'Geoff'

At first, I thought it had been a joke.

A tape of 'Licia's voice and Phil's was in the mail drop at my office. I had played it, and wrote it off as another part of the psychological games being played with us by whoever was behind all this.

Yet, I couldn't put the taped conversation out of my mind. Had 'Licia slept with Phil? I couldn't believe that, yet, the doubt ate at me. Doubt and jealousy.

The caterer called me for a confirmation that the wedding reception had been called off. Then I had gone home, the bodyguards were there with their story of 'Licia dismissing them. Finally, I had found the note and the engagement ring.

As explanations went, this one was woefully inadequate. She had written that she was calling off the wedding. That she couldn't marry me, and she was sorry for all the trouble that this caused. However, she couldn't marry me because she didn't love me.

That last part was not unexpected. She had never professed to love me.

I went to look for her. She wasn't at her office. She wasn't at the motel, although she had checked in. The clerk said that she had seen 'Licia walking towards the Church.

Sure enough, there she was, on her knees with her old rosary in her hand.

"Just what do you think you are doing?" I demanded of her.

"I'm trying to pray," she told me as she rose from her knees and took a seat in the pew. "So, you just up and cancel the wedding without even talking to me about it," I demanded.

She sighed tightly. "It takes two to make a marriage. You deserve better than me. I can't be what you need, Geoff. I'm too broken."

"We can work it out, 'Licia," I told her.

"No, we can't. I tried to tell myself that we could. But, it won't work, Geoff. We'd just end up hating one another, living our own lives, and being coldly civil to each other. We both deserve more than that."

"Are you in love with Phil?" I demanded of her.

"That's not an issue, Geoff," she told me.

"I believe that it is. Are you sleeping with my best friend?" I demanded, my voice rising such that we were drawing the attention of the rest of the people in the Church. It was probably the best entertainment most of them had in some time. There was no helping it. The way gossip spread through this little town, the tale would be all over by tomorrow anyway.

"No!" she denied.

There was a time I thought I knew her. Now, I wasn't even sure if she was telling me the truth. All I knew is that there was nothing soft about her. She was as hard and resolute as I had ever seen her. It was over. There was nothing I could say to make this right.

"It's not you," she said, her voice full of pain. "Geoff, I just can't be the wife you need. I care about you too much to want you to be as miserable as you would be with me. You need a woman who loves you with all her heart. I don't. And I never will."

"At least, take back the bodyguards, 'Licia," I demanded.

She shook her head negatively. "No, Geoff. I have to face this. I have to draw this person out of hiding and make him strike at me openly. I can't do that unless I'm standing alone," she said. "And then it will be over. One way or another, it will be over."

"You are going to get yourself killed," I told her, trying to keep my horror out of my voice. She had to know how dangerous this was. She did know how dangerous this was. And it filled me with fear for her.

"That's a possibility," she told me, absolutely no emotion in her voice. "It's a real possibility. But it is going to end one way or another. At this point, I don't much care how it ends, as long as it ends."

"You don't mean that," I told her, unable to reconcile this cold woman with the kind and lovely 'Licia.

"Yes, I do," she said. "Now, if you'll excuse me, it's my turn to go to confession. There's a good chance I might not survive this. I need to get back into a state of grace."

She rose and walked to the now available confessional. I just watched her go. I put my head down on the pew and sighed. Then, I said a prayer for her safety and for her sanity.

With no other option, I left the Church. She had made her decision. She would have to live with it, or die with it.

I felt about a thousand years old.

Leaving the Church, I walked took off walking. I needed to clear my head and work off this anger. I walked past Glenna's clinic. She was just coming out.

She looked at me shyly. "h.e.l.lo, Geoff," she said.

"Glenna," I acknowledged.

She was uneasy, clearly wanting to say something. "Geoff," she began.

"Just spit it out, Glenna," I told her.

She smiled at me and sighed. "Oh, Geoffrey! I heard about the wedding. Come on, I'll buy you a coffee. Haven't I always been a sympathetic ear?"

