Fearless (15 page)

R
ICK 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 attitude 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 nobody 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, rushing 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 rushing 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 hell 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 fishing line, nothing fancy, but every Saturday when he didn’t have to plow, we’d catch bass 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 hell 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.

M
ARQUEZ 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.

S
ARINA 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.

A
LL 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 assistant 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!”

S
HE 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 button. 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 button 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.”

“Why?” Glory asked coldly. “It won’t be Bernadette.”

Sarina’s eyes were compassionate. “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 friendship. 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.”

A
ND SHE DID
. S
HE 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 Saturday 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?

B
LISSFULLY 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 space 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-shirt 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!

H
E 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.

G
LORY 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.

L
UCK 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 God!” he exclaimed.

He pulled open the door, unfastened her seat belt, and carried her, as if she weighed nothing, to the passenger 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 flashing 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.