He placed his arms around her and lifted her into a sitting position, hugging her close to his rain-soaked chest. "I'm here, Marcie.
He can't bother you now. Not anymore. Never."
"Is she all right?" Pat hunkered down beside him.
"I think so. Just scared."
"Is she cut? There's glass all over the place.
Apparently she broke out the light."
Chase smiled as he smoothed back strands of red-gold hair from her damp forehead.
"That's my girl. Always smart. Always resourceful."
"Chase?"
He bent his head down, bringing his face close to hers. Even pale and disheveled she looked beautiful.
"Hmm?"
"Get me to the hospital."
"The hospital?"
"I'm bleeding."
His eyes moved over her face, her chest, her exposed midriff, but he saw no trace of blood.
"She's probably cut her hands and knees on the glass," Pat said.
"No, it's not that. Get me to the hospital now," she said, her anxiety increasing. "Hurry, please."
"Marcie, I know you're scared. You've come through—"
"Chase, I'm bleeding vaginally." Her tearful eyes found his. She pulled her lower lip through her teeth.
"I'm pregnant."
It was still raining. Chase looked beyond his own reflection in the window out into the dark, forlorn night. He saw the reflections of his brother and Pat Bush as they approached him, but he didn't turn away from the window until Pat spoke his name.
"I just got back from the courthouse," the sheriff said. "I thought you'd want to know that Harrison is in jail. He'll be arraigned first thing in the morning."
"For assault?"
"Murder one."
Chase's gut knotted. Was this their way of informing him that Marcie had died? He slowly pivoted on his heels. "What?" he croaked.
"I dispatched some men to his house. They found his wife. She'd been dead for several hours. He strangled her with his bare hands.
Allegedly," Pat added, remembering his role as a fair and impartial officer of the law.
Chase dragged his hand down his face, stretching the tired, strained features. "Dear Lord."
"Marcie had good reason to be scared of him," Pat said. "Even over the telephone she sensed he was more than just a casual phone freak. I feel like hell for doubting her."
Chase was still too stunned to speak. Lucky squeezed the older man's shoulder. "Don't worry about that now, Pat. You couldn't guess that he was going to carry out his threats.
You were there tonight when Marcie needed you." He glanced over his shoulder toward the waiting room at the opposite end of the corridor. "I think Mother and Sage could use you for moral support right now. And vice versa."
"Sure. Chase, if you need me… for anything
… just holler." Chase nodded. Pat ambled off, leaving the two brothers alone.
For a moment they said nothing. Chase couldn't think of anything appropriate to say.
He felt hollow. There were no words inside him.
Lucky broke the silence. "Sage made the trip safely."
"So I see. I'm glad she's here."
"She arrived in a mood to celebrate. We had to break the news about Marcie. She started crying. When you feel up to it, she'd like to say hello. Right now, she thinks you'd rather be left alone. Is she right?"
"I don't feel much like talking."
"Sure."
Lucky turned away, but had only taken a few steps when Chase reached out and touched his arm. "I'm sorry this has put a pall on your daughter's birthday."
"It sure as hell wasn't your fault things turned out the way they did. The culprit is in jail. Blame it on him."
Chase's fists flexed at his sides. "He could have killed her, Lucky."
"But he didn't."
"If I hadn't gotten there—"
"But you did. Everybody's safe now."
They didn't mention the baby that Marcie was carrying. There might yet be another casualty of Ralph Harrison's violent madness.
Lucky's first child had been born; Chase's second child might die on the same day. He couldn't bear thinking about it.
"Anyway," he said emotionally, "I hate like hell that this had to happen today of all days."
"Forget that part of it. You've got enough on your mind without worrying about that."
The things on his mind were about to drive him crazy. To stave it off he asked, "How's Devon feeling?"
"How do you think? Like she just had a
baby. I told her I knew how she felt. I thought she was going to come out of that bed and slug me." He chuckled in spite of the somber mood.
Chase forced a half smile. "The, uh, baby." he said huskily, "how is she?"
"Fine, even though she was several weeks early. The pediatrician checked her out. He wants to monitor her closely for the next few days, but he says her reflexes are normal, lungs and everything seemed well developed."
