Long, Tall Texans: Fearless Part 23

"Why?" Glory asked coldly. "It won't be Bernadette."

Sarina's eyes were compa.s.sionate. "I'm so sorry," she said softly. "You won't understand, but I know how you feel. I was desperately in love with my husband when he left me for another woman, one who only wanted his money. Colby and I were apart until Bernadette was in grammar school, and that witch had convinced him that he was sterile."

Glory relaxed a little.

"Yes," Sarina replied, smiling, "I'm very much in love with my husband. All I could ever give Rodrigo was friends.h.i.+p. It wasn't enough. He's tenacious," she added. "It's what makes him dangerous in the field. But it's a double-edged weapon, too."

Glory's hand rested on her stomach. "I don't know if I can carry a child," she confessed. It felt good to tell someone. She'd lived with the fear for so long. "I had a slight heart attack on the job," she added slowly, seeing the sympathy in the other woman's dark eyes. "I've worked so hard to get where I am. And I'm paying the price. I have to take medicine for high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and now I have to take blood thinners as well so that I won't have a second, worse heart attack. The usual tests didn't show any blockages, but they want me to do a heart catheterization and I won't risk it while I'm pregnant. If I stop taking the blood thinners, the child will be safe, but I could die. How do I tell him all that?" she asked bluntly. "He thinks I don't want children. It isn't true. But it might be kinder to let him go on thinking it."

Sarina shook her head. "It isn't." She took a piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to the younger woman. "That's his home address, in Houston. He's gone back there to debrief his office, and to connect some local drug smugglers with Fuentes. Go see him. Tell him."

"He won't want to know."

Sarina stared her down. "Isn't he worth fighting for?"

Glory looked down at the note in her hand. It was a forlorn hope. It would only lead to more heartache. She shrugged. "Yes," she said. "I'll go."

AND SHE DID. SHE HAD to go by the Pendletons' to get her car for the trip. The old one she drove on the job was on its last gasp.

Rodrigo lived in a gated community. It was a pretty apartment complex, very ritzy. Most of the cars in the parking lots were expensive ones. If he could afford to live here, she thought, he had more going for him than a federal agent's salary. She remembered Sarina saying that he was related to the royal houses of Europe. He was probably wealthy.

She had to show her court ID to the gatekeeper and lie about the purpose of her visit. He said that he'd have to check it with Mr. Ramirez, which he proceeded to do. But Rodrigo wasn't in. The guard gave her racing-green Jaguar XKE sports car a long, wistful look. It really was a beaut-a present from her stepbrother and stepsister last Christmas.

"I'll only be a minute," she pleaded. "I have some papers to leave with him on a case I'm trying in San Antonio."

"Oh, I see. Yes, we all heard about the happenings down in Jacobs County," the gatekeeper said, warming to her. "Were you in on that?"

She laughed. "Only peripherally, I'm afraid. But I will get to try some of the coconspirators." That was a possibility, but she made it sound as if it were the purpose of her visit.

"You go on in. He plays tennis most Sat.u.r.day mornings," he added. "You can wait for him."

"Thanks a million."

"Sure thing."

She drove off and the guard frowned. Should he have told her that another young lady had already gone in to see Mr. Ramirez, and that she had a key to the apartment?

BLISSFULLY IGNORANT OF the possible complications, Glory pulled up in the parking lot and got out, walking to the apartment the guard had given her directions for. There was a little Hispanic boy with a soccer ball in the green s.p.a.ce between the apartment buildings. She smiled at him, and wondered if her child would be a boy.

"Do you like soccer?" the boy asked.

"Yes. I follow all the games," she replied, "and I always watch the World Cup."

"I like Marquez," he replied. "He's captain of the Mexican team. He's a great player."

Her eyebrows arched. "Marquez?" she asked, thinking of her own Marquez, the detective.

He nodded. "We call him Rafa. I want to be like him when I grow up. Look what I can do." He bounced the ball from one knee to the other. She laughed, enjoying his skill.

She heard footsteps and turned. And there was Rodrigo, but not the man she'd known in Jacobsville. This was someone else. He was like the people Jason and Gracie invited to their social events. He was wearing an Armani suit with handmade Italian shoes. His hair was styled, not just cut, and he looked expensive and graceful...and dangerous.

