhead and - as she looked to the west, she saw Canis Major, the constellation that Alex had referred to as 'the big dog.' The brightest star in Canis Major, Sirius, was not only the brightest star in the constellation but the brightest star in the whole sky.

Like Antares, Sirius also was a double star. The larger star, Sirius A, was twice the size of Sol, and twenty-five times as bright. It's white dwarf companion, Sirius B, was tiny and not nearly as bright. But because the Sirius system is one of our nearest neighbors - a mere 8.6 light years away - it appeared as the brightest star in the sky. Isabel knew that - Alex had told her that on one of their previous stargazing sessions. She smiled at it, realizing that the light she was seeing right now had started toward Earth 8.6 years ago. But the smile went away as Sirius disappeared.

It came back only seconds later - but that was even more puzzling. What were the odds that a star would 'go out' 8.6 years ago for three seconds and then relight? Isabel didn't actually know about Occam's razor, but it didn't really matter. It was intuitive that whatever had happened hadn't happened 8.6 light years away - it had happened in the immediate area. She was in trouble - someone was closing on her stealthily and quickly.

Jim and Jaime were aware that there was nothing but open desert between them and Isabel - what they had forgotten about was what was behind them. Running a racer through the desert kicks up a lot of dust. During the day, you could see it behind the vehicle, but even during the night it would rise into the sky behind the vehicle. By dodging around the mesquite bushes Jim had thrown a rooster tail of dust across the sky between Isabel and the star system Sirius. It was the clue that Isabel had needed to tell her that the low pitched rumble to the west wasn't a distant truck - it was something much closer and moving through the desert with no lights - and it would be upon her within minutes.

She dropped her bottle of water into the floor of the jeep and jumped in the driver's seat. Within seconds she had the jeep charging through the box culvert into the desert on the east side of County Road 49. She would be screened - both from the patrol car and from the machine - whatever it was - that was charging across the desert in the darkness. If the machine were the oversize jeep she would be safe - it wouldn't be able to get through the culvert - but even if it wasn't she had bought some time. Whatever it was it was coming fast to put up that much dust, faster than she would have been able to travel. Faster - most likely - than even the big Search and Rescue jeep could have traveled.. She hesitated not even a couple of milliseconds in indecision. Apparently it was in her genes - the ones that weren't from around here. When you come from a tough neighborhood, you have to think fast or you don't survive to think at all.

Isabel turned right and headed south, determined to put as much distance as possible between her and the culvert and determined to be out of sight when the pursuer came through the culvert - assuming automatically that the pursuer would actually fit through the culvert . She was forcing whoever was pursuing to make a choice and if they turned north she was almost certain to break contact with them. Of course, that was also taking her further away from Max and the podchamber.

"Son of a bitch," Jim exclaimed, "...where did she go?"

"She must have gone into the culvert," said Jaime, looking quickly to the north and south on the west side of the roadway.

Jim gunned the engine and drove the racer quickly through the culvert skidding to a stop as he hit the brakes on the other side.

"Which way do we go now?" Jim asked. Jaime quickly queried the patrol car. They had no visual contact with Isabel either.

"No way to tell, Jim. Your choice I guess."

Jim looked north and south - without seeing any evidence of Isabel or the jeep. Every second he wasted was another second's lead that she got. He turned the wheel left - toward the north - knowing she had tended to go that way on past deliveries - and gunned the engine. A shower of gravel came from the rear wheels as the jeep climbed out of the arroyo and headed north - back toward town.

Meanwhile, 250 yards south, Isabel had found a small arroyo of her own and was slowly working eastward. When she got to the Pecos River she'd find the bridge on County Road 409 and cross to the eastern side where she could then head north away from both the patrol car on 285 and the pursuing off-road vehicle.


Almost thirty two miles to the north northwest, Jeff Parker was parking his car as far as possible away from the Old Albuquerque highway, at the very end of the small gravel road that had come off it and dead-ended in the hills to the east. Even getting there he'd been cautious - driving his car northbound at the speed limit through the area where he knew Isabel would be dropping off the supplies as if he were just another late night traveler - and then going over a mile further north - around a curve and out of sight - before shutting off his headlights and slowly doubling back in the darkness driving by his own night vision goggles. He had slowly turned off and climbed the gentle rise - then kept going past the portion visible from the road to park out of site in this area amongst an assortment of tin cans riddled with bullet holes and scattered collections of expended brass cartridges from people using the deserted area as an impromptu shooting range.

Jeff pulled his gear out of the trunk and put on the pack, then slung the shotgun over his shoulder. He hiked back west a hundred yards and then uphill another twenty yards or so where he found a flat spot that had a view of the entire stretch of road. He laid down his pack and unhooked the sleeping bag, spreading it out on the wide flat rock. He placed the shotgun on it and opened the pack - putting two water bottles and some energy bars on the opened sleeping bag within easy reach before pulling out the camouflaged tarp and spreading it over everything. He'd damn near frozen his butt off three months ago when he'd done this - the night was a little warmer now but even if it hadn't been Jeff Parker wasn't a stupid man. He had learned.

He crawled under the tarp next to the shotgun and pack and made a bipod of his forearms to help support the weight of the night vision goggles. He had an excellent view of the entire area that Isabel had traversed on every one of her previous trips. He put the night vision goggles down momentarily and took out his satellite photos.

