Long, Tall Texans: Fearless Part 22

"I'll phone him at home tonight," she said. "Then I'll phone you, if he says it's okay. I'd like to go tomorrow."

He frowned. "Why so quick?" he asked. Then he remembered what he'd overheard at the hospital-Sarina and her daughter would be coming down to see Rodrigo. Glory didn't want to be there when she arrived.

"I'll phone you," she repeated.

"Okay. I'll be at Mom's," he added. "I'm not on call this weekend."

She grimaced. He didn't have a lot of weekends when he wasn't on call. "Sorry."

"Hey, all I do is watch television. Mom spends most Sundays at the nursing home after church, reading to some of the older patients."

"She's a lovely person, your mother."

He smiled. "Yes."

"Thanks, Rick," she said after a minute. "I was a little nervous being out at night alone, even with the gun."

"Where is the gun?"

"In my car," she said. "I didn't want to risk taking it into the hospital."

"Get it out of your car before I leave and keep it with you," he returned solemnly. "You're not out of the woods yet."

She sighed. "Don't I know it!"

SHE PHONED THE D.A. at home and he was agreeable to having her back on the job, in a safe house. One of the investigators would follow her to and from work and the police would put extra patrols on. But, like Marquez, he didn't think Fuentes was going to be a problem any longer. Neither did Glory. Thanks to her husband and his colleagues, Fuentes was about to have big trouble of his own over those confiscated drugs.

RICK WAS DUE AT NOON to follow her back to San Antonio. She'd sworn him to silence about her job. There was no reason to tell Rodrigo about it. He'd be back in Houston in no time, and they probably wouldn't even have to see each other again. They could get a quiet divorce and pretend they'd never met. She was so hurt by his att.i.tude that it didn't even bother her that they were separating.

She heard him come in, in the wee hours of the morning, but she didn't have her light on, and she didn't make a sound when she heard him hesitate outside her door. He didn't open it.

The next morning, she stayed in her room until he left the house. Then she fixed herself a poached egg on toast and some coffee. She'd packed most of her things. Now, it was just a matter of waiting for Rick to follow her into the city.

She heard a car door slam and the high, sweet sound of a child's excited laughter outside.

She went to the curtained front window and looked out. Rodrigo had the little girl high in his arms, and he was laughing down into the pretty blonde woman's animated face. Watching them, Glory felt like an outsider. They were still a family, regardless of Mr. Lane's presence in their lives. She couldn't bear to see how happy Rodrigo was. She went back into her room to finish her packing.

When she was finished, she put on a pair of jeans with a pretty floppy magenta overblouse and sandals and walked out onto the porch, because Rick was due. She saw Sarina's car, but she was nowhere in sight.

She walked to the end of the porch and stopped dead when she heard voices around the corner.

"...but you're married," Sarina was saying.

"To a little country hick who dresses like a bag lady and has no social graces, or education to speak of," he said coldly. "I was ashamed to have my colleagues even see her with me last night!" He drew in a harsh breath. "She's crippled and Fuentes wants to kill her because she's a witness to something illegal that he did. I only married her out of pity. It was the worst reason in the world." He didn't add that he'd felt a raging desire for her that he couldn't deny.

"What are you going to do, then?" came the reply.

"Whatever I have to, in order to get out of the mess I'm in."

Glory moved back away from them, feeling sick. He was ashamed of her. He married her because he felt sorry for her. She felt as if her whole life had just shattered at her feet.

She went off the porch the other way and walked blindly down to the old iron bridge that n.o.body used anymore, since the modern one was completed. She climbed up on the high rail and sat there, blinded by tears, hurting as if she'd been stabbed in the heart. The man she loved spoke of her with disdain, with contempt, and she was carrying his baby. She felt such a fool. How could she have thought he might come to love her? She was crippled and plain and useless to him. He thought the woman who'd worked on the farm with him was nothing but a country hick. It should have been amusing. It wasn't. Added to that, her medical condition could cost her not only her baby, but her life. It was a bleak, cold future looming ahead. Depression and melancholy settled over her like a black cloud.

She swung her legs out over the river, rus.h.i.+ng below her over the rocks. The water was deep, there. A woman had thrown herself off this bridge back in the early 1920s and drowned because she'd caught her husband with her best friend. Sarina Lane wasn't Glory's friend, but she could understand how the dead woman must have felt. Some people had seen her on this bridge late at night, or so they said, walking along the road in a white dress. They called it the haunted bridge. But Glory wasn't afraid. She was a kindred spirit.

