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  In mid-July, Joe asked her to spend a weekend with him in Corpus Christi. Joe would be going to San Angelo State College with the Outlaws for over a month of training camp. With the prospect of a prolonged absence looming, Madison could no longer hold back. For all her cautious ways, Madison McCall was as passionate and sensual as any woman. When Joe asked that they spend an entire weekend together at a beach condo outside the Texas coastal town, she agreed. That weekend, the only beach they saw was from the terrace that overlooked the ocean from their bedroom. As much as Madison now despised Joe Thurwood, she would never regret, or forget, that weekend. Total physical pleasure, ecstasy like she had never known before or since.

  And nine months later, her beautiful son, Jo-Jo, whom she loved more than anyone or anything in her entire life, was born.

  It was mid-August when Madison knew she was pregnant. She had taken precautions, but again, fate intervened. She was scared when she found out, and she felt all alone. She wanted to tell Joe in person. Her first opportunity came after the Outlaws had played an exhibition game against the Cowboys in Dallas. Madison said she needed to talk to him, and Joe had gotten permission from the team to stay overnight in Dallas.

  The players didn't have to report back to camp until the next night. It was their first day off since training camp had begun in late July, so Joe was more than happy to spend it with his new lover. It was midnight before he gimped out of the locker room, sore from a bruised thigh he'd acquired earlier in the week during practice and exacerbated in the game. Joe was cranky from exhaustion and pain, and although Madison understood, she was impatient to be alone with him to talk. Joe wanted to be alone too, but not for talking. He'd been cooped up at Angelo State for a month, and although he'd bedded several groupies who had haunted the camp, he was anxious to get his beautiful new trophy on her back without any complications or discussion. When they got to his hotel room, he groped at her the minute they stepped inside the room and actually tore her blouse.

  That was Madison's first glimpse of a side of Joe that would soon come to define his entire character. In tears she told him she was pregnant. He tolH her she'd have to have an abortion. Madison screamed that she would never d<*>> r*, then she collapsed onto the bed, sobbing. Joe calmed her and gently tc!d her that he loved her, but it was three a. M. when he finally gave up hope of convincing her to abort the baby.

  Joe Thurwood knew when he was beaten. One thing he would not do was father a child out of wedlock. Marriage was something he'd planned on one day anyway, and on that night he couldn't imagine a better mother for his children than this beautiful and spirited law student. In a way that he thought was gallant and magnanimous, Joe Thurwood announced that they would get married. Madison, exhausted and confused in a way that she had never been before in her life, surrendered herself, physically and emotionally, into Joe Thurwood's arms. They made love then, over and over, until they finally collapsed as the sun began to rise. Later that day they made hasty arrangements. The next Saturday, the day the Outlaws broke training camp and returned to Austin for the season, Madison and Joe married in civil ceremony in Corpus Christi. Their honeymoon was spent in the same seaside condo in which they had conceived their son. By then, things were already different. The gallantry was gone and, although the difference in his treatment of her was slight, Madison had a sinking and unshakable feeling that she had gone from the role of damsel to bed wench in one short week.

  When Madison returned to school the next week, she quietly let it be known that she had married Joe Thurwood in mid-May, right after finals for the spring semester. She hadn't lied for herself as much as for the son she would bear. No one was surprised. Madison had always been the private type who would keep even her own wedding confidential. Everyone already knew that the football star was madly in love with her. All her classmates had seen him waiting for her after classes in his red Porsche Carerra. It had been the talk of the law school last semester. Madison successfully sold the lie to her close friend and classmate Marty Cahn. They had spent all spring slaving for a huge firm in Manhattan, and she hadn't spoken a word of her new relationship or condition until fall. Marty was crushed but determined not to let his disappointment separate him from the girl he secretly loved. If he couldn't be her lover, at least he could be there as her friend. Marty was smart enough to figure that Madison would need him later on. When she did need him, he intended to be there.