Once the exclusive domain of national security agencies and the military, there were now any number of commercial outfits that could - for a price - retrieve you a recent satellite image of almost anywhere in the world. It wasn't military quality - that is, you couldn't actually read a newspaper headline if one was laying on the ground - but it was almost that good. Jeff had bought these two photos for $79.95 - the company had had a two-for-one sale that day - with detailed photography of both sides of the road. He got out his small tactical light and - shielded carefully under the camouflage tarp - shown the small red light on the westernmost photo-map, comparing it to what he'd just seen below. The abandoned ranch houses and old mine were clearly shown, and he studied every bush and shrub that might serve as concealment. There certainly weren't a lot of those. He played the light on the other photo. At it's nothernmost edge it showed the very spot that he was at. South of that the hills showed no evidence of roads or trails - and certainly nothing resembling a mine or ranch house - in fact no evidence of human habitation at all. He looked closely at the small cleft in the hills - the brushy area leading down to the road might offer some concealment and a path to the Old Albuquerque highway, but a path from where? There was nothing out there.

He shut off the flashlight and looked back out - scanning the west side of the road intently before looking again at the highway where the small cleft in the hills intersected with it. He wouldn't ignore that area, of course. It was possible that Isabel might actually use the brush there to cache the supplies for her brother to pick up with a vehicle - or even hike to their from one of the ranch houses. But Jeff's bet was on the mine or one of the ranch houses on the east side of the road. He continued scanning, reaching for one of the energy bars with his right hand. It was likely to be a long night, but he was ready for that - ready for just about anything - if it allowed him to confront Max Evans....

"Dammit," said Jim before he had gone 50 yards when he saw the small arroyo heading off to the northeast. Already he was having to make another choice. What had been a binary choice - go north or go south - was now becoming a branching problem. It was Law Enforcement 101 - and the reason why cops preferred hot pursuit when others thought they ought to follow the speed limit and let the perps get away - calling ahead on the radio for back up.

That tactic would sometimes work - if you had a helicopter overhead - or had someone confined to a freeway with exits only every few miles. Yeah, in Los Angeles it might work reasonably well. Most other places it worked poorly if at all.

No, once you lose visual contact with the perpetrator the odds start going the other way. When he'd come out of the culvert and not seen her further up the same arroyo, he'd had a fifty-fifty chance of going in the right direction, and maybe he'd already screwed up. But now he had yet ANOTHER decision to make - follow this new branch where she could be hidden or continue forward - or go back to the south. The problem was he hadn't yet travelled far enough to overtake Isabel Evans if she was headed north - still the way he thought most likely - and already he'd come to yet another way that she might have gone. If he went up this arroyo and she had just continued on northward he was unlikely to ever catch her, but if he continued on along the east side of the road and she HAD taken the other arroyo, he was equally unlikely to catch her. Doggedly he continued another seventy five roads when he found yet ANOTHER arroyo - this one also continuing UNDER the roadway to the west. Had she actually gone through the culvert the patrol car watching from the Old Dexter highway would have likely spotted her, but she could easily be hiding in the culvert - waiting for them to pass. He had to check it out. He drove the Baja racer quickly in to the box culvert so the IR illuminators could let Jaime and him see. It was - of course - empty.

"Dammit all to hell."

"It can't be helped, Jim," said Jaime. "Let's continue north for awhile - once we are sure we've lost her, we need to get out the map and figure out what we can do now."

Jim nodded and again headed the Baja racer north along the east side of County road 49.

A mile and a half southeast, Isabel finally came to Shoshoni Road, and - with her headlights off - drove the jeep up onto the pavement and turned north. A mile ahead the road curved to the right - ran eastward for a mile and then backtracked along the Pecos river a quarter mile to the intersection with county road 409. A left on that brought her quickly to the bridge over the Pecos river. She crossed the bridge and headed north on county road 409. It was definitely the long way around, but it would eventually meet up with highway 380 east of Roswell where she could cross the bridge again and work her way north toward the Old Albuquerque Road or continue north to highway 70 and cross the river there and work her way southeast. Either way, this was going to take more time than she'd anticipated. The important thing though was that for the time being at least, she was safe.


Back in Roswell, Nancy Parker had just awakened. When you've slept by someone's side for twenty years - there snoring doesn't bother you - but it's absence does. When her hand went out and felt nothing but a cold mattress next to her, she quickly got up out of bed and went to the kitchen. When it was empty she shook her head and climbed the stair to Lizzy's floor and found the unlocked door, the gun safe sitting open. She shook her head sadly and went back to the kitchen where she dialed the phone.

"This is Nancy Parker. I know it's late, but I absolutely HAVE to talk to Jim Valenti."

She listened briefly, then responded.

"Well if you can't, I at least need for you to get a message to him for me then. It's about my husband, Jeff Parker......."

It was ten more minutes before Jim Valenti was willing to admit failure – ten minutes during which he and Jaime had fruitlessly searched three more places that the black jeep MIGHT have gone – discovering in the process seven additional places that it MIGHT have gone and in the process using enough time up that Isabel Evans had almost certainly gotten away regardless of which of the options she had actually exercised. That's what happens when you lose sight in a pursuit. Both officers understood that, but it didn't make it any easier to take. It was pretty depressing considering how close they'd come to a major breakthrough in the case. The radio message that came from the desk officer back at the office was worse than depressing – it was alarming. They temporarily abandoned pursuit of the jeep and pulled out their maps to discuss the problem.

