Diamonds in the Dust Read Online Free Page B

shifted a fraction to the right and took down one of the timber uprights of the covered walkway that gave shoppers respite from the scorching sun. The crack of the wood was like a gunshot. The old man ducked, so that the bumper missed him by the width of the brim of his hat, and instead selected a different victim: a stocky native woman wearing a bright green sarong, a woven basket perched on her shoulder.
    Connie screamed at her through the windscreen as she stamped on the brake pedal. “Run! Run!”
    Please, please, run faster!
    But the woman knew that her time had come. That the spirits had chosen her, and there was no escape. She swung round at the last moment and faced the oncoming car. She stared straight into Connie’s eyes and her lips moved, but the words were swallowed by Connie’s own scream as the bumper uttered its muffled grunt. It had found flesh. The woman’s eyes became huge black pools of pain for one brief moment before she disappeared from Connie’s sight and the car shuddered to a halt.
    No!
    Connie was shaking, teeth chattering. With an effort of will she unclamped each finger from around the steering wheel and seized the chrome door handle. She tumbled out of the car and raced to the front of the hood. She caught sight of a pair of bare feet, their soles covered in red dust, then caramel-colored legs and the edge of a green sarong. On the ground, the rest of the woman’s body was hidden from sight behind the crowd that had gathered around her, but they drew back at Connie’s approach, opening a path for her. As if she were unclean.
    “Call an ambulance!
Pangil ambulans!
” she shouted to a man in a striped butcher’s apron, and he said something in reply, but the connection between her ears and her mind seemed to have broken because the sounds meant nothing to her.
    The Malay woman lay on her back, not crumpled, not in a tangle of blood and fractured bones, but straight and unharmed as though she had dozed off by mistake in the heat. With a rush of relief Connie dropped to her knees on the sidewalk beside her and lifted the limp hand. It felt warm and dry against her own damp palms, with short stubby fingers that curled around hers in a stubborn grip.
She isn’t dead, thank God, she isn’t dead.
But the woman’s eyes remained firmly closed.
    “An ambulance is coming, a doctor will be here very soon. Don’t try to move,” Connie told her, her throat so tight the words sounded as if they’d come from someone else’s mouth. She leaned over the motionless figure, shielding her from the glare of the sun, and asked softly, “Are you in much pain?”
    No response.
    “I’m so sorry,” Connie said. “I didn’t mean to . . .” Her voice trickled away. She wanted to wrap the woman in her arms and rock her gently. “Please,” she murmured, “open your eyes if you can hear me.”
    Still no response.
    Thick black lashes lay on the plump dusky cheeks, and fine veins traced a network back into her temple where the beginnings of a bruise were starting to form. She looked a similar age to Connie herself, about thirty-four, but the woman’s dense black hair that she wore pulled back into a knot behind her head was showing the first few streaks of gray. Maybe she was older. Her nose was broad, and the skin of her arms a patchy, uneven brown as if she worked with chemicals of some sort.
What world have I wrenched her out of?
    There was no blood. Not a mark on the sarong or on the woman herself, except for the slight bruise, and Connie allowed herself to hope it was just a concussion. Softly she started to talk to her, to entice the woman’s stunned brain back into action. She asked her name, her address, who should be told about the accident, what was in the crushed basket at her side. She stroked her hand, tapped her arm, touched her cheek.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said again.
    The eyes opened suddenly. There was no flicker of warning, just closed one moment, open the next, in a narrow