  And Marty had been right. After six years of Joe's infidelity and the vociferous arguments that characterized their marriage, Madison finally called it quits. She knew that the only thing worse than a single-parent home for Jo- Jo was a dysfunctional family environment. Like every football player, Joe had gotten old and battered during all the years of his playing. He was replaced by younger and healthier men. No longer the toast of the town, Joe became belligerent and vicious toward a wife who was not only the family's breadwinner but a respected member of the community. Madison gritted her teeth and tolerated the drinking and even the cocaine, but when Joe took his first swing at her, she put the legal system she knew so well into motion and quickly stripped Joe Thurwood of what he considered his last remaining possessions: his home, his wife, and his son. That had been only two years ago. After a humiliating series of newspaper articles chronicling the complete demise of the local superstar, Joe Thurwood, angry and privately vowing revenge, had disappeared. Madison heard rumors that he returned to his hometown, a small farming community in Iowa, but for almost two years, she had not seen or heard from her ex-husband.

  Marty, as he had intended to so many years ago, stepped into Madison's life and was the kind of stalwart friend she needed in a crisis. He maintained an even keel through it all. He stayed by her side, sleeping on her couch like some lanky, underfed guard dog, through the divorce proceedings and custody hearings. Madison was scared of Joe and what he might do. He had openly threatened her and Marty, whom Joe resented for helping Madison. This only stiffened Marty's resolve to help Madison to secure exclusive custody of Jo-Jo.

  Marty not only allowed Madison a more peaceful sleep at night, he made breakfast in the mornings, dinner in the evenings, and got close to Jo-Jo. But that had been almost two years ago. With Big Joe's absence, things settled down. Madison and Jo-Jo adjusted, and Marty felt that things were normal enough in everyone's life now for him to state his intentions to Madison, ff pressed for a candid answer, Marty would have admitted that he felt he had earned the right to court the woman he had loved for so long.

  Marty's one consolation was that before Madison and Joe separated, she had convinced her husband to allow Marty to negotiate what would be the last contract of his NFL career. Although he studied tax law as a practical matter, it had always been Marty's dream to represent the elite athletes of the NFL. He got Joe a great deal in an age before free agency made big deals the rule rather than the exception,- and although Joe did everything he possibly could to squander the money on bad oil and real estate deals, Marty's craliy negotiating had assured that at least there was a lot to spend. That deal, and Marty's subsequent successes at the negotiating table throughout the NFL, had resulted in a small stable of top-rated players. Marty, ever pragmatic, continued to devote most of his efforts to the less glamorous but steady work of tax lawyering. But the agency work was Marty's prize accomplishment. The deals he did for football players were embarrassingly easy, but they gave Marty a direct tie to the macho, physical world of the NFL. Everyone who knew Marty knew that this work and his friendship with Madison were the pride of his life.

  Marty pushed his plate away untouched and signaled their waiter for the check. "I'd give everything I have to have never had you marry that animal."

  "Don't, Marty." Berating her ex-husband served no purpose. "What is done is done."

  "It's true, Madison," he said, holding his hands up in surrender. "It's true."

  Madison stared out at the fountain in the park, lost in her thoughts and the white noise of it's steady spray. "He's back," Madison said, as if
she was hypnotized.

  "What?" Marty said, stiffening as if someone had doused him with a bucket of ice water. "Who?"

  Madison's eyes came into focus. She turned and stared intensely at Marty while reaching inside the breast pocket of her suit jacket. She pulled out a folded paper, which she set down on the table between them. It was a summons. Like most lawyers, Marty knew what it was without more than a glance.

  "Joe," Madison said flatly.

  "What is it, Madison?" Marty said patiently, slipping naturally and easily back into his role as the consummate friend. "A summons." "I know. But for what?"

  "Joe wants to challenge the divorce settlement and the custody arrangement," Madison said, her eyes losing their focus in the fountain once again. "He wants alimony.... He wants Jo-Jo."

