Ralph was Dirk's antithesis. He was round, stout, and jolly. He was always cracking jokes, more to everyone's annoyance than amusement. When nervous, he jangled change. The coins in his pocket were getting a workout now. They rang as noisily as sleigh bells.

Neither of these men, to her knowledge, had ever professed to having a last name. She sensed that omission was to promote a friendly working relationship between them and their clients. As far as she was concerned, the gimmick didn't work.

Nelson took charge. "Eddy, please clarify what you just told us in the dining room."

Eddy went straight to the heart of the matter and turned to Avery. "Did you have an abortion?"

Her lips parted, but she couldn't utter a sound. Tate answered for her. "Yes, she did."

Zee jumped as if her slender body had just been struck with an arrow. Nelson's brows pulled together into a steep frown. Jack and Dorothy Rae only stared at Avery in stunned disbelief.

"You knew about it?" Eddy demanded of Tate.

"Yes."

"And you didn't tell anybody?"

"It wasn't anybody's business, was it?" Tate snapped furiously.

"When did this happen?" Nelson wanted to know. "Recently?"

"No, before the plane crash. Just before."

"Great," Eddy muttered. "This is just fuckin ' great."

"Mind your language in front of my wife, Mr. Paschal!" Nelson roared.

"I'm sorry, Nelson," the younger man shouted back, "but do you have any idea what this will do to the Rutledge campaign if it gets out?"

"Of course I do. But we have to guard against responding in a knee-jerk fashion. What good will flying tempers do us now?" After tempers had cooled, Nelson asked, "How did you find out about this. . .this abomination?"

"The doctor's nurse called headquarters this afternoon and asked to speak to Tate," Eddy told them. "He had already left, so I took the call. She said Carole had come to them six weeks pregnant and asked for a D and C to terminate pregnancy."

Avery sank down onto the padded arm of the sofa and folded her arms across her middle. "Do we have to talk about this with them in here?" She nodded toward the public relations duo.

"Beat it." Tate nodded them toward the door.

"Wait a minute," Eddy objected. "They have to know everything that's going on."

"Not about our personal lives."

"Everything, Tate," Dirk said. "Right down to the deodorant you use. No surprises, remember? Especially not unpleasant ones. We told you that from the beginning."

Tate looked ready to explode. "What did this nurse threaten to do?"

"Tell the media."

"Or?"

"Or we could pay her to keep quiet."

"Blackmail," Ralph said, playing a tune with the change in his pocket. "Not very original."

"But effective," Eddy said curtly. "She got my attention, all right. You might have rained everything, you know," he shot at Avery.

Trapped in her own lie, Avery had no choice now but to bear their scorn. She didn't care what any of the others thought of her, but she wanted to die when she thought of how betrayed Tate must feel.

Eddy strode to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a straight scotch. "I'm open to suggestions."

"What about the doctor?" Dirk asked him.

"The nurse doesn't work for him anymore."

"Oh?" Ralph stopped jingling coins. "How come?"

"I don't know."

"Find out."

Avery, who had given the sharp command, came to her feet. She saw only one way to redeem herself in Tate's eyes and that was to help get him out of this mess. "Find out why she no longer works for the doctor, Eddy. Maybe he fired her for incompetency.''

"He? It's a woman doctor. Jesus, don't you even remember?"

"Do you want my help with this or not?" she fired back, bluffing her way through a dreadful error. "If the nurse has been fired, she wouldn't be a very believable extortionist, would she?"

"Carole's got something there," Ralph said, glancing around the circle of grave faces.

"You got us into this jam," Eddy said, advancing on Avery. "What do you plan to do, brazen it out?"

"Yes," she said defiantly.

She could almost hear the wheels of rumination turning throughout the room. They were giving it serious consideration.

Zee broke the silence. "What if she has your medical records?"

"Records can be falsified, especially copied ones. It would still be my word against hers."

"We can't lie about it," Tate said.

"Why the hell not?" Dirk demanded.

Ralph laughed. " Lying'spart of it, Tate. If you want to win, you've got to lie more convincingly than Rory Dekker, that's all."

"If I become a senator, I've still got to look myself in the mirror every morning," Tate said, scowling.

"I won't have to lie. Neither will you. No one will ever know about the abortion." Avery stepped in front of Tate and laid her hands on his arms. "If we call her bluff, she'll back down. I can almost guarantee that no local television station would listen to her, especially if she has been dismissed from the doctor's staff."

If the nurse took her story to Irish McCabeaand KTEX would probably be her first choice, because it had the highest ratingsahe would nip the story in the bud. If she took it someplace else. . .

Avery suddenly turned to Eddy and asked, "Did she say she had someone to corroborate her story?"

"No."

"Then no credible journalist would break it."

"How the hell would you know?" Jack asked from across the room.

"I sawAll the President's Men."

"The tabloids would print it without corroboration."

''They might," she said, "but they have no credibility whatsoever. If we nobly ignored a scandalous story like that, readers would consider it a sordid lie."

"Whatifit got leaked to Dekker's staff? He'd blast it from Texarkana to Brownsville."

