The words echoed in his brain.She wasn’t sick.Or in a car crash.He’d already left two cryptic messages that only Pam would understand.“No,” he murmured and hung up the phone.
Leaving the booth, he slid into his truck and sat for a long time staring out the windshield.He was scared to death.He loved Pam so much that she was his first thought in the morning and his last thought at night.She was with him wherever he went, was everything poetic in a life that was otherwise ordinary.
He didn’t know what in the hell was wrong.It wasn’t like Pam not to call if she couldn’t come.Or not to answer his calls.
Starting the pickup, he backed away from the phone booth and headed out of town toward the highway.Minutes later he was pushing the speed limit, heading south, toward Boston.
He’d find her.If he had to wait all night and all of Sunday outside her dorm, he’d find her.He had to know what was wrong.She meant far too much to him not to worry, and it was even worse since they’d made love.Her body was perfect.It was fresh and clean, and it responded to his body as if it had been created especially for him.When he was hugged tightly inside her, he felt securely loved.
It was an illusion, of course.Pam did love him, but there was nothing secure about it in the sense of longevity.She argued that they had a future, but he didn’t believe it.He was a townie, she was a city girl.He was born to dirt, she was born to money.He knew he’d have to give her up one day, but he just wasn’t ready for it yet.He hadn’t had her long enough.He wanted more time.
In the fall she’d go off to college, and her world would open up.He could follow her, could leave the mine and take a job where she was, but that would only be worse because then she’d see him out of the context of Timiny Cove.In comparison to the college guys, he would seem a dud.
Flashing lights suddenly filled his rearview mirror.He didn’t have to look at his gauge to know he’d been speeding.Muttering a choice epithet, he slowed down and moved out of the fast lane.When the cruiser sped past him after another target, he stayed where he was.Someone had given him a reprieve.
He prayed for another one when he reached Boston, but it wasn’t to be.Pam wasn’t at her dorm.She had signed out to a friend’s house, which meant she could be anywhere.Leaving another cryptic message, he checked in to a nearby motel.Pam never showed.He stayed there, watching the phone, until midday Sunday, then staked out a position within viewing distance of the brick-flanked drive to her school.It was cold and dark at 6:00 P.M.when the Cougar finally turned in.He quickly followed, pulled into the parking space beside hers, and caught her as she got out of her car.
She screamed with fright, then with anguish.“Cutter!Oh God.”She covered her face with shaky hands, but rather than falling into his arms as he thought she would,she shrank back against her car.“Go away.Cutter!Go quickly!”
He didn’t like the sound of that at all.“What’s wrong?”
“Leave!Please,leave!”She parted her hands and shot a frantic look around.“If we’re seen together, there’ll be awful trouble.”She grabbed hold of his heavy jacket.Not even the darkness could hide the fear in her eyes.“Go now, before someone sees!”
He’d never seen her this way, and it was making him more nervous by the minute.“Not until I find out what’s wrong.You were supposed to drive up yesterday morning.”
“I couldn’t.He said he’d have me watched.”
Cutter felt a ripple of cold fear.“John?”
“He knows about us.Everything.And he’ll do awful things if he catches us together.”She glanced worriedly over her shoulder.
Cutter pulled her down against the baseboard of his pickup.“What things?”
“Fire you.”
“I’ll quit first.”
“No.”She held tight to his jacket.“He’ll fire the others—Jethro, the MacMorgans, Hugo Wall, all the men you fought for—and he said he’s already sold the house.”
“I haven’t heard about that, and I would’ve.Word spreads fast.”
“Maybe it’s too soon.”
“Maybe he’s lying.”
“You didn’t see his face, Cutter!It was awful!The man is mad!He’ll do everything he says!”
Cutter refused to believe it, but Pam clearly did.Tugging her shaking body to his, he held her tightly for a minute.Then he gave her a kiss that was rough, telling her of the hell he’d been through for the last two days.When he raised his head, he was angry.“John is full of crap.”
“No.He’ll do it.All of it.”
“He isn’t God.”
“Close to it.”
“He can’t control us.”
“But he does!”
