"Lord." Geoff growled.

Al shrugged and rose from her chair. "I am going to bed, if you will excuse me."

"Are you feeling well?" Geoff asked.

"No. I'm feeling pretty badly, actually."

Geoff levered himself up from the couch with a groan. His ribs were obviously

giving him a good deal of pain. He walked over to her. He touched her forehead. "You don't seem to have a fever. Do you need to go to the doctor?"

Al sighed. "Don't worry about it, Geoff. I'm not physically ill, just emotionally distressed. You are the one who should be in bed. You still have to be hurting from those cracked ribs ... I'm just mollycoddling myself."

Geoff smiled at her. "Pregnant women deserve to mollycoddle themselves."

"Well," I said, "I'll be going now. Sleep well, both of you."

"Thanks for everything, Phil," Geoff told me.

"I only wish that I could do more."

Al nodded negatively. "You've done everything that anyone could expect from you.

Thank you, Phil. You are a good friend."

I smiled at her, somewhat hesitantly. "If you need anything."

"When have you ever known me to be shy?" Al demanded.

I laughed. "Hang in there, kid. Sooner or later, he's going to slip up. When he does, I'll get him."

"Well," she said with more than a shade of malice, "one of us will."

*Chapter 30*

'The Diary, May 14'

The fools don't even realize that they can't have a private conversation in that house, or in any of their offices. They haven't found the transmitters I've hidden.

I've got the tapes of her saying how it is necessary to take out Raoul. Fool. Those tapes will be the nails in her coffin shortly.

This is almost too easy. She's running scared. The snake and the prop head did it. Now, she's beginning to know what I could do to her. And she's scared. But, not nearly as frightened as she's going to be before this is all over.

The kid is one of the last straws for her. And now she has another kid to think about, another b.a.s.t.a.r.d. It's almost funny.

So sanctimonious, so holy, so apart from the world. My how the mighty have fallen. But, she never was what she pretended to be.

She's got a couple of surprises coming yet. I almost wish that I could be there to watch her get what is coming to her. Justice is sweet. Revenge is sweeter.

Chapter 31*

'Geoff'

I paced the emergency room hall. I had brought her into the hospital with the help of one of the bodyguards who had carried her downstairs and had driven us here. I knew that I should have been waiting out in the waiting area. I wanted, needed, to be here if she needed me.

Doug Webb, the county sheriff, was pacing the same hall. One of his deputies had been shot during a 'routine' traffic stop in the county. The young man's prognosis was apparently not good. But, I was too concerned about 'Licia to spend much time thinking about Doug's problems.

'Licia was in the same treatment room where I had been only days before. The door was closed. Only two minutes ago, Ed Roby had gone inside.

Phil walked up behind me. "How is she?"

"I don't know. She's frightened."

"The baby?"

I nodded negatively. "G.o.d, Phil, she woke up bleeding and cramping. I'm scared to death. I can't lose her now. And if she loses that baby, I don't know what she will do. I don't know what this is going to do to her. I don't know how much more she can take."

Phil looked around to see if anyone was listening. No one was. "When she told me that she was pregnant, you could have knocked me over with a feather. You had a vasectomy before you asked Jan to marry you, twenty years ago."

"I had it reversed."

"I thought that after that long, it was almost impossible to do."

It is. But, I wasn't going to tell him that. Best friend or not, there are just some things that you don't tell anyone. "The specialists are doing marvelous things these days."

"She wanted this baby," Phil said after a moment.

"Sometimes, I think that she wanted the baby more than she wanted me," I admitted. Heaven knew that much was true. "G.o.d, Phil, I don't know how she is going to cope with this."

Phil just looked at me, totally at a loss for what to say.

Fortunately, Ed Roby chose that moment to come out of the treatment room. "We're taking her up right now for an emergency D&C. She's losing too much blood. Connie Yerke is on OB/GYN call tonight. She'll do the surgery."

"Then, she's lost the baby?"

"I'm sorry, Geoff," Ed said with compa.s.sion. "Spontaneous abortion at this stage of the game is usually nature's way of handling mistakes. And it happens far more often than most people want to think about. She was -- what -- less than a month into term?"

"Something like that." A pair of patient care workers entered the treatment room with a gurney. "Is there any reason that you know of that 'Licia and I couldn't try again?"

"Give her one normal cycle before you try again," Ed advised. "Sometimes, it takes a woman a while to begin to ovulate again after a pregnancy terminates. If you wait one cycle, it will be easier to track the pregnancy. I doubt that she's going to feel much like anything for a while."

The nurses wheeled 'Licia out of the treatment room. I didn't at all like the fact that 'Licia was almost paler than the white cotton pillowcase on which her head rested.