He broke into a wide grin. "She's squalling loud enough."
"That's good, Lucky. That's real good."
Chase's throat closed tightly around the lump stuck in it. He cleared it self-consciously and blinked gathering tears out of his eyes.
Lucky placed a consoling hand on his shoulder.
"Look, Chase, Marcie's going to be okay.
And so's the baby. I know it. I feel it. Have I
ever steered you wrong?"
"Plenty of times."
Lucky frowned with chagrin. "Well, not this time. You wait and see."
Chase nodded, but he wasn't convinced.
Lucky stared at him hard, trying by sheer willpower to inspire optimism and faith. The last couple of years Chase's confidence in good fortune had been shaken. Today's events had merely confirmed his skepticism in the benevolence of fate.
Lucky left him to join the rest of the family huddled in the waiting room. The nursing staff had become well acquainted with the
Tylers since dusk that day. They now had two
Mrs. Tylers in the obstetric ward. One of the nurses was passing around fresh coffee.
Chase turned his back on the well-lighted corridor, feeling more in harmony with the dismal gloom beyond the window.
I'm pregnant.
At first he had just stared into Marcie's anxious blue eyes. Unable to move, unable to speak, unable to think beyond that word, he had mutely gaped at her. Then Pat's elbow had nudged him into awareness.
"Chase, did you hear her?"
Adrenaline assumed control. He scooped
Marcie into his arms and carried her past the shattered bedroom door. Pat put two deputies in charge of Harrison and the house on
Sassafras Street. He followed Chase through the vacant rooms. "I'll call an ambulance."
"Screw that. I'll make it faster driving myself."
"Like hell you will. And kill yourself, or innocent people? Forget it. If you won't wait for an ambulance, put her in the patrol car.
I'll drive you."
So he had held Marcie on his lap in the backseat of the patrol car behind the wire mesh that separated them from Pat. He turned on all the emergency lights and the siren. At intervals he spoke into his police radio transmitter, informing the emergency room staff that they were on their way. Windshield wipers clacked in vain against the torrential rain.
The ride to the hospital had taken on a sur
real quality to Chase, as though he were watching it from outside his own body.
Because he hadn't wasted time on getting an umbrella, rain had left Marcie's hair damp.
There were drops of it beaded on her face and throat. Pat must have retrieved her blouse because Chase didn't remember picking it up.
He wrapped her torso in it but didn't bother with working her arms into the sleeves or fastening the buttons. He kept touching her hair, her pale cheek, her throat. She continued staring up at him with tearful and wary eyes. They said nothing to each other.
At the entrance to the emergency room she was whisked away on a gurney. "Who's her o.b.?" the resident on duty asked. Everyone looked at Chase expectantly.
"I… I don't know."
Admitting her to the hospital was a seemingly endless procedure of questions and forms to be filled out.
Once it was done, he returned to the emergency room. There he was informed that Marcie had been transferred upstairs to the maternity ward and that her doctor was on his way.
Before the gyn even examined Marcie, he asked Chase pertinent questions relating to the attack. "To your knowledge was she raped?"
Feeling bereft, numb, he shook his head no.
"Did he even attempt penetration?"
"I don't think so," he said, barely able to get the words out.
The doctor patted his arm reassuringly. "I'm sure she'll be all right, Mr. Tyler."
"What about the baby?"
I'll let you know."
But he hadn't. And that had been almost two hours ago. Pat had had time to go to the courthouse and deal with Harrison and come back, and still there had been no word on the conditions of Marcie and the baby.
What the hell was taking so long?
Had they had trouble stopping the bleeding?
Was there hemorrhaging? Had she been rushed into surgery? Was her life in danger as well as the child's?
"No." Chase didn't realize he had moaned the word out loud until he heard the sound of his own voice, pleading with fate, pleading with God.
Marcie couldn't die. She couldn't. She had become too important to him. He couldn't lose her now that he had just come to realize how important she was to him.
He remembered something that Lucky had asked him earlier that afternoon. That afternoon?
It seemed eons ago. Lucky had asked,
"What's the single worst thing that could happen to you. Chase? The worst possible thing?"