  "He can't do that, Madison," Marty said as gently as he could, using every ounce of control he had to keep from bursting out with rage. "The order has been settled."

  Madison huffed at the irony.

  "1 know, Marty," she said, looking directly at him with a twisted smile, "but, like you're always telling me, the law is in a constant state of flux and anyone can sue anyone for almost anything."

  "He said he didn't want Jo-Jo," Marty reminded her. "Apparently," Madison said quietly, "he's changed his mind."

  "Mr. Moss?"

  He had just finished an overseas call regarding a deal for some sonar equipment for the Italian navy when Clara stuck her head just inside the door to his office.

  "Come in, Clara," he said.

  She stepped inside the door and immediately started to wring her hands and shift her weight from one foot to the other.

  "I wanted to tell you that everything's okay now," Clara mumbled, looking at her restless feet.

  "What are you talking about, Clara?"

  'Those bad kids, the ones that'd been scaring me and my son ..." Clara turned her gaze bravely toward her boss. "They're dead." "Why are you telling me this?" Clara looked back to the floor. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know, either."

  "Would you like your coffee, Mr. Moss?" she said. "I usually do about this time, Clara," he replied flatly. "Yes," she said and turned to go.

  "Clara..."

  Striker leaned back in his leather chair, elbows on both arms and placed his steepled fingers under his chin. "Sometimes Cod works in mysterious ways."

  Chapter Three

  When many people think of Texas, they think of oil rigs and vast expanses of dry, hot flats dotted with sagebrush and cactus. But set on the edge of rolling foothills in the center of the state is Austin, a lush, green; landscape speckled with large blue lakes and gently running streams and: rivers. An extremely desirable and welcoming place to call home, it is the; capital of the second most populous state in the nation. Austin has a world class university and has attracted a steady flow of industry and high-tech companies. The fact that the city boasts a competent NFL team, the Texas Outlaws, gives it a cachet shared by its better known rival cities, Dallas and Houston.

  In the foothills northwest of the city, a golf and tennis community called Wild Oaks boasts homes beginning at four hundred thousand dollars. All are set back off peaceful, winding streets, and most enjoy either a view of the golf course or an even more spectacular view of the distant city and the river that rushes toward it. The Greys had a home with a view of both. When they first arrived in Austin almost nine years ago, Cody and his young wife, Jenny, lived downtown in a fashionable apartment between the river and Sixth Street, the center of Austin's night life. The neighborhood suited their lifestyle perfectly. Cody not only had the distinction of being an NFL player, he was a handsome man with dark hair and an angular face and physique. Jenny also had dark hair, long and silky, creamy white, unblemished skin, and a face that was almost perfect. She was tall, only a few inches shorter than her husband who was six-foot-two, and she had the kind of body that turned men's heads wherever she went. Her eyes, though, were her most striking feature, ice blue, like the eyes of a Siberian husky.

  From the moment they arrived in Austin, Jenny, more than anything, wanted to establish herself and her husband in the high life of Austin society. She wanted to be important and rich, to be invited to all the right parties, and dine at all the right places. Cody was a celebrity, and that meant that they were always welcome, but he had no desire for any of it. He wanted to play football, that was all. Networking, something Jenny perfected during her four years at Princeton, was something completely foreign and distasteful to him. He only knew that Jenny liked to go to every party, every charity luncheon, and spend every free minute at the Wild Oaks Country Club, which he had no desire to attend. He didn't golf all that well because it was something he'd never done: tennis to him was a joke, something for rich people and women. No matter how much money Cody made, he never thought of himself as rich. But Jenny had insisted on all those things that smacked of glamour and displayed wealth.