“You really think that Jeff Parker has some way of tracking the girl?” asked Jaime.

“That's what it sounds like,” replied Jim. If both times that he's gone out happened to be the last two times she's gone off on these early morning runs – it can't just be a coincidence. I don't think he's got anyone watching her either – we would have spotted them.”

“So it must be an electronic tracking device of some sort...?”

“Most likely. That's what we would have done if we could have gotten probable cause.”

“Which we damn near had, if the boy's parents reputation as lawyers hadn't deterred the judges,” said Jaime, nodding his head as he spoke.

Jim swore under his breath. “I've got to tell you, Jaime, for me this sort of changes everything.”

“How so, Jim?”

“Let's be honest about this case – the real screw-up here was the judge who let that drunk out of jail and gave him back his driver's license.”

“Not going to argue with you about that one....,” agreed Jaime.

“I told you how aloof Max Evans and his sister were. Until this happened they just didn't interact that much with anyone – like I told you, for a while I honestly weren't sure they were even human. Max never had any sort of a record before this – Isabel still doesn't. But whatever late start they might have gotten in interacting with other people, as soon as Liz was injured they both were up to their eyeballs in it. But the fact still remains that even if we catch Max – prove that he did indeed kidnap the girl, the likeliest outcome is that he's going to do a couple of years in a mental institution. Isabel might be at more legal risk actually, since she doesn't have his psych history, but all she's really doing is supporting her brother...”

“And playing the Whitman kid for a sucker...”

“And I'm not even altogether sure of that. But the point is, Jaime, what I envision happening is a disastrous miscarriage of justice. Max was never really a normal kid, but he wasn't a bad kid – more just a loner. Liz's accident clearly pushed him over the edge, but with his early history and everything – well, he may not be blameless for his actions, but legally his culpability is likely going to be pretty small.

“Of course that's for the court to decide, but basically I think you are probably right.”

"The way I see it, the ones who have already been hurt the worst by all this are the Parkers. Nancy and Jeff have already lost their only child – regardless of whether we find her alive or not. Now with Jeff going off the rails and becoming a vigilante, all hell's threatening to break loose. Jeff is an adult – a respected businessman, with no psych history at all – but it's clear he had put considerable thought into tracking Max down. I'd call it thought, but the jury...”

“The jury will call it premeditation. I see where you are going on this, Jim....”

“Yeah, well where I'm going is I can see Jeff Parker going to prison for premeditated murder, Nancy losing both her daughter and her husband, Isabel never forgiving herself for leading a homicidal Jeff Parker to her brother and maybe having to serve some REAL time for being an accessory after the fact to kidnapping, Diane and Philip Evans having to deal with losing both of their kids... Dammit all, Jaime, this whole damn scenario has pain and suffering written all over it, and the only real villains here are the drunk who is already dead and the judge who let him go, and not a damn thing is going to happen to her no matter what.”

“I can't disagree with a thing you just said, Jim, but what are you proposing?”

What I'm proposing is that we find Isabel Evans BEFORE any of this can happen, but if we don't – even if we catch up with her after she's made her delivery when she's off pretending to stargaze with Alex Whitman - what I'm proposing is that you look the other way while I lean on her... while I try to talk some sense in to her.”

“Talk?”

“I wouldn't hurt her – Cripes she's just a kid scared for her brother – but we could work the old good cop-bad cop routine on her and scare the information out of her and – hopefully – get to the boy before Jeff Parker has done anything to him that will cost HIM the rest of his life behind bars, cost Isabel a brother, cost Nancy Parker her whole damn family...”

“With both Evans parents being lawyers and this whole thing at risk for blowing up in our faces, playing fast and loose with the girls legal rights might not be the best career move...?”

“Jaime, these are my people – the people I have to live with my whole life. If I see a disaster coming at them, how can I live with myself if I don't do everything I can to try to keep it from happening? I'm not asking you to take the fall if it comes to that – Hell, you can be the good cop, it's just...”

“Jim, this is all irrelevant if we can't find the girl. Let's do first things first. How DO we find her, preferably before she makes the delivery, because after that it might be too late?”

“I've got an idea about that. It isn't perfect – it may be altogether wrong – but I think it gives us our best chance. Let me tell you about it...”

The plan Jim laid out was a simple one. At it's most basic, it was to concentrate their limited resources where they were likely to do the most good. Isabel had last been seen east of 285, but in fact she had NEVER been seen west of it. That was the most heavily traveled road in the county - policed by the New Mexico State Police as well as the county sheriff's office. It served as somewhat of a barrier to the western part of the county, and she was likely to stay east of it. Farther south were Greenfield, Hagerman, Lake Arthur, Espuela - tiny little towns where even a single jeep going through town at three in the morning would risk attracting attention.