"Hi, Rodrigo!" the boy called. "Want to play?"

"Not right now. Go home, Domingo," he said gently.

The boy looked from one adult to the other. "Sure." He didn't argue.

"What do you want?" Rodrigo asked bluntly.

She hesitated. She should have dressed better. She was wearing the same jeans and T-s.h.i.+rt she'd worn at the farm, although her hair was in a neat plait. She didn't have much makeup on. She was walking without the cane, because she didn't want pity. She tried to look comfortable.

"I wanted to tell you something," she said. She didn't know how to begin.

He smiled coldly. "Someone's been talking to you, I gather," he replied.

"Well, yes."

"And now you know that I could have afforded to buy that farm and fifty like it for cash, and suddenly those marriage vows we took have real value, no?"

Her eyes widened. "You must be joking," she began. She wasn't a Pendleton, but she was treated like one. She had a closet full of designer clothes that Gracie and Jason had forced on her. Not to mention the little Jaguar sports car she was driving.

"Joking?" He gave her a long appraisal with narrowed, contemptuous eyes. "It's no joke. Don't think you'll play on my sympathies and walk away richer. I have none for mercenary creatures like you." He was outraged that she'd tracked him here, that she was brazen enough to try to force her way into his life after they'd agreed to divorce.

"Mercenary...?" She was horrified. This wasn't what she'd expected.

Before he could say anything else, or she could come up with a reply that didn't include kicking him in the groin, his apartment door opened and a beautiful young woman with long black hair, olive skin and dark eyes called to him.

"Are you coming, Rodrigo?" she asked urgently. "I've almost burned the paella!"

"I'll be right there, Conchita," he called back.

Glory had never felt so stupid. He looked back down at her with pure revenge in his dark eyes. "She's great in bed," he drawled.

She didn't want him to see the pain he was causing. She turned away and started back toward her car. Her hip was hurting, but so was her belly. Odd, these twinges of pain. She thought about the blood thinners she'd taken for so long and hoped they weren't going to hurt the baby. The baby. Rodrigo would never know, she vowed. Never!

HE WATCHED HER WALK away with mingled fury and regret. She was proud. She'd never asked for special treatment on the farm and she had guts-she'd saved herself from both Marco and Consuelo without any help from him. He'd accused her of being after his money. Well, he told himself, she probably was. She had nothing. Could he blame her for wanting a better life?

As he mounted his steps he heard a roar and looked over the parking lot in time to see a green sports car rev out into the road. He didn't recognize the car, but he knew it couldn't be Glory's. Maybe some friend of hers had brought her. He went in to eat the paella and put Glory out of his mind.

GLORY RAN OUT OF CURSES before she left Houston. By the time she got to the expressway and was almost to Victoria, she was making them up as she went along. The pain in her belly came again. She gasped. This wasn't going away. Her own doctor was in San Antonio, and Jacobsville was much closer. Lou Coltrain knew about her condition. She decided that Jacobsville was her best bet. She hoped she could make it. She floored the accelerator.

LUCK WAS WITH HER. On the outskirts of Jacobsville, a squad car threw on its blue lights and pulled her over. She slumped over the wheel as the officer, whom she recognized from her standoff with Marco, walked to her side.

Holding his ticket book, Kilraven started to date a ticket without looking down. "May I see your license and registration, ma'am?" he asked courteously.

"The minute...you get me...to a hospital," she panted, and turned her white face up to his. "I think I'm...losing my baby," she added, and her voice broke.

"Good G.o.d!" he exclaimed.

He pulled open the door, unfastened her seat belt, and carried her, as if she weighed nothing, to the pa.s.senger side of his squad car. He put her in, gently, and fastened the seat belt. All the time, he was talking into his portable. "I'm on my way in with a pregnant woman who may be miscarrying her child," he said curtly. "Have them meet me at the emergency room entrance. There's no time to wait for an ambulance."

"Ten-four," dispatch replied. "Can you identify the patient?"

"Gloryanne Barnes," he told her immediately. "Notify Dr. Lou Coltrain."

"That's a ten-four. Dispatch clear at eleven-twenty hours."

"My...purse, and keys," she managed between bouts of excruciating pain.

He ran to get them, locking the car and racing back to get in under the wheel. He put the purse, keys inside, on the floorboard beside her, started the car and laid down rubber getting out into the highway.