"'Licia," I said as I walked beside the gurney.

She opened her eyes and looked at me. "I'm sorry, Geoff. I'm so sorry."

"You've got nothing to be sorry about, sweetheart. This wasn't your fault. The only thing that you have to worry about, now, is getting yourself well. The wedding's in two weeks. Just remember how much I love you."

Fresh tears streamed down her face. "Stay with me."

"I'll be here. I'm not going anywhere."

"Call Father Dougla.s.s for me, please."

"I will, baby. Is there anything else that you want?"

She just held my hand as though it were her only anchor to reality. But, looking back on it, I'm not sure who was anch.o.r.ed to whom for that reality check. All I could think of was that she was, maybe, dying and that it was my fault.

I sat by her bedside waiting for her to awaken. My mind was entirely too full for me to be able to sleep.

If I hadn't made arrangements for the artificial insemination, she wouldn't be lying here now. She wanted children. That was one thing, nearly the only thing, she had wanted from our marriage. And that was one thing that I could never give her.

I had lied to her about the vasectomy having been reversed. It had only taken a reasonably small bribe to get the doctor to use donor sperm, from a healthy, relatively intelligent, blue-eyed, blond male, who had my blood-type, to inseminate 'Licia. I would have accepted and loved the child, if for no other reason than for the fact that the child would have tied 'Licia to me, in a way that nothing else could have ever done.

The ends would have justified the means. Or at least that was what I had told myself at the time. Now, I wasn't so sure. She would never forgive me, if she learned how I had conspired to fool her. Perhaps, this was just as well. Now, at least, we wouldn't have to be living a lie for the rest of our life. But, I hurt for her. She had wanted this child, so badly. And I had wanted it for her.

*Chapter 32*

'Phil'

As Geoff walked off down the hall with Al, I turned to Ed Roby. "What could have caused this?"

"More things than you want to know about. About half of the conceptions which take place end up spontaneously aborted. Often before a woman even knows that she is pregnant. There isn't anything that we can do most of the time," Ed Roby replied.

"I'm probably going to sound paranoid. Is there anyway of telling whether the miscarriage was induced?"

"Induced? Alicia would not do something like that to herself," Ed dismissed.

"But, there is someone who'd like to harm her. This seems to be a thing he would do. It's entirely too coincidental for my peace of mind."

Ed Roby looked at me for a long moment without saying anything. "You are a suspicious b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Phil Mallory."

I nodded tightly. "It's my job to be."

"I'll order a whole range of toxicological tests, just to be on the safe side. Will that make you happy?"

"Nothing about this makes me happy," I replied. "But, I need to know."

"Fine. I'll bill the department for the tests."

"Whatever. How serious is this?"

"Pretty serious. She's bleeding too much, far too much for this early of an abortion. You saw that I had started her on plasma. When we get her typed and cross-matched, she'll get at least two units of whole blood. But, we've got to get the bleeding stopped. If we don't get that under control, she'll die."

"Oh G.o.d..."

Geoff paced the floor in the surgical waiting room.

"She had most of a pot of peppermint tea before she went to bed," Geoff said in reply to my subtle questioning. Geoff was far too distraught to notice that he was being interrogated.

Connie Yerke was the community's only female obstetrician. Connie was five-foot-nine, a vivacious redhead, full of nervous energy. There wasn't an ounce of spare flesh on her runway thin frame. Occasionally, Geoff and Alicia had played mixed doubles tennis with Connie Yerke and her husband Larry. I always liked to see those matches. Talk about an immovable object versus an irresistible force. Neither team liked giving up a point.

"Geoff?" Connie asked.

"How is she?" my best friend asked.

"Sedated. We managed to stop the hemorrhaging with the D&C. I want to keep her under observation for twenty four hours, at least. Then if everything stabilizes, you can take her home Sunday morning."

Geoff sighed. "Thanks Connie."

"This is going to be rough on her, Geoff. Don't let her blame herself. These things often are for the best," Connie advised.

"Is there any problem with her becoming pregnant again?" Geoff asked. "You didn't find any physical problem?"

"Give her some time. But, no, she should be able to conceive again," Connie replied. "At her age, though, we should watch any pregnancy more closely. She hasn't been in for confirmation of the pregnancy."

"No. She has a friend who is a high-risk obstetrician in St. Louis. She went down to see him," Geoff answered. "She was concerned about her age being a factor."

Connie sighed. "I understand. I'm sorry, Geoff."

Geoff nodded. "How long will it be until she is back on her feet?"

"She lost a lot of blood, Geoff. More than she should have."

My ears perked up. "Why would that be?"