It was Jim's guess that Isabel would work her way east and then head north - and the only way to do that without being seen from the desert west of the river was to go east of the river, and that meant she was probably even now using the bridge on County Road 409. But once she crossed that bridge she was trapped. A single patrol car could block the highway 380 bridge north of her and another could block the bridge on highway 70 to Clovis. In the meantime, they could cross the highway 409 highway bridge and cruise northward - ready to move in behind her and once she tried to cross one of the bridges, they'd know where to look.

It certainly wasn't a faultless plan - it required some assumptions that might be wrong - but it was their best chance to block her from leading Jeff Parker to her brother - and THAT they had to do at all costs....

"ZZZZZZZZZTTTT"

It was 3:15 AM in Alex Whitman's room as his cell phone - placed on alarm clock and vibrate mode - started to do the baby rattlesnake imitation. There seemed to be a lot of that going on around Roswell this morning. Alex hit the off button - his face smiling in anticipation of soon seeing Isabel.

He'd had a pleasant dream - Izzie - or was it Isabel Evans? - snuggled up against him, then promising to see him again later as she had evaporated from his dream. He was, he realized, having increasing difficulties sorting his fantasy feelings for Izzie from his real feelings for Isabel and if he couldn't get hold of himself, he was afraid he'd embarrass himself and Isabel Evans by an inappropriate casual comment or spontaneous caress. But it was only when he was half-dressed and shaving that he realized just how far gone he was.

'You are shaving,' he told himself, ' ...at 3:30 in the morning...'

In point of fact, he only needed to shave about every other day and he'd shaved at 10PM last night - in anticipation of being with Isabel and the thought that she might put her head on his shoulder and come into contact with his cheek - which he had already shaved yesterday morning. Any guy who shaved three times in a twenty-four hour period, he reasoned, was more than being a good sport - he was praying for something to happen.

He put down the razor and looked in to his own eyes in the mirror. It was time to be honest with himself.

'You, Alex Whitman, are in love with Isabel Evans.'

It was, he realized, the truth. Somehow his feelings for Izzie and his feelings toward Isabel had somehow melded themselves together - almost like he'd started to believe that ridiculous dream where Izzie had told him that she was really Isabel Evans and part-alien and was deeply in love with him and the only thing holding her - Isabel Evans that was - back from being his forever was that she had doubts that she could give him children. Yeah, there was no doubt about it, when you put THAT combination of circumstances together - fantastic dreams of dancing and talk of eternal love, coupled with shaving three times in the same day -that was love. He couldn't deny how he felt any longer.

'Of course that doesn't mean that it's ever going to come true,' his head warned his heart, '...any more than it means Isabel is really part alien. If anyone ever was out of your league, it's Isabel....'

He sighed deeply and finished his shaving. He still had 45 minutes before he needed to be at the park for her to pick him up with the jeep, but she might be early. He dressed quickly and went out the window - walking slowly in the darkness to the city park downtown eight blocks away.


About five miles to the east, Deputy Archer was already in position on the Highway 380 bridge over the Pecos River, and he had quite a bit of company. Through much of the Southwest the Border Patrol has roving roadblocks on the highways looking for, interestingly enough, illegal aliens. En route to the 380 bridge after a radio call from the dispatcher to set up to intercept a seventeen year-old girl in a black jeep, he'd run in to such a night time roadblock. It had been surprisingly easy to convince them to move their roadblock two miles East – onto the bridge itself – where he now waited with them for any sign of
the Jeep. His wait lasted less than a half-hour.


Isabel made the last left curve in the river road and saw the intersection of Highway 380 appear before her. She had a choice to make – left in to town on 380 westbound or right on 380 eastbound almost three miles to where she could then turn north on Alamo road and eventually make her way – on a variety of small winding roads almost twelve miles to the northeast to the little town of Acme where she could get on the new Clovis highway – Interstate 70 – and then come back eight miles to cross the river at the I-70 bridge. She actually didn't like the 380 route – it would take her back toward the heart of town – but she knew she was running a little late and the northern route would add almost an hour to her time to get to the Old Albuquerque road and that would certainly get her there after the time she'd told Max to expect her and possibly out of the window they'd agreed upon for delivery altogether. If she was too late, she'd have little choice but to discard the supplies and try again some other night, and she wasn't willing to do that. Instead she took te left on Interstate 380 and headed west toward the bridge a quarter mile distant and Roswell. She wouldn't get far.

Deputy Archer saw the headlights of the approaching car as soon as it turned left from the river road onto the highway, but he wasn't sure it was actually a jeep until it got abeam the illuminated 'road block ahead' sign but as the sign illuminated it he could see that it was obviously a dark colored open-top jeep with one person in it, but even if he hadn't seen that, the suspicious way it braked to a stop a hundred feet short of the road block would have gotten everyone's attention. Even before it had done a U-turn and started proceeding eastbound in the westbound lane – fortunately there was no other traffic – he had fired up his engine, turned on his strobes, and taken off in hot pursuit.