The rus.h.i.+ng water was hypnotic. She wasn't really suicidal. She was just sick at heart. But something was urging her to slide closer and closer to the edge. Just a little way down, a voice nudged, and all the hurt would end. She would be free. She would never have to walk with a cane or take medicine for blood pressure or hear her husband recite her drawbacks to another woman ever again...

"Glory!"

She didn't hear Marquez at first. She didn't hear, or see him, until he caught her around the waist and dragged her down from the iron pillar.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" he exclaimed, steadying her against him. His face was pale. He was breathing hard. "I never thought I'd get here in time!" he added.

He must have run down the hill, she thought. But it got worse. Rodrigo and Sarina were also running down the hill, onto the bridge.

"What happened?" Rodrigo asked curtly.

"I thought she was going to j...I mean, fall," Rick corrected at once.

"I wouldn't have fallen," she told Rick without looking at the others. "I used to fish off this bridge." She still sounded dazed. "When I was a little girl, my great-grandfather would come down here with me." She smiled reminiscently. "We only had cane poles and fis.h.i.+ng line, nothing fancy, but every Sat.u.r.day when he didn't have to plow, we'd catch ba.s.s and bream for supper."

"Why were you sitting up there in the first place?" Rodrigo demanded.

She looked at him, distracted. "I've always done it," she said vacantly, "and dangled my legs over the edge."

"You could have fallen!" Rodrigo persisted hotly. He actually sounded concerned, but Glory was sure that he wasn't. After all, his own special woman was standing right beside him. He couldn't afford to let her think he was heartless about his wife.

She looked into his eyes, and her own were blazing with banked-down fury. "If I had fallen, it wouldn't have mattered to you, would it?" she asked coldly. She avoided Sarina's curious eyes and turned to Rick. "I'm ready to go when you are," she said quietly.

"Where the h.e.l.l are you going?" Rodrigo asked curtly.

She couldn't bear to look at him. "I'm going home. Rick is going to follow me, just in case Fuentes hasn't been sidetracked by the loss of his product last night."

Rodrigo hadn't been thinking. Fuentes was still after her and she was going off with this detective who seemed more concerned than her husband did. He felt ashamed. "Where's home?" Rodrigo asked, scowling.

She didn't answer him. "We'd better get going. Sorry about the work," she told Rodrigo matter-of-factly, "but I'm sure I won't be hard to replace. There are so many plain, country hicks around here who have no hope of a better life than working in someone's kitchen." She'd added that last bit deliberately, and she looked up in time to see it hit home, like a poisoned arrow. He knew then that she'd overheard him talking to Sarina. It shamed him. He hadn't meant it. Not really.

Sarina looked as if she wanted to say something, but Glory simply walked past her and Rodrigo, and kept going. Her hip was killing her, but she wasn't showing any signs of weakness to that two-legged, two-timing pit viper to whom she was still, temporarily, married.

MARQUEZ CAUGHT UP WITH her. "Are you packed?" he asked her.

"Yes. My suitcase is in the living room. I just need to get my purse and my cane."

They went inside together. She hoisted her shoulder bag and leaned a little heavily on her cane as she followed Marquez outside.

Rodrigo and Sarina were standing on the porch. Rodrigo was frowning.

"Exactly where are you going?" he asked Glory, sparing Marquez a glance as he went to put her suitcase in the trunk of her car.

Her face was bland as oatmeal as she looked at him. She was pale and unhappy, but she tried to conceal it. "That's need-to-know. You don't. Anyway, with Fuentes's operation in tatters, we think he'll be much more worried about his own life than he'll be about taking mine. You can always send flowers if I'm wrong and he puts a bullet in me," she added matter-of-factly.

Rodrigo actually flinched.

Sarina gnawed her lower lip. "We didn't get to introduce ourselves on the bridge," Sarina said quietly. "I'm..."

"Sarina Lane," Glory replied tonelessly. "Yes, I know. Mr. Ramirez speaks of you often."

Rodrigo's black eyes flashed. He didn't like her formal use of his name. But before he could speak, Marquez was back.

"I'm ready," he told Glory, pausing to nod at the couple beside her.

"Okay." She looked at Rodrigo's chin. "Thanks for letting me stay here while Fuentes was after me. I hope I won't be leaving you shorthanded."

"Carla and one of the other workers will finish up the fruit," he said stiffly. "It's only a speculative project. If it takes off, Pendleton will have to arrange for more kitchen staff to meet the demand."

"Of course," she said, and even smiled. "Well, goodbye."

Rodrigo frowned. "There will be some legalities..."

"I'll have my attorney contact you. You can file for divorce whenever you like," she said. "The sooner the better," she added bitterly. She turned, leaning heavily on the cane, and walked out of Rodrigo's life without a backward glance.