Perhaps he had known the answer to that question then. Devon's phone call had prevented him from having to deal with it at the time, but now he repeated the question to himself.
The answer was full-blown and well-defined in his mind. After losing Tanya, after losing their child, the worst possible thing that could happen to him was to love again.
Almost anything else he could have han
died. A drinking problem. Getting seriously hurt by bull riding, perhaps permanently injured, perhaps killed. Professional and personal bankruptcy.
Whatever misfortune fate might have hurled at him, he could take because he had reasoned that he didn't deserve anything better.
Partially blaming himself for Tanya's death, he had pursued self-punishment. He had cultivated calamity like a twisted gardener who preferred weeds to flowers. Nothing that could happen to him could be worse than losing his family—nothing except loving another one.
That he couldn't deal with.
He couldn't handle caring about another woman again. He couldn't handle another woman's loving him.
He couldn't handle making another baby.
He banged his fist against the cool, tile hospital wall and pressed his forehead against it.
Eyes closed, teeth clenched, he battled acknowledging what he knew to be the truth.
He had fallen in love with Marcie. And he couldn't forgive himself for it.
Acting a fool, he had rejected her when she needed him most. He had turned his back on her when she was pregnant and frightened.
And why? Pride. No man liked to feel that he'd been manipulated, but the business about the house now seemed more an act of love than manipulation. He'd just been too mule-headed to accept what was so plain and simple.
Marcie loved him. He loved her.
If that was his worst crime, was it so terrible?
He examined the sin from all angles, even from Tanya's viewpoint. She wouldn't have wanted it any differently. Her capacity to love had been so enormous that she would have been the first one to encourage him to love again if she had seen what their fate was to be.
Why was he fighting it? What had he done that was so despicable? Why was he continuing to punish himself? He had fallen in love with a wonderful woman who, miraculously, loved him. What was so bad about that?
Nothing.
He raised his head and turned. At the end of the corridor the obstetrician was coming out of Marcie's room. Chase moved toward him, his long strides eating up the distance between them, gaining speed and momentum as he went.
"Listen, you," he said harshly before the doctor had a chance to speak, "save her life.
Hear me?" He backed the startled physician into the wall. "I don't care if it costs ten million dollars, do whatever is necessary to make her live. You got that, Doc? Even if it means…" He stopped, swallowed with an effort, then continued in a rougher voice, "Even if it means destroying the baby, save my wife."
"That won't be necessary, Mr. Tyler. Your wife is going to be fine."
Chase stared at him, unwilling to believe it.
The fortunate twist of fate took him totally by surprise. "She is?"
"And so is the baby. When she fell over the
sawhorse, a vaginal blood vessel burst. It was weakened and under unusual pressure due to her pregnancy. There wasn't much bleeding, but enough to alarm Mrs. Tyler. Rightfully so.
"We've cauterized it. I did a sonogram just to make certain that everything was okay, and it is. The fetus wasn't affected in any way." He hitched his thumb over his shoulder toward the room from which he'd just emerged. "She insisted on taking a shower. A
nurse is helping her with that now. When she's done, you can go in and see her. I recommend a few days of bed rest. After that, she should experience a perfectly normal pregnancy."
Chase mumbled his thanks for the information.
The doctor moved to the nurses' station and left instructions, then departed. Chase's family surrounded him. Laurie was weeping copiously. Sage was doing her share of sniveling.
Pat was wiping nervous perspiration off his forehead with a handkerchief and mercilessly chewing a matchstick.
Lucky slapped Chase soundly on the back.
"Didn't I tell you? Huh? When are you gonna start trusting me?"
Chase fielded their expressions of relief with what he hoped were the correct responses, but his eyes were trained on the hospital room door. As soon as the nurse came out, he excused himself and rushed inside.
The single, faint night-light behind the bed shone through Marcie's hair, making it the only spot of vibrancy in the shadowed room.
Its magnetism drew him across the floor until he stood at her bedside.
"History repeats itself," she said. "I remember another time when you came to see me in the hospital."
"You look better now than you did then."
"Not much."
"Much."