Long, Tall Texans: Fearless Part 24

"I'm talking to my wife..." Rodrigo shot back.

Coltrain dragged him out of the room. "She had an attack of angina soon after she was brought in. She has extremely high blood pressure, and she's already had one heart attack before she came down here to Jacobsville!" he said icily. "Her blood pressure has been worse since she lost the baby, two days ago..."

"Baby?" Rodrigo leaned against the wall. His horrified dark eyes held Coltrain's blue ones unblinking. His olive complexion faded to the color of oatmeal. "She was pregnant?!"

"Yes." Coltrain scowled. "Surely you knew?"

Rodrigo slumped back against the wall and closed his eyes. Glory had come to Houston to tell him something, and he wouldn't let her speak. She was pregnant. She'd come to tell him about the baby. He'd sent her away, upset her. A heart attack. High blood pressure. It would be dangerous for her to have a child. He knew she was p.r.o.ne to attacks of faintness, but he'd dismissed it, paying more attention to her bad hip. She'd said she didn't want children. It was a lie. Her health made it life-threatening, and he hadn't even known. G.o.d forgive me, he thought. Dear G.o.d, forgive me!

"I said things to her in there," Rodrigo said heavily. "It angered me that she came to my apartment in Houston and then walked away without even talking to me. I thought she'd come to ask for money..." His eyes closed. "I knew nothing about any of this."

"For a married man, you're d.a.m.ned uninformed about your wife."

"I filed for divorce," Rodrigo said in a haunted tone. "My attorney said the sheriff refused to serve the papers on her, and called me. I thought maybe she was in traction for her hip..." His face was drawn. "I should be horsewhipped for what I said to her."

"An apology wouldn't be out of place."

He looked at the other man evenly. "I'm not going to upset her any more than I already have. She'll be all right?"

Coltrain nodded. "She's already under the care of a heart specialist."

"Good. Good. If she needs anything..."

"She has good insurance. We'll take care of her."

Rodrigo stood erect. He started to speak, but he only shrugged. He was ashamed of himself. Glory had done nothing to deserve such treatment from him. He'd been horrible to her, and not just today. He didn't understand himself. Not at all.

Coltrain moved away. He could read people very well. This man had no idea what was going on. Maybe it was just as well that he hadn't known, if he was divorcing Glory. Good riddance, Coltrain thought. She deserved better.

The officer who brought Glory in, Kilraven, wandered back from the canteen and watched the woman's husband staring at her door. One of the nurses had identified him to Kilraven, who was feeling anger at the man for what Hayes Carson had said.

"She's been through a lot," he told the tall, dark man. "She doesn't need any more upsets."

Rodrigo looked at him coldly. "I didn't come here to upset her. n.o.body told me she'd had a miscarriage. I didn't even know she was pregnant."

The older man's silver eyes narrowed. "I heard. Pity you want to live in the past." His head jerked toward Glory's room. "That one has more grit and courage than any woman I've ever known."

"Yes," Rodrigo replied, feeling empty. "But she and I are as incompatible as any two people have ever been. She'll be better off without me."

Kilraven smiled coldly. "My thoughts exactly."

Rodrigo didn't like the arrogance in that smile, and he had to restrain his first impulse, which was to deck the man. This wasn't the place. Besides that, he was feeling particularly guilty. If he hadn't been so cruel to Glory, perhaps she wouldn't have lost his child. His child. He was responsible for its loss. Surely he could have found a kinder way to get Glory out of his life!

"I'll take care of her," Kilraven said, breaking into his thoughts. "The divorce will help her heal." His silver eyes glittered. "From what I've seen, she's never done anything in her life bad enough to deserve you as a husband."

Rodrigo's black eyes glittered as well. "She couldn't wait to replace me, could she?" he asked icily. "You're welcome to her. She would never have fit into my world."

He turned and walked away. Kilraven had made him murderously angry. Glory was still his wife. He could keep her; he didn't have to sign divorce papers. But the guilt ate away at him. His child was gone. She'd never forgive him for its loss. He'd never forgive himself.

On his way out, he almost collided with tall, handsome Jason Pendleton and his stepsister, little blond Gracie.

"Rodrigo," Jason greeted him nonchalantly. "We heard about the drug bust. Good work."

Rodrigo wasn't paying attention. He was still seeing Glory's tragic face and d.a.m.ning himself for his part in it. "Yes." He tried to sound interested. "What are you two doing here?"

"Visiting a family member," Jason said, scowling. "Are you all right?"

"Not really. I have to go. Good to see you both."

They watched him walk away with open curiosity.

"He's a strange man," Gracie mused.

"All men are strange," Jason said wickedly, and grinned when she flushed and laughed. "Come on. Let's see what we can do for our Glory."