She put on her seat belt, started her car, and pulled out of the yard behind Rick's truck. She never waved. She never looked back. She just drove, even when the road became a little blurry as she pulled out of the driveway.

SARINA WAS FROWNING. Rodrigo was staring after the departing vehicles as if he were watching a movie. He was scowling, rigid.

"She heard what you said about her," she said quietly. "It must have hurt. She's proud, you call tell."

His teeth crashed together. He was remembering what Glory had said, about being shuttled into foster homes, always the child outside looking in, always the outsider, always unwanted. He didn't understand why he'd said such cruel things about her. He wasn't emotionally involved with Glory. He'd only wanted her. So why did it feel so wrong that she was leaving?

"It was an act of insanity," Rodrigo said curtly. "A divorce would be best for both of us."

Sarina was thinking. There was something odd about the other woman. She couldn't put her finger on it, but there was much more going on here than Rodrigo was admitting. He said he didn't care about Glory, but his eyes were tormented. He was pretending. Glory hadn't known him long enough to know that, but Sarina had. Not only that, she knew she'd seen Glory somewhere else, in a different setting. For some reason, San Antonio kept pulling at her mind.

So when she got back to Houston, she phoned a colleague in the San Antonio DEA office and started asking questions.

14.

ALL THE EXTRA PATROLS and precautions were suddenly unnecessary for Glory's protection. She'd just moved into the safe house and was drinking her first cup of Monday morning decaf coffee when Marquez phoned.

"Guess what?" he asked.

"You won the lottery and you're running away to Tahiti?"

"That'll be the day. I called to tell you that they just found Fuentes facedown in a stream between here and Jacobsville. They didn't even bother to hide the body-it's visible from the highway."

Her heart stopped. "Say what?"

"We were right about his superior counting mistakes. This is the second big load Fuentes lost, and his organization isn't forgiving. No more chances. He's very dead."

She was sorry, even for a drug dealer to die. But it took the heat off her. "Then I'm safe?" she asked hesitantly.

"Perfectly," he replied. "Our mole in the organization said Fuentes was crazy to put out a contract on an a.s.sistant D.A. in this country without authorization, when he was already under the gun for a murder charge. Not that they don't kill attorneys, cops and journalists, but this isn't the way they operate. Anyway, the big drug lord told them to lay off you."

"Gee, I didn't get him anything," she mused.

"It was a nice present, wasn't it? Pity we can't find out who he is. Maybe the DEA will have better luck. Anyway, you can move back into your apartment whenever you like, and your boss says your paperwork is piling up, hint, hint."

She smiled. It was the first good news she'd had in a long time. "Okay. Good thing I haven't unpacked."

"Yes. I'll be over on my lunch hour to move you."

"Rick, you've done so much already..."

"You're my friend," he said simply.

"Then, thanks. I'll expect you at noon, and I'll order a pizza!"

SHE WAS STILL SQUEAMISH that night, back in her own apartment, fighting the morning sickness that seemed to get worse and last longer. She was also having some pain. She made an appointment with her physician in San Antonio and started putting together her work clothes for the next day. When she looked in the mirror, she saw the toll her experience had taken. She was pale and drawn and she looked as if she'd lost weight. But at least the pretence was over now. She could use makeup, put her contact lenses back in, wear what she liked and not have to blend in. It was a bitter thing, remembering what Rodrigo had said about her lack of culture, education and looks.

She was getting dressed the next morning when her doorbell rang. She pushed the intercom b.u.t.ton. She wondered who it could be so early...

"May I come up?"

Her jaw clenched. "Why?" she asked, because she knew that particular feminine voice all too well.

"I need to tell you something."

For two cents, she thought, I'd ignore her. But it wasn't Sarina's fault that Rodrigo couldn't go on living without her. "Okay," she said heavily, and pressed the buzzer on the outside door.

Glory was wearing a gray suit and pink blouse, with her hair in a neat bun and makeup on, when she opened the door to her rival.

Sarina stared. "You look different."

"I have to uphold the image of the district attorney's office on the job," she said stiffly. "What can I do for you?"

Sarina's eyelids flinched. "He's not an easy man to get to know," she began. "He was still hurting from his sister's death when I was partnered with him in Arizona. He alternated between bristling and cold formality-at least, until he met Bernadette. He loves children," she said deliberately, and with a glance at Glory's belly, as if she knew that the top b.u.t.ton of her skirt was undone because it wouldn't fasten anymore.

"You wouldn't tell him...?" Glory asked, panicking.

Sarina shook her head. "That's your business. But he should know."