"What if hedid?"Avery asked. "It's an ugly story. Who would believe I'ddo such a thing?"

"Why did you?"

Avery turned to Zee, who had asked the simple question. She looked stricken, suffering for her son's sake. Avery wished she could provide her with a satisfactory answer to her question, but she couldn't.

"I'm sorry, Zee, but that's between Tate and me," she said finally. "At the time, it seemed like the thing to do."

Zee shuddered with repugnance.

Eddy didn't care about the sentimental aspects of their dilemma. He was pacing the rug. "God, Dekker would love to have this plum. He's got the zealous pro-lifers in his back pocket already. They're fanatics. I hazard to think what he could do with this. He'd paint Carole as a murderess."

"It would look like he was slinging mud," Avery said, ''unless he can prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, which he can't. Voter sympathy would swing our way."

Dirk and Ralph looked at each other and shrugged in unison. Dirk said, "She's brought up some valid points, Eddy. When you hear from the nurse again, call her bluff. She's probably grasping at straws and will scare easily."

Eddy gnawed his inner cheek. "I don't know. It's chancy."

"But it's the best we can do." Nelson got up from hisseat and extended a hand down to Zee. "Y'all sort out the rest of this ugliness.Inever want to hear it mentioned again." Neither he or Zee deigned to look at Avery as they went out.

Dorothy Rae headed for the liquor cabinet. Jack was glaring so malevolently at his brother's wife that he didn't notice or try to stop her.

Apparently, no one in the family had known about Carole's pregnancy and abortion until tonight. This development had come as a shock to everyone, even to Avery, who hadn't known for certain herself and had lost by gambling on no one ever finding out.

"You got any more skeletons rattling around in your closet?"

Tate spun around and confronted his brother with more anger than Avery had ever seen him exhibit for anyone in his family. His hands were balled into fists at his sides. "Shut up, Jack."

"Don't tell him to shut up," Dorothy Rae cried, slamming the vodka decanter back onto the cabinet. "It's not his fault your wife's a slut."

"Dorothy Rae!"

"Well, isn't she, Jack? She got rid of a baby on purpose, while mine. . .mine. . ." Tears welled up in her eyes. She turned her back to the room.

Jack blew out his breath, lowered his head, and mumbled, "Sorry, Tate."

He went to his weeping wife, placed his arm around her waist, and led her from the room. For all the aversion she felt toward Jack, Avery was touched by this kind gesture. So was Dorothy Rae. She gazed up at him with gratitude and love.

Dirk and Ralph, impervious to the family drama, had been talking between themselves. "You'll sit this trip out," Dirk told Avery peremptorily.

"I second that," Eddy said.

"That's up to Tate," she said.

His face was cold and impassive. "You stay."

Tears were imminent, and she'd be damned before she cried in front of Dirk, his sidekick, and the indomitable iceman, Eddy Paschal. "Excuse me."

Proudly, but quickly, she walked out. Tate followed her from the room. He caught up with her in the hallway and brought her around to face him. "There's just no limit to your deceit, is there, Carole?"

"I know it looks bad, Tate, buta"

"Bad?"Bitter and incredulous, he shook his head. "If you'd already done it, why didn't you just own up to it? Why tell me there'd never been a child?"

"Because I could see how much it was hurting you."

"Bullshit. You saw how much it was hurting you!"

"No," she said miserably.

"Call her bluff. No corroborating witness. Falsified records," he said, quoting her previous suggestions. "If you got caught, you had your escape route all thought out, didn't you? How many other tricks have you got up your sleeve?"

"I made those suggestions so you'd be protected. You, Tate."

"Sure you did." His lips curled with cynicism. "If you'd wanted to do something for me you wouldn't have had an abortion. Better yet, you wouldn't have gotten pregnant in the first place. Or did you think a baby would be your ticket to Washington?"

He released her suddenly, flinging off his hands as though he couldn't bear to touch her. "Stay out of my way. I can't stand the sight of you."

He returned to the living room, where his advisers were waiting for him. Avery slumped against the wall and covered her mouth with her hands to hold back the sobs.

In another attempt to atone for Carole's sins, she had only driven Tate farther away.

The following morning, Avery woke up feeling groggy. Her head was muzzy, and her eyes were swollen and stinging from crying herself to sleep. Pulling on a light robe, she stumbled toward the bathroom.

As soon as she cleared the door, she flattened herself against the wall and, with horror, read the message that had been written on the mirror with her own lipstick.

Stupid slut. You almost ruined everything.

Fear held her paralyzed for several moments, then galvanized her. She ran to the closet and dressed hastily. Pausing only long enough to wipe the message off the mirror, she fled the room as through chased by demons.

It took only a few minutes in the stable for her to saddle a horse. She streaked across the open pasture at a full gallop, putting distance between her and the lovely house that harbored such treachery. Even though the sun's first rays warmed her skin, goose bumps broke out on Avery's arms when she thought of someone sneaking into her bedroom while she slept.

Perhaps Irish and Van were right. She was certifiably insane to continue with this charade. She might pay with her life for another woman's manipulations. Was any story worth that? It was foolish not to leave before she was discovered.