Even after she'd seen the border patrol roadblock Isabel hadn't been too concerned. Border Patrol roadblocks are a common occurrence in New Mexico, and she was hardly the demographic they were looking for – especially driving a car with Chaves county plates. The problem was that another Crown Victoria was sitting there next to the Border Patrol trucks and vans – just sitting there – but looking just a little bit out of place. She braked to a halt and – as she saw the lights come on and the vehicle start to move – did a bootlegger turn and floored it. The little jeep's tires squealed and she was off eastbound. She knew the speedier patrol car would quickly overtake her – certainly before she got to the Alamo road but not before she got to Tijeras road 800 feet ahead of her. A left turn there and she'd be back on a gravel road, minimizing the patrol car's speed advantage – less than a quarter mile after that she could get back out onto the desert where the patrol car would have difficulty following. If she could lose it there – work her way back east to the Alamo road and go north – she could still get to the Interstate 70 bridge on the Clovis highway.

'It'll be a miracle if you aren't lat though,' she told herself as she reached Tijeras road and turned left, gravel spraying up behind her as she accelerated north. The patrol car made the turn but was far enough behind that she could turn north out on to the open desert. Deputy Archer was actually gaining on her – up until the boulder she had straddled with her higher ground clearance hit the bell of his transmission. There was a loud 'clang' followed by several red lights coming on on the dashboard and the engine RPM starting to climb while the car slowed down.

'Well, this ransmission is toast,' thought Deputy Archer, '...but at least the radio will still work.' He took his foot off the gas and the patrol car slowed to a stop. Then he reached for the microphone.

35 minutes later Isabel's jeep was approaching the outskirts of Acme New Mexico - at least one might say that if one chose to believe a company town that had never had more than seventy people could have 'outskirts.' That was, of course, at the town's peak of population - before the mine played out. The place was a ghost town now - had been for years. It was named after the Acme Gypsum Cement company and had been a booming enterprise in 1906. In fact, it had its own post office from 1906 to 1946.

During the early Pleisotocene eras New Mexico and much of the southwest had been sea bed and the deposit of gypsum - Calcium Sulfate dihydrate - had formed as sediment in evaporite beds and the mineral had been mined here for several decades to be used as a soil conditioner and plaster of paris and a number of other industrial uses before mining the shallow pocket in the region had started to become more expensive and shipping costs had become prohibitively high. By 1950 Acme had been emptied of people and just a dozen ruined buildings remained.

But it was only about a mile from an on-ramp to Interstate 70 - the freeway to Clovis - the freeway which crossed the Pecos and would once again allow her to get back to deliver her supplies - a little late perhaps but not too late. Assuming, that was, that she could get by on the interstate bridge. She'd know that in just a few minutes.


Less than five miles south of Isabel and heading north fast were Jim Valenti and Jaime Sanchez in their hopped up dune buggy. Deputy Archer had seen the Evans vehicle continue north after he had taken out his transmission and there were only the three bridges anymore. The 380 bridge was being watched by another patrol car while Archer's car was being towed back to the shop, the Federal Marshal's were still back at the old WPA bridge on County Road 409 and Jim had been able to get a New Mexico State Patrol car to the Interstate 70 bridge and that was all the bridges that were left. There had once been another bridge over the Pecos River for the Old Clovis highway but in the late 1960s when I-70 had been built, they'd needed two spans to carry the capacity and one had been built north of the old bridge to carry the westbound lanes. When it had been finished, the old bridge site had been used for a new bridge the eastbound freeway lanes. That's why the Old Clovis highway was now discontinuous ending on the west side of the Pecos and resuming not too far from Acme - the old ghost town ahead.

So basically, Jim figured, the girl was trapped. She would be unable to get across the bridge - at least not without backtracking hugely. By that time it would be daylight and hopefully she would decide not to make the delivery at all. That way they could talk to her - find the tracking device - and he could try to talk some sense into both Miss Isabel Evans and Mr. Jeffery Parker - before there was yet another tragedy. With luck they could even trap Isabel between themselves and the state police on the bridge - still with the evidence in the car. That way they might be able to sweat it out of the girl and get this long-running tragedy resolved - at least to the extent it could be resolved. There wasn't going to be a happy ever after out of this story, Jim was sure of that, but the families needed closure before they could even start to heal.


Parked beside the roadway on the I-70 bridge westbound, Patrolman Hargreaves saw the lights come up the on ramp. It was a jeep. He waited until it was past the on-ramp and coming his way to put the lights on - no way was that jeep going to outrun him - and got ready to block its path. It braked suddenly to a halt, did an immediate U-turn - and headed back down the on-ramp it had come up. He wasn't even tempted to follow it, the dispatcher had made that clear. He was to hold his position on this bridge. The girl going back down the on-ramp had been anticipated. She would doubtless come back up the off-ramp westbound and try to cross the river that way against the flow of traffic. Well, Patrolman Rodriquez was waiting over there - that wouldn't work either. The Sheriff and the FBI guy were closing fast in a vehicle that could outperform the girl's jeep on or off the road - they would soon be in hot pursuit. According to dispatch all the New Mexico State Police were expected to do was to hold their roadblocks - and try not to be tempted into breaking any more transmissions.

'I might have known THAT would be too easy,' thought Isabel as she fled back down the on-ramp from I-70.

She crossed back to the east-bound off-ramp and made a quick turn up the ramp - past the 'wrong way do not enter' signs to drive up the highway lanes westbound. At this hour - in the middle of nowhere - it wasn't like there would be much traffic to dodge going the wrong way. But as she approached the bridge - she quickly saw the OTHER waiting patrol car. She braked hard, made another U-turn - and went right back down the off-ramp, heading back down the road back toward Acme. She turned off the road - toward the old mine - only seconds before Jim Valenti and Jaime Sanchez came around the corner - coming up the road northbound. They passed the old mine road - hurrying to get to the bridge where according to their own dispatcher, Isabel Evans jeep had just been spotted.