GLORY TOOK A COUPLE of weeks off for tests, and to come to grips with her grief at the loss of her child. Her boss was good to her, giving her time off when she needed it and arranging for someone to cover for her when she had the heart catheterization. In the end they did a balloon angioplasty to blow out the plaque that was blocking an artery. Afterward she worked hard at her diet, took her medicine regularly and tried to convince herself that she could still manage her high-stress job despite the blood pressure that responded best to drugs when she was away from work. The doctor warned her quite bluntly that she had a congenital heart defect that had become more serious as she aged. He added that even with her lifestyle changes, she could die if she didn't find something less stressful to do for a living. It was the same old spiel, but she wasn't listening. She didn't care anymore. She'd lost her child and her husband, and the job wasn't enough to hold her to the world. But she did it with fervor and flair, going after evidence from witnesses like a bloodhound on the trail of a killer. Defense attorneys started to groan the minute she walked into the courtroom. Miss Barnes, they confided, could take rust off battles.h.i.+ps with that tongue.

RODRIGO HADN'T PURSUED the divorce, but Glory did. She charged him with desertion and alienation of affection and irreconcileable differences and set her own attorney on him. He offered a cash settlement, which he wasn't required to do under Texas law. Glory refused hands down. He signed the papers and left the country. n.o.body knew where he was.

Glory was enjoying a hostile witness on the stand in a murder trial. The man had lied about everything, especially his involvement in the crime.

"You turned state's evidence in order to receive a reduced sentence, did you not, Mr. Salinger?" she purred.

"Well, yes, but I was coerced."

She was wearing a very expensive pale gray suit with a green silk blouse the color of her eyes, and gray shoes with a short heel. Her blond hair had been cut. It curled around her delicate face like feathers. She wore contact lenses and makeup and she looked lovely. Her complexion was like peaches and cream. Her low self-image had been boosted in recent weeks by the gentle attentions of Officer Kilraven from Jacobsville, who spent his days off in the courtroom watching her work. She was one of a handful of people who knew he was the half brother of San Antonio FBI agent Jon Blackhawk. He was working undercover in Jacobsville with the help of police chief Cash Grier. Not even Glory knew on what. He was a secretive man. But he was also very masculine and he knew how to charm women. Glory had blossomed because of his interest. She wished she could encourage him, but she felt nothing more than friends.h.i.+p.

She glanced at him in the audience and grinned. He grinned back.

"Coerced?" she echoed the witness's statement. She moved close to him, with her file folder in her hand. "How very strange."

"What is?" he asked.

"It says here-" she indicated the file "-that you requested a meeting with the a.s.sistant prosecutor on this case-that would be me," she purred again, "and swore that you'd do anything for a reduced sentence."

He frowned. "Well, I might have said that," he agreed.

"You signed this statement in the presence of your defense attorney. That's correct, isn't it, Mr. Bailey?" she asked the defense attorney.

He got up. "Uh, well, yes..."

"Thank you, Mr. Bailey," she said, smiling. She turned back to the witness and the smile faded. Her green eyes glittered as she leaned toward the nervous man. "You will repeat the statement you gave to me, Mr. Salinger," she said with icy disdain, "or I will have you charged with perjury and I will ask for the maximum time a judge can give you in jail. Is that clear?" He hesitated. "I said," she raised her voice, "is that clear, sir?"

"Yes. Yes!" He straightened. "I saw the accused shoot the victim," he stammered.

"Saw him? Or helped him, Mr. Salinger?" She leaned forward again. "Is it not a fact that you held the gun on the victim while your friend and partner, the defendant, cut his throat from ear to ear and watched him bleed to death on the ground in front of you?!"

There was sobbing from the prosecution side of the courtroom. The victim's mother, Glory knew, and she hated to make the point so graphically, but it was necessary to force this witness to admit what he knew.

"Yes!" Salinger burst out. "Yes, yes, I held the gun on him while my partner killed him. I saw him do it. But he made me help him. He made me do it!"

"Liar!" raged the defendant.

"Order! Order in the court!" The raven-haired little judge raised her voice. The witness was now sobbing. The defense attorney was gritting his teeth. "Objection!" he called. "Objection, your honor! Leading the witness!"

"Overruled," the judge said calmly.

The defense attorney said something under his breath and glared at Glory as he sat down again.

"The defense attorney is objecting to the truth? My, my," Glory murmured.

"Another word, Miss Barnes, and I'll hold you in contempt," Judge Lenox chided.

"I'm very sorry, your honor," Glory drawled sweetly. She glanced at the defense attorney. "The prosecution rests."

"Mr. Bailey?" the judge asked the defense attorney.

The lawyer knew he'd blown it. He made a futile gesture. "The defense rests, also, your honor." His client glared at him as a deputy came to remove him from the courtroom.