"Yes," I said. "You have always been here for me. And I've always taken you for granted."

"Now, that's an improvement. Don't be too humble, Geoffrey, or I won't know what to do with you," she replied. "I still make a fine cup of coffee. Do you want to talk?"

"Do you want to listen?" I asked her.

She smiled at me. "I have broad, strong, shoulders, Geoff. Let me help you through this."

"A cup of coffee would be nice."

*Chapter 43*

'Alicia'

I tried to meditate on the psalms Father had a.s.signed me for my penance. But, the words kept swimming before my eyes.

I sank to my knees and buried my face in my hands as my forehead rested on the pew in front of me. I didn't want to die. When I made the decision to make myself this vulnerable, I had made it with my emotions frozen. Now, I was beginning to feel the fear again.

I heard someone slid into the pew beside me. The click of pistol being c.o.c.ked brought my head up and around.

The woman beside me appeared to be quite elderly, until I looked at her eyes. My breath caught in my throat. "Sarah?" I asked in a tone little over a whisper.

She reached into my waistband and removed my Walther and holster. With an economy of movements, she dropped the weapon into her own handbag. "You will come with me, now," she said lowly. "Do not call attention to yourself or you will die right here."

"You're going to kill me anyway," I told her lowly. "Where doesn't make a difference."

"Ah, but if you come with me quietly, I'll let the brat live," Sarah replied on a whisper.

"Joanie?"

"If you don't come with me right now and do exactly as I tell you, I will see that she dies. If I don't make a telephone call in the next two minutes, telling them that I have you, and that we are on our way, the brat dies. Now are you coming with me?" Sarah replied at a level which was not loud enough to draw attention.

I sighed. "I'll come." What choice did I have; certain death for at least one of either Joanie or I, or a chance that she might slip up enough to give me an advantage?

"My car is parked just outside. When we get there, you will drive. Any false move and I'll shoot you. And then the brat will get it between the eyes. Understand?" Sarah asked.

"Absolutely."

The car had been a driver-training vehicle. Sarah had dual controls for the brake and the ignition.

The only thing that I was grateful for was we had been seen. Sister Mary Clare had seen us. Realizing that she had seen us, I dropped my purse and bent over. Hopefully, Sister would have seen the gun in Sarah's hand when my body was out of the way. I only hoped that the good Sister had enough of her wits about her to report it.

Inside the car, Sarah started the car and turned on the air conditioning.

"Drive. Down Main Street, stay within the posted speed limits, do not draw attention to yourself, and then make a left onto Oak and drive out of town," she instructed, never taking either her eyes or her weapon from me.

I pulled up to a stop sign in front of the courthouse as Phil crossed from the probation office over to the courthouse. I knew that he had seen me. But, he gave no sign of that. I only hoped he understood something was very wrong.

The drive seemed as though it took forever. In reality it was only something more than about fifteen minutes from town, down winding country roads, to a run-down farm house.

It was a small house, probably originally a house for a hired hand. Most of the paint on the walls had long since perished. It was a lonely looking place. Rows of Osage Orange trees flanked the property. A scraggly overgrown stand of cherry and apple trees was on the Northeast. A garage leaned in on itself to the Southeast.

An ultralight plane put-putted overhead.

"Get inside," Sarah ordered as she waved the gun.

I decided to wait until I had a good opportunity to overpower her. If I could get the gun away from her, I knew that I would stand a decent chance. If she would get within striking range again, I would take the chance.

The interior of the little house was no better than the exterior. We went in through the back porch into a bare-bones kitchen. The cracks in the plaster had given way to great gapping holes all the way down to the lathe.

"Sit down, Sister," Sarah instructed.

A rickety wooden table and a pair of old chairs with nearly half the caning gone on the seats was the only furniture in the room. There wasn't even a refrigerator or stove.

"Eat out a lot?" I asked.

"Sit down!" she ordered. "It's time to die, Sister."

Sitting was the last thing I wanted. I needed the possibility of moving. "You don't want to do that, Sarah."

