Free Reilly's Woman by Janet Dailey Page A

shirts from the suitcase and closed the lid. "I have a rough idea."
    "Wonderful," Leah murmured sarcastically. When he rose to his feet she followed as closely as his shadow. "Does that mean we're somewhere in Nevada? I could have made that guess."
    Reilly stopped shortly, nearly causing her to run into his broad back. His gaze was hard as steel when he looked at her.
    "We're on the east side of the Monitor Range, which would put us roughly sixty miles from the nearest town as the crow flies. In this terrain, on foot, it would probably be ninety miles."
    In this emptiness, it seemed impossible that they were even that close to civilization. "We could die out there," Leah argued.
    "We could die here," he pointed out.
    "Yes, but"—his reply put her off her stride for a second—"here, we at least have a chance of being found, of signalling the next plane."
    "When will it come, Leah?" Reilly studied her rebellious yet frightened expression. "Tomorrow? The day after? Three days from now? When?"
    "I don't know." Her hand lifted to wave the question aside. "But it will come. My parents and Lonnie won't stop looking until they find me. I know they won't!"
    "I agree, but time is still the factor."
    "Why?" she demanded.
    "Because in three, maybe four more days we won't have the food, the water, or the strength to walk out of here." The lowness of his voice, his calmness, seemed designed to impress on her the gravity of their situation.
    Wildly, she looked up the slope in the direction where he had said he had found the water. "But—"
    "The water I found in the rock basin is drying up," Reilly explained. "It's evaporating in this heat."
    Foolishly Leah had regarded their water supply as inexhaustible. She had forgotten Reilly's comment that water was invaluable in desert terrain.
    A tide of helplessness washed over her. "You should have told me."
    "Perhaps." Reilly adopted the same indifferent attitude about discussing what had already been done as he had when Leah had used all the water to wash her feet. What had been done was done, and as far as he was concerned, there was no purpose in rehashing the reason.
    "If we tried to walk for help," Leah still didn't endorse the idea despite the logic of Reilly's reasons, "how would we know which way to go?"
    "We'll go south."
    "Why?" she persisted stubbornly. "Why not west? When we flew off course, we came east. Surely we should go back that way."
    Reilly breathed in deeply, as if his patience with her questions was thinning. "The mountain ranges run in a north-south line. I don't know how many of them we would have to cross before we reached either a highway or a town. Finding a safe way over them and down would take too much time. That same reason rules out going east. To the north, I can see mountains. If we went that way, we would have to travel along the ridge. But south, we have a valley. The walking will be easier and we can make better time."
    "We could also get lost," Leah point out.
    "I won't get lost," he assured her dryly.
    His confidence irritated her. He was absolutely positive he was right. With all of her arguments dismissed, she retaliated with lashing sarcasm.
    "How stupid of me to forget that you're part Indian," she inserted cuttingly. "Of course you wouldn't get lost."
    His carved features darkened ominously. "You're quite right."
    She pressed her lips together. Her barb had somehow fallen short of its mark. Exhaling an angry breath, she glanced away.
    "I don't care what you think," she muttered. "I don't think we should leave here. The search plane could find us any time."
    Â  "We're leaving in the morning at first light," Reilly stated calmly.
    Leah tossed her head back defiantly meeting his cool gaze. "You can leave if you want. I'm staying here."
    "No, you are not." His jaw tightened.
    "And how are you going to stop me?" she asked pertly. "I somehow don't think you're strong enough to carry me all the way and I'm certainly not going to go with you