Treacherous by Barbara Taylor Bradford Read Free Book Online Page A

the
accident, using the tracks made by the crane.
    It hadn’t
taken as long as she thought it would to find the place. She had made it here
from the Tunnel in a little over two hours. Once she was across the bridge from
New Jersey into Pennsylvania, all she had to do was point the car toward the
lights that swept the night sky. And let the GPS do the rest.
    Reaching the actual
crash site was another matter entirely. There were road blocks everywhere, and state
troopers were turning the cars of the curious around. But a little thing like
law enforcement was not going to keep Hayley Martin from finding her friend and
the man she loved.
    It was on the
drive that she had finally admitted to herself that she did love Luke. She
always had. She also decided she was going to tell him so. Why had she been so
coy, pretending not to care, telling everyone who would listen that she and
Luke were just friends? Why was she waiting for him to make the first move? This
was 2013. Women were allowed to go after what they wanted.
    When she saw
the road blocks ahead, Hayley abandoned her car, and set out across the fields in
a jog. She was glad she had pulled on jeans and sneakers before leaving New
York. The ground was soft, and bristles from the crushed crops scratched at her
ankles. Finally she had the good sense to tuck her jeans into her socks.
    As soon as she
was closer to the crash scene she slowed down, straightened her jacket and
walked ahead of the big crane, ordering people to make way, to move aside, in a
very official manner.
    She approached
a railway employee, and said she must confiscate his flashlight to lead the
machine in. She claimed hers had been lost in the field.
    Armed with the
long, official-looking torch, she made her way through the wreckage to a
cluster of officials who appeared to be directing operations. In the chaos of
the moment, it was difficult to tell who belonged and who didn’t. Hayley put
her talent for disappearing in a crowd to good use. No one challenged her, or
even seemed to notice she was there.
    What she swiftly
learned chilled her to the bone. Fiona and Luke had been on the train when it
went over the cliff. So far, three more witnesses had come forward, reporting
that they saw the two jumping free of the car. But the consensus was that whether
they jumped, fell, or went into the water with the train, what officials were
now calling a search and rescue mission would soon become something else. A
quest to recover the remains of the two passengers from the unforgiving
Delaware.
    A team of
divers from the Coast Guard would go into the river at first light. A search
party made up of police officers, National Guardsmen and volunteers would be
deployed to search every inch of the shoreline on both sides of the river. If
no one was found by afternoon, they would commence dragging the river. Barges
were being brought in to raise the train carriage once it was located.
    Her heart in
her mouth, Hayley extinguished her flashlight and faded away into the night to
say a prayer. It was something she hadn’t done in a long, long time. But at
this moment it was the only thing she could do.

SIXTEEN
    The
only sounds in the darkness were the rushing of the water and the whirring helicopters
upriver. They were circling over the spot where the train carriage had gone
into the Delaware.
    Fiona, soaked
to the skin and shivering, was on her knees on the rocky shore. “Please, please
let me rest, just for a minute.”
    “You’ve got to
keep moving.” Luke lifted her to her feet, but she seemed to have lost the
ability to move her legs. “Try to walk, Fiona. I’ve got to get you to some
place where you can get warm.”
    “I’ll just sleep
till Tuesday,” she promised groggily.
    A cold fear
gripped Luke.
    He knew, from
covering disasters around the globe, what the signs of hypothermia were, and
Fiona was exhibiting a number of them. She had been delusional for a while now.
A person could die very quickly, he knew,