Sarah Quinn laughed, deep and rich. "Oh, I definitely do. I've lived for this moment for a very long time."

"Why, Sarah?"

"Why, Sister?" She cleared her throat, angrily, and brought out a tape recorder from her shoulder bag as she held on with one hand to the small pistol that was still trained on me.

"Is your tame police chief any good in bed?" she asked. "Is that why he has bent over backwards to give you an alibi for Raoul's death and for the brat's kidnapping? Are you that good in bed, Sister? But, no, you can't be. You aren't even sleeping with your loving fiancee. That man who is about to escape the fate of being married to you is almost as bad as you are. I was really tempted to let this happen. You both deserve one another."

"You're too late, if you want to stop the marriage. I broke of the engagement myself today," I told her.

"You're a liar. No one would walk away from that kind of money," Sarah stated. "I've hated you for years, more so lately because you've landed into a gracious life. It isn't fair. Evil should not triumph.

"You might be interested to know that the baby whom you lost wasn't Samson's. He can't father a child. But, he didn't tell you that. No, it was convenient for him to keep that information to himself." She pressed the play b.u.t.ton on the tape recorder.

"G.o.d, please, just let her live," Geoff's voice begged. "I swear that I'll tell her about the vasectomy and about how I bribed the doctor to do the artificial insemination switch. Just let her live. Please!"

Sarah shut off the tape.

"You have a talent for piecing together unrelated words and making new tapes out of them, don't you? That's how you put together the new telephone calls which I received, wasn't it?"

Sarah laughed boldly. "Sure. I took some courses in radio and television production when I was an undergraduate. I learned all about editing tapes."

"Why, Sarah? Why have you done this? If you are going to kill me, don't I deserve to know the reason?"

"You know the reason."

"No. I don't understand why you hate me this way. Why are you doing this to me, after all I have done for you?"

"Done to me, you mean! You seduced the man I loved and his brother. You killed both of them, lied about it, made yourself look like the heroine of the hour, seduced Raoul, then killed a nun, lied some more, and made almost three million dollars on royalties from the book that you wrote and the options for the screenplay. You ruined my life. Totally. You blew up my little problems into an excuse for your actions. Then you gave away the Hernandez baby!"

My mind boggled at the construction that she had placed on the events of my life.

"All you've done for me?" she shrieked. "Done for me? You haven't done s.h.i.t for me, Sister. Pretending to be holy and above reproach. Prepare for a painful eternity, Sister. If you don't believe in h.e.l.l, now, you will in a few minutes when you experience it first hand."

"Sarah. Just wait a minute. Remember the night that you came to the shelter? You were crying and afraid of Luis. You said that he wanted to kill you, remember? We gave you sanctuary."

"Sanctuary. Right. You called my parents and told them to come get me."

"You needed someone who loved you to look after you. You were fourteen, Sarah, and pregnant, living on the streets, with most of our money being taken from you by your pimp."

"They made me get an abortion. It wasn't bad enough that you killed Luis. But, they made me lose his baby, all that I had left of him. It's your fault. I loved him ... and you didn't care! You didn't care! For all your talk about love, you didn't love me. I can't forgive you for that. Your ruined my life, and you did it for your own gain."

"We did what we thought was best for you. None of us sought to profit by it."

"Yeah, right! Like suddenly everyone is an expert on what is best for Sarah. Luis would have come around. I had just told him that I was pregnant. Of course, he was upset. So what if he knocked me around a little. It wasn't the first time in my life that I was knocked around. You didn't have to kill him!"

"Did you kill Joanie?"

"The brat? No, she's still alive. Alive and sleeping off a large dose of Demerol. She's in the bedroom. She's been heavily sedated most of the time, except when we needed her awake. Raoul couldn't make the casts for the head we planted in your freezer, or the manikins we used for the video we sent her adoptive parents without her. I think that he got off on that. Getting even with you was the one thing that he lived for. Too bad that he also had to die for it."

"Do you really think that you can get away with this?"