"We will adjourn for lunch and resume with the summations at 1:00 p.m. Dismissed." The judge banged her gavel and stood up.

"All rise!"

Everyone else stood up.

AT THE BACK OF THE courtroom, Rodrigo Ramirez was standing with an a.s.sistant prosecutor watching the trial.

"Isn't she something?" Cord Maxwell chuckled. "A little firecracker. She's so good that defense attorneys s.h.i.+ver when they hear her name. She vanished for a while. n.o.body knows why, but she's back now and racking up convictions the way a pool champion racks up b.a.l.l.s. There's talk of running her for district attorney in three years."

"I can see why," Rodrigo replied. He'd started when he heard the judge call her Miss Barnes. That had been Glory's last name. But that elegant, chic woman at the prosecutor's table bore no resemblance to the pathetic woman who'd worked for him in Jacobsville. And Glory's hair had been long. Long, and beautiful.

Rodrigo had tried not to think about her, but with little success. Part of him had loved her, in spite of all his rhetoric about never getting over Sarina. He missed Glory, and he'd grieved for the child. Perhaps it would have been a disaster, if they'd remained married, but he would have kept his vows, and he would have wanted the baby. It was a shame that he hadn't let her talk to him. The guilt kept him awake at night. When he'd gone home from the hospital, he'd gone on a legendary bender. It hadn't helped the pain. Nothing had.

"They're recessing," Maxwell told him. "Let's talk to her."

Rodrigo followed him down the aisle to where the defense attorney was glaring at his opponent.

"And that's another lunch you owe me, Will." She chuckled.

"I could win cases if they'd lock you in a closet somewhere!"

"Watch it, Bailey," a tall man with silver eyes told the attorney with a grin, moving to stand beside Glory. "If you lock her up, I'll have to arrest you."

"You have no jurisdiction here, hotshot," Bailey chuckled. "And I'm not going near Jacobsville as long as you work there. Marquez has told me too much about you."

"Lies," Kilraven returned suavely. "I'm so sweet that people ask me to handcuff them when they break the law, just so they won't hurt my feelings."

"You wish," Glory laughed. "Let's get something to eat..."

"Miss Barnes?" Maxwell called.

She turned, her face radiant, and met Rodrigo's wide, shocked eyes.

15.

GLORY'S GREEN EYES LOST their radiance and went cold. She glared at her ex-husband so intently that DEA Agent Maxwell had to clear his throat to divert her.

"Maxwell, isn't it?" she asked, trying to collect herself. "What can I do for you?"

"You're prosecuting one of our cases in district court," he replied. "Mr. Ramirez here is the arresting federal officer. We'd like you to depose him. He's going to be out of the country during the trial, and his testimony will be crucial to our case."

Glory didn't want to talk to Rodrigo. She averted her eyes, thinking furiously. At her side, Kilraven's big, lean hand slid over hers and clasped it firmly. She glanced up at him and smiled gently. He almost read her mind sometimes.

"The case?" Rodrigo bit off. He didn't like the other man touching Glory.

Glory turned back to him. The smile was gone. "Which case is it?"

"The accused is a man named Vernon Redding," Maxwell volunteered. He was obviously puzzled by the undercurrents. He knew nothing about Rodrigo's connection to the a.s.sistant prosecutor.

"The Redding case." She thought for a minute. "Oh, yes, the smuggling charges. Reg Barton's handling that one," she said and thought, Thank G.o.d! "He takes a late lunch, so you can probably find him at our other office in the courthouse annex right now."

"Great. We'll go over there, then. Thanks. Good to see you again, Miss Barnes."

"Yes. Same here." She didn't look at Rodrigo. Her hand was still clinging to Kilraven's.

Rodrigo wanted to say more. He was still getting used to the idea that his dowdy ex-wife was this high-powered, elegant a.s.sistant prosecutor. She'd hidden this side of her life from him. She wasn't plain and she wasn't stupid. She obviously had a law degree. She was cultured and she dressed in a manner that would make any man proud to be seen with her. She was very attractive, with her hair in that becoming style. But she hated him and had no reservations about expressing it with her eyes. He felt the chill all over.

"It was good to see you again," Rodrigo said quietly.

"Was it? Pity I can't return the compliment," she said curtly. "I'd hoped that I'd never have to see you again as long as I lived."

He hesitated for a minute. Then, with a Latin shrug of his powerful shoulders and a quick glare at Kilraven, he turned and followed Maxwell out of the courtroom.

Glory sat down quickly. Her heart was going wild. She fought for each breath. "Get Haynes," she whispered.

Kilraven turned and walked briskly out the side door and down the hall. But he didn't have to go after Haynes, she was running toward him.

"She didn't take her medicine this morning!" she exclaimed breathlessly.

"I know."