“Are you still bleeding?”

“Some. I think I’ve already expelled the…” Unable to bring herself to say it, she ended with “I think the worst of it is over.”

“So, you’re going to be okay?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m sorry I caused you this delay.”

“Delay?”

“Manuelo.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Do you know how to get to Itasca?”

He looked at her like he didn’t understand the question, then said, “South on 35 out of Fort Worth. I’ll find it.”

“How long will it take you?”

“I don’t know. Hour and a half maybe.”

“And if you do find Manuelo, how are you going to convince him to come back with you? He doesn’t even speak English.”

“I’ll make myself understood.”

“He’ll be scared. When he sees you, God knows what he’ll do.”

“I can take care of myself. Can you?”

“I’ll be all right.”

“Can I get you anything before I go?”

“I can’t think of anything.”

He turned his head away. “Yeah, okay.” He was speaking in a clipped voice, lightly slapping his palms against the outsides of his thighs, anxious to be away. “I would stay, except-”

“No, you must go. Actually, I’d prefer to be alone right now.”

“Sure. Understandable.” He plowed his fingers through his hair and walked in a tight circle, then whipped the bedspread back. “Lie down. Sleep.”

“I will. Be careful.”

“Yeah.”

He turned abruptly and left the room, pulling the door closed, not loudly but soundly. She heard the door connecting the hallway to the living room being opened, then shut.

Knowing she was finally alone, she sagged under the weight of her heartache. She lay down on the bed, turned onto her side, and drew herself into a tight ball. Then, burying her face in the pillow, she opened the floodgate that had been tenuously holding back her emotions.

Her sobs were so intense, they shook her whole body. So when the mattress dipped, she didn’t trust herself to believe that he had come back. She didn’t let herself accept it until she felt his hand stroking her shoulder and heard his whispered “Shh, shh.”

He’d made it as far as the back door. He’d even taken hold of the doorknob. His future, possibly his life, depended on finding Manuelo Ruiz before Rodarte did. It was in his best interest to leave now, drive as fast as he could to that dot on the map, and rout out the only individual in the world who could save him from being convicted of murdering Foster Speakman.

Besides that, Laura had rejected his help. She’d practically pushed him out the door. No mystery there. It was his fault that she’d lost the baby. Earlier tonight, when she told him it was for real, that she was pregnant, he’d thought: Finally. For the first time in his life, he’d done something right and good.

He should have known that it wouldn’t last, that he would somehow mess it up. Anyway, it was over. The baby was lost, and there was nothing he could do about it now.

Go! Go! Turn the freaking doorknob.

He was moving back through the living room before he fully realized he’d made an about-face. He heard her sobs when he opened the door into the hallway. The sight of her huddled inside the pink robe, weeping into the pillow, made his heart feel like something had pinched it, hard.

He lay down behind her and touched her shoulder. “Shh, shh.”

“You need to go,” she moaned.

“No, I need to be here with you. I want to be.” Placing his arm across her waist, he scooped her back against him.

“You can’t let Rodarte-”

“I can’t leave you. I won’t.” He pressed his face into the nape of her neck. “I’m sorry, Laura. God, I’m so sorry.”

“Please stop saying that, Griff. Stop thinking it. This wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was nature’s way of saying something wasn’t right. I was only seven weeks pregnant. It wasn’t even a baby yet.”

“It was to me.”

She raised her head. Her swimming eyes found his. Then with a long, mournful sound, she turned toward him and pressed her face against his chest. His arms went around her, drawing her to him, holding her close, tucking her head beneath his chin. He sank his fingers into her hair and massaged her scalp.

She wept and he let her. It was a female thing, a maternal thing. The tears were essential, cleansing, as necessary for healing as the bleeding. He didn’t know how in hell he knew that. He just did. Maybe in times of crisis, you were graced with superior insight like that.

When her crying finally subsided, she tilted her head back against his biceps. “Thank you for coming back.”

“I couldn’t leave.”

“I didn’t want you to.”

“You pushed me away.”

“To keep myself from begging you to stay.”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

He looked deeply into her eyes. “They’re pretty.”

“What?”

“Your eyes. When you cry, your eyelashes stick together in dark spikes. They’re pretty.”

She gave a soft laugh and sniffed. “Yes, I’m sure I look radiant right now. But I appreciate the sweet talk anyway.”

“It’s not sweet talk. I don’t make sweet talk.”

She hesitated a moment, then tucked her face back into his neck. “You’ve never had to. Have you?”

“I never wanted to.”

“With Marcia?”

“She was paid to sweet-talk me.”

“And with me, it certainly wasn’t necessary. With or without it, you were being paid.”

He placed his finger beneath her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Do you think that on that last day I was thinking about the money? Or making a baby? No. I broke every speed limit to get there for only one reason, to see you. That afternoon had nothing to do with anything except you and me. You know that, Laura. I know you do.”

Slowly, she nodded.

“Well, good.” They smiled gently at each other.

She was the first to speak. “You’re not rotten.”

He laughed. “We’re back to that?”

“Did you ever look for your parents? What happened to them after they abandoned you? Do you know?” He didn’t say anything for such a long time that she said, “Forgive the questions. You don’t have to talk about it.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s just ugly.”

But she continued to look into his eyes, hers inquiring.

He supposed she was entitled to know just how ugly it was. “My old man died of alcoholism before he was fifty. I tracked my mother to Omaha. Right before I checked in to Big Spring to start serving my sentence, I worked up enough nerve to call her. She answered. I heard her voice for the first time in, hmm, fifteen years.

“She said hello again. Impatiently, like you do when you answer the phone and the caller doesn’t say anything but you can hear them breathing. I said, ‘Hey, Mom. It’s Griff.’ Soon as I said that, she hung up.” Although he’d tried to form a callus around it, the pain of that rejection was still sharp.

“It’s funny. When I was playing ball, I used to wonder if she knew I’d become famous. Had she caught me on TV, seen my picture on a product or in a magazine? I wondered if she watched the games and told her friends, ‘That’s my son. That Pro Bowl quarterback is my kid.’ After that call, I didn’t have to wonder anymore.”

“Your call caught her off guard. Maybe she just needed some time to-”

“I thought the same thing. Glutton for punishment, I guess. So I hung on to that phone number. For five years. I called it a few weeks ago. This guy answered, and when I asked for her, he told me she’d died two years ago. She had a lot of pulmonary problems, he said. Died slow. Even knowing she was going to die, she made no attempt to contact me. Truth is, she simply never gave a shit about me. Not ever.”

“I’m sorry, Griff.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters. I know how bad it hurts. My mother abandoned me, too.” She told him about her father. “He was a real-life hero, like a character in the movies. His death shattered Mom and me, but eventually I recovered. She didn’t. Her depression became debilitating, to the point where she wouldn’t even get out of bed. Nothing I said or did made her better. She didn’t want to get better. One day she put herself out of her misery. She’d used one of Daddy’s pistols and left herself for me to find.”