As they came to the freeway they got the second message - that the jeep had been seen going the wrong way by the patrolman on the southern span of the bridge. They charged up the off-ramp hoping to find her still between them and the patrolman but as they approached the patrol car it was apparent they'd just missed her.

Jim and Jaime got out to talk to the officer - to see if he had any idea if she'd continued east or gone somewhere else.

'Well,' said Isabel to herself as she looked at the rusty sign, '...nobody ever promised you life would be easy....'

The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad had existed from its inception in 1859 until its merger with the Burlington Northern in 1996.

In fact, the railroad trestle bridge ahead of her in the darkness had NOT been built by the ATSF it had been built in 1905 by the same company that had developed the Acme Gypsum mine. A small mining company steam engine and ten 35 ton capacity ore cars had spent the next 40 years carrying millions of pounds of gypsum across the river to join up with the ATSF which took the gypsum to its final destinations.
But with the closing of the mine and the bankruptcy of the company that had owned it, the ATSF had picked up the small spur line at a bankruptcy auction for less than what it would have cost them to build the small switching facility that Acme owned in town – what they were really after – and the rest of the spur came for free.

ATSF actually used the spur line and the bridge across the Pecos to move oil tanker cars from 1955 until 1965 – the last year that any maintenance had been done on the spur line or the bridge – as the oil fields of Eastern Mexico were opened up but the opening of the refinery in Artesia and the oil pipeline connecting it to the fields further east had – again – rendered the old bridge unnecessary for railroad traffic. Of course, sometimes just a utility right of way itself can be valuable.

When El Paso Natural Gas Company had developed the natural gas production of the oil wells it had been decidedly cheaper to run the gas pipeline on the old railroad right of way – get the gas pipeline across the Pecos by suspending the eighteen inch pipe underneath the old bridge. That – and the right of way rental that still went to what was now the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe railroad was why the old trestle bridge was still standing over a half century since the last railroad car had crossed it. The ends of the bridge on both sides of the river were carefully fenced off with chain link fence with padlocked gates for the service vehicles that would come out to bring people to inspect the pipeline and perform any needed repairs. The fact that the no trespassing signs still said ATSF was a measure of how little attention the bridge had.

Still, the bridge was there and even if it hadn't been maintained all that much, a bridge that could one hold a 75 ton steam locomotive and another 350 tons of ore cars full of gypsum could, Isabel reasoned, probably still hold a two ton jeep. At least she hoped it could, because as she reached out and grabbed the padlock – let her powers flow into it and turn the cylinder inside – and felt the shackle pop free and release the chain, she certainly knew she was going to try.

Had it not been for the IV solutions she would have been tempted to dump everything and just head back the way she came. When the Sheriff eventually caught her, there would have been nothing incriminating. But not only had Michael almost emptied the ambulance service of outdated IVs, but they still weren't sure just how they were going to get the rest that they might eventually need. The things normally required a doctor's prescription and that was going to add another layer of complication. Isabel was NOT going to dump three or four weeks worth of the ten or twelve weeks of IV fluids that her sister-in-law might eventually need. Even if she didn't need them now, when Liz did need them she'd need them badly. Isabel was determined to see that she had them. And that was why she was driving her jeep – slowly – out on to the railroad trestle-bridge over the Pecos river surrounded on both sides by only inky darkness and a long long drop.

The rails were still in place on the trestle – in fact the top of the trestle was only the two ribbons of steel and the railroad ties beneath it, but Isabel aligned the jeep as carefully as she could inside the rails, downshifted to 4-wheel low – and with a thunk-thunk-thunk as the tires pulled themselves over the cross ties held in position – she hoped – by the rails alongside the wheels. Within a few seconds she was out on the trestle – a hundred foot drop on either side – making her way west at almost six miles an hour.


A mile upstream on the I-70 bridge, Jim had pulled out the map and was looking at it with Jaime.

“If nothing else,” said Jim, “...we have at least kept her from leading Jeff Parker to her brother. We still need to track her down. Hopefully she'll still have something incriminating on her, but even if she doesn't we can tell her about the tracking device … offer to help her find it. But with all three bridges blocked she is going to have to go either way north or way south to get across the river. If she does that I think she's probably done for the night. I just wish we could catch her over here – talk some sense into her...”

Jaime nodded his head in agreement.

“I just wish,” he said, “... that we knew where she was right this moment.”

At that point the New Mexico State police officer cleared his throat. “Ummm … I think I know where you missing jeep is gentlemen, but I don't think you are going to like it.”

Jim didn't understand at first what the officer was talking about as he pointed his hand downriver in the darkness – at least not until he saw the slowly moving headlights where no headlights ought to have been.

“Omigawd – the old railroad bridge....,” he said in disbelief. “... the damn thing's not much wider than a car itself – certainly not as wide as even a poor road – and there isn't any surface other than the railroad ties.”