"Laying drags," she managed. "They'll hang you for that."

He laughed, silver eyes flas.h.i.+ng as he glanced at her. "You sound like a lawyer."

"I am a lawyer."

"I know."

She would have pursued that, but the pain doubled her up, in spite of the seat belt. Tears were rolling down her cheeks all the short drive to the hospital.

The rest was a blur of pain and loud voices, hands lifting her, and very soon, Lou Coltrain's gentle, calming voice. Something stung her arm. Then, peace.

When she opened her eyes again, Kilraven, the tall, good-looking policeman who'd brought her in was standing beside the bed, watching her with eyes so pale a shade of gray that they gleamed like silver against his olive complexion and jet-black hair.

"You brought me in," she murmured drowsily.

"Yes."

She touched her flat belly and started to cry silently. She knew her child was gone. She could feel the emptiness. "I lost my baby, didn't I?"

His mouth made a straight line. "I'm sorry."

She looked up at him in anguish.

"It gets better," he said stiffly. "It just takes time."

"Have you...lost a child?"

His mouth made a thin line. "Yes."

She had to fight to breathe. Her cheeks were flushed. Her heartbeat was moving the sheet that covered her.

He pushed the intercom b.u.t.ton and said something into it, very softly. Seconds later, a nurse bustled in and checked her vitals. She grimaced.

"Just lie still," she said gently. "I'll be right back."

"What is it?" she asked the officer.

"They'll hang me if I tell you."

She studied him. "They wouldn't dare. Tell me."

His broad chest expanded under the uniform. "I think you're having a heart attack."

She nodded. "That's what...I think, too."

The nurse was back with Dr. Copper Coltrain. He checked her vitals, looked at her chart and whispered something to the nurse, who nodded and scurried out of the room.

"Heart attack." Glory murmured drowsily.

"I don't think so. An episode of angina, probably, but we'll run tests." He glared at the officer. "She can't have visitors," he said flatly.

Kilraven clasped his hands behind his back and stood at parade rest. He didn't move. His silver eyes dared Coltrain to evict him.

"He saved me," Glory protested. "I'd never have made it on my own."

Coltrain's evil expression mellowed, just a little. The nurse came back and handed him a syringe. He injected it into Glory. She managed a weak smile and everything faded away again.

THE NEXT TWO DAYS were a blur. She awoke to an unG.o.dly noise outside her room. She recognized Sheriff Hayes Carson's deep voice cursing. She wondered if he did it often, because he was using some odd phrases.

"Crackers and milk!" Carson exploded. "I'm not serving d.a.m.ned divorce papers on a woman in her condition!" he was yelling into his cell phone. "You tell your d.a.m.ned client if he wants them served, he can come right down here to Jacobsville General and serve them himself!"

"You're disturbing the patients," Lou Coltrain chided.

"Sorry," Hayes muttered sheepishly. "It was unavoidable."

He and Lou exchanged a meaningful look. They didn't go inside and tell Glory anything. Which was a shame. Because three hours later, her husband walked into her room unannounced and stared at her as if he couldn't believe his eyes.

"What do you want?" she asked icily.

"Your sheriff refused to serve divorce papers on you." He started to pull them out of his pocket, but he hesitated. She looked worn out, heartsick, exhausted. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing in here? Is it your hip again?"

Her green eyes flashed at him. "What do you care?" she asked. "You didn't even ask me why I'd come to see you. You think I'm mercenary, do you? You think money is all I want out of life."

His teeth clenched. "That's all women have ever wanted from me," he said coldly. "Except..."

"Except for Sarina," she finished for him. "But you can't have her, can you? I guess Conchita is your present consolation. Pity I didn't know that I was standing in for your ex-partner!"

His eyes darkened and he smiled coolly. His pride stung and he retaliated, "You were a poor subst.i.tute."

That was the absolute last straw. "Get out!" she shouted, sitting up. The action made her feel faint. She felt her heart racing wildly, in spite of the drugs they were giving her.

"Shall I leave the divorce papers on the table before I go?" he taunted.

"I'll tell you where to put them, and how far. Get out!" she yelled. "Get out!"

Copper Coltrain burst into the room like a redheaded tornado. "Get out of here," he said in a furious undertone. "Right now."