  Cody Grey was one of the most visible and well-known Outlaws players in the city of Austin, and Jenny's taste for celebrity status was fueled by the attention people gave to her husband. At first, Jenny liked it when they went to a restaurant or a club on Sixth Street and people stopped to ask for Cody's autograph. Soon, however, she began to resent the constant attention that was paid to her spouse while she stood idly by, ignored. She had brains, and she had looks. She also believed she had talent. Jenny wanted to be a star too. She was often told she was beautiful enough to be in the movies, and she had always secretly wanted to. She decided to do it. Austin, she already knew, was the fourth biggest place in the country for filmmaking behind L. A., New York, and Chicago, and it was growing by leaps and bounds.

  Just months before completing her Ivy League education, the thing she had struggled so long and hard for, Jenny realized she wanted more than the job interviews and the scramble for placement in corporate America. Certainly a Princeton business graduate had a wonderful leg up in the job market, but Jenny wasn't satisfied with the idea of making eighty thousand a year, out of the limelight. She had seen the effects of real wealth up close and all around her during her four years at Princeton, and she wanted that. But she knew that wealth alone wouldn't make her happy. She needed fame as well as fortune, and in the city of Austin on the arm of a well-known NFL player, Jenny believed she could find both. She started thinking about a plan to get her acting career off the ground in Austin.

  From the very beginning, Cody Grey was a player who drew a lot of attention from the local media. Even the negative publicity his violent temper occasionally generated could help Jenny with her plan. She understood that the connections important in the world of business were even more crucial in the filmmaking industry. Besides an incredible stroke of luck, to get anywhere you had to know the people making the decisions at the top. The people at the top attended the same social occasions that Cody was invited to. Even though Cody preferred to avoid this scene, he wasn't one to stand in the way of his beautiful wife's ambitions. In fact, he was her biggest fan. Cody wanted Jenny to get what she wanted. He was a decent husband, and he wanted his wife to be happy. But he secretly hoped that if she were to achieve even modest success in her acting that she would settle down, spend more time at home, and maybe even be ready for the children he dreamed of having.

  Cody's dreams of family and his professional goals were tied up together, and he hoped he could achieve even some of them. If he drove himself hard enough, maybe he would. On the football field, dreams are directly related fo productivity, and productivity for Cody came in the form of tackles and interceptions. The Outlaws was the perfect team for him. Even when he was still in his rookie season, and he played nothing more than special teams, his violent brand of football earned him a cult following. The Outlaws had two exceptional comerbacks that enabled their defense to play primarily man-toman coverage. This allowed Cody, as the free safety, to be a run-stopper first and foremost, and that became his forte, because stopping the run was all about hitting. In only his second season, Cody b
ecame the starter at the strong safety position. In his third and fourth years, he was considered a solid player. As the seasons stacked up, more and more fans would appear at Texas Stadium in #40 jerseys with GREY printed on the back. The crowds would cheer wildly whenever he made one of his heat-seeking missile hits that inevitably laid the offensive ball carrier out on the grass. It was something the fans in Austin came to expect. Many of them considered his hits alone worth the price of a ticket. When Cody tackled, he went up high, for the head. An occasional unnecessary roughness penalty thrown by some over-cautious official would draw deafening boos in Austin. They wanted their assassin turned loose, and Cody seemed to never disappoint them.

  In his fifth year, Cody had eight interceptions to go along with his team- leading one hundred sixty-seven tackles. The team went to the playoffs, and although they lost in the first wild-card game, Cody went to the Pro Bowl. He was by then a household name in Austin and most of Texas.

  But unfortunately for Cody, from a financial standpoint the timing was not good. As a third-round draft choice he was happy to get a four-year deal worth just over a half-million dollars. And when he was up for renegotiation after four years, free agency in the NFL was still a dream, and he considered himself lucky to get another four-year deal worth nearly $1.5 million. Locked into the four-year deal, his Pro Bowl appearance, something that would have made him millions in the free agency market of the nineties, did nothing more than earn him a fifty-thousand-dollar incentive bonus. And fifty thousand dollars to Cody Grey wasn't what it once was.