Already in his mind Jim Valenti was picturing the jeep going over the side of the trestle, the long fall – over a hundred feet, certainly lethal no matter if she hit the water or the dry riverbed alongside it – and Jim Valent explaining to two parents that their daughter would not be coming home tonight – or ever.

“I didn't even guess she'd do this, Jaime, I certainly wouldn't have let this happen if I'd even for a moment thought.....”

“I know, Jim,” said Jaime. “Who'd have believed she'd do something like this,” he thought, remembering first thinking of Isabel Evans as a spoiled Princess-type who he really hadn't believed was nearly as tough and determined as she'd turned out to be. It wasn't Jim Valenti's fault. The girl had fooled them all.

The three police officers watched in fear and spellbound fascination as the little jeep slowly ground toward the west side of the bridge. It was only as Isabel reached it and they saw the jeep stop and Isabel Evans get out and – somehow – open the padlock that they actually felt like they could breathe again. They had a few seconds when they relaxed in relief with smiles on their faces – but that was short-lived.

“Uh, you two know she's past your roadblocks now, don't you?” asked the New Mexico State policeman.

“Shit...” said Jim Valenti, running for the Baja racer. Jaime was still bucking in to the five point harness as Jim Valenti engaged the transmission and hit the throttle sending the glorified dune buggy west across the bridge with blue smoke coming from the rear tires. If they really hurried they could still catch her – Jim hoped.

Isabel had chugged across the trestle slowly - hitting a top speed of almost seven miles an hour as she had gained confidence near the western end of the bridge and finally come to believe that she would NOT wind up hitting a damaged area and tumbling into the darkness below. Apparently a trestle that could once hold a freight train was reasonably sturdy - 40+ years of deferred maintenance or not. She wasn't actually comfortable enough to spare a look to the other bridge to the north until she was completely across and unlocking the gate of the chain metal fence though. That bridge was lighted, and it gave her her very first opportunity of the night to realize what she was up against. She was not - she realized - going to outspeed the Baja racer either on dirt or asphalt. That did, however, leave at least one other medium.

She got in the jeep and shifted it back up out of low range and started off, turning left into the desert off the access road on a trail that looked like it would take her back down toward the flood plain of the river. The Dead Horse creek was down there - one of the few tributaries from this area that fed the Pecos for more than a few months a year. There was a ford in the creek that Michael had described to her. She needed to get there before the pursuit caught her. More precisely, she needed to be there WHEN the pursuit caught her.

'At least going down hill you have the speed to keep ahead of it....,' she told herself as she narrowly missed smashing the jeep into a boulder.

It was - once more - Law Enforcement 101 time.

There was nothing subtle about this pursuit - there didn't need to be. The Night Vision Goggles were strapped back into their cases - mounted to the frame of the Baja racer. They wouldn't be needed now.

Jim Valenti had seen the lights of the jeep going down the dirt road and the dirt road led only one place - to the floodplain of the Pecos river. The river cut through the hills here - that's why the bridge was so high above the water - and it would be nearly three miles before the jeep came to another place where it could climb out of the riverbed. That's why stealth and night vision goggles and the like weren't really needed. She couldn't get away.

He turned on the original driving lights and the whole of the dirt road before him lit up, the jeep bouncing downhill in front of him. No, this wouldn't require finesse or stealth. His vehicle was as agile as hers - no bigger than hers - had traction that was at least as good as the stock jeep - and it had over eight times the horsepower. It was now back to Law Enforcement 101 - the Vehicle Pursuit - and the rules were simple. Keep sight of the other vehicle and close on it. When you were able to get the nose of your vehicle past the other one - which shouldn't take very long down on the level floodplain given the disparity in power - you nose in front of them to make them stop - pinning them against an obstruction or perhaps the river itself. After that it was easy.

Oh, it would take a little while of course - going down the steep dirt road to the floodplain sort of negated his horsepower advantage - but within seconds she'd be on level ground and it would be the 80 horsepower of the little jeep against the 500+ horsepower of the racer. It would be no contest really.


The lights of the vehicle behind her were so bright they even lighted up the ground in front of her – far better than the simple headlights of the jeep. Unfortunately their very intensity made it difficult for her
to assess how quickly the vehicle was gaining on her, but as she got on the relatively flat ground of the floodplain it became readily apparent – it was gaining rapidly.

Isabel's plan was to use the information that Michael had given her about Dead Horse creek. The creek was seasonal – but less so than most of the creeks in eastern New Mexico. It flowed from the west into the Pecos about a mile ahead. Like the Pecos itself, the creek had eroded in to the desert floor over many millenia. Like the ground above, this was mainly old sea bottom. Sandstone and other types of sedimentary rock had been gradually worn away to form the canyon of the Pecos and the creek bed, but the creek bed had traversed several strata where the rock had been quite soft – or perhaps like the Acme mine above, there had been pockets of gypsum that had dissolved away. The creek's depth depended – in some degree – on just what those strata had been and what was left of them.

There was a primitive road in the flood plain that paralleled the river that had been carved out by hundreds of off-road vehicle users – like Michael and others. That was what Isabel steered towards. The primitive road would allow her to travel a little bit faster than she could if she drove randomly through the floodplain. Unfortunately, the same held true for the vehicle behind her which was now getting uncomfortably close. The other advantage to the road was even more important. The road led to the spot in the Dead Horse Creek where the ford was. At this time of the year at the ford itself – a six foot wide area of sandstone – the water depth was probably only a foot. On either side of the ford the depth increased substantially – probably to three or four feet. The plan was a simple one – stay ahead of the vehicle behind her and not let it pass her – not until she got to the ford. If she could just stay in front of the vehicle until then – not let it pass her UNTIL she was at the ford – she would go racing through with little more than a splash while the passing vehicle would go into that three or four feet of water.

'Of course, that might be easier said than done,' thought Isabel.

The jeep was being rapidly overtaken.


Once they got down to the floodplain of the river it was obvious to Jim Valenti that the sturdy little jeep was greatly outclassed. With the driving lights on the roll bar almost turning night into day in the narrow canyon he could see not only ahead of his vehicle, but ahead of hers as well.

“She can't outrun us and she can't hide,” Jim shouted to Jaime.

Jaime nodded his head. It was clear that the suspension of the Baja racer was much better at this terrain than that of the jeep, and in terms of engine power, there was no comparison. He watched Jim maneuver the racer up just behind the racer and pull out to pass her on the right. As soon as he had the nose of the racer past the jeep Valenti would next steer the vehicle toward the jeep, forcing the girl toward the river. It was a standard pursuit-driving technique.


As she saw the vehicle pull over to the right and start to accelerate, Isabel looked desperately ahead. Dead Horse Creek was up there, but it was way too far away. She couldn't let the vehicle pass her – not here – if she did it could force her over to the river's edge and stop her. The vehicle was some sort of an off-road racer, smaller but far more powerful than her jeep. It looked like it was well-built – the drivers in a cage that protected them far more than her windshield and roll bar did. It also looked like it could take a hit far more safely than the jeep could. But that, she decided, really didn't matter. Max and Liz needed the supplies – it was as simple as that – she simply had to get through. She twisted the wheel hard to the right, shoving its nose in the path of the oncoming racing vehicle.

'Son of a bitch!' thought Jim as he twisted the wheel to the right to avoid colliding with the jeep. It scooted out in front of him – taking a fifty foot lead. Jim quickly fell back into trail directly behind the black jeep He'd made a mistake trying to pass that close to the jeep, Jim realized. He'd have to go wider. But as he went wide to the right he saw the creek ahead. It was clear that the road ran through it – that off-roaders went through it all the time – but they didn't go through it line abreast. If he passed the jeep as they went through the creek it would throw up a wall of water. He and Jaime had their helmets and their face shields – Isabel Evans didn't. What would happen if she lost control when the water hit her? Did he have to take that chance? He looked further forward. It would be a good two miles before the girl could get out of the floodplain – No way was that going to happen. He decided he'd throttle back – keep in trail – and pass the girl only after they were on the dry land on the other side of the creek.

Isabel smiled as she cut off the racer. That bought her the time she needed to get to the creek. But the smile went away as the racing vehicle fell directly behind her.

'It's going to follow me straight through and take me on the other side,' she thought.

That was not good. But Max and Liz needed the supplies, and an Ice Princess has got to do what an Ice Princess has got to do....

As the jeep approached the creek, Jim slowed slightly. He wasn't sure how deep the water was, but he expected that whatever the depth it would slow the jeep slightly. He didn't expect, however, for the brakes to be slammed on just as the jeep entered the water – but as the taillights came on and the jeep decelerated quickly it was apparent that was precisely what Isabel Evans had done.

Jim yanked the steering wheel to the right as the jeep skidded in to the creek through what appeared to be about twelve inches of water. But as the front wheels of the Baja racer entered the creek five feet to the right of the jeep they seemed to keep going down and a geyser of cold water shot up over the dash board hitting Jim Valenti and Jaime Sanchez in the face. The racer staggered from the creek as its engine died.

"Dammit all....!” screamed Valenti, water dripping from his entire body.

He cranked the engine fruitlessly for thirty seconds, then cussing again as he watched the jeep drive another couple miles before climbing up out of the floodplain.

“Relax, Jim,” said Jaime. “The air intake is high up on the engine – it didn't suck in any water. We weren't in long enough to get water up the exhaust – this has to be a wet ignition problem. We can pop the distributor and start drying stuff out – We can have this going in fifteen minutes or so.”

Of course, Jaime knew that the Baja racer's starting troubles were the least of their problems. Isabel Evans had gotten away from them and she was possibly leading Jeff Parker to her brother.

“Maybe going through the water drowned the tracker device Parker put on her,” said Jaime hopefully, pulling the sparkplug wires off, drying them with his damp t-shirt, and blowing in to the connectors.

“Maybe....,” said Jim, starting to take apart the distributor, “... but we sure can't count on it. He may already know the general area - just waiting for her to draw her brother out of hiding.”

"We may have to track her down and use your idea, good cop-bad cop. Which do you want to be?"

"After that girl cut in front of me - then ran us into the deep water? I get dibs on bad cop this time, Jaime, and I don't want to hear any arguments about it."

"Yeah, the cheerleaders in Roswell are evidently a pretty rough bunch, if they are all like her," agreed Jaime.

"Well, she surprised me this time. I doubt she'll be able to do it again tonight, though...."