Chapter 15
Cutter put his back to the phone booth door and lowered his head over the receiver. “Pamela St. George, please.”
“Just a minute.” The voice was that of another of the students in Pam’s dorm and was accommodating enough.
Whether the girl could produce Pam was another story.
He had already tried twice without luck and was uneasy.
They hadn’t talked in five days, which wasn’t unusual, but he had expected her in Timiny Cove that morning, and she hadn’t shown.
He had checked the big brick house and found it locked tight.
He wasn’t waiting to get back to his place to try her again at the dorm.
“I’m sorry,” the voice came back, “but she isn’t here.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“No.”
“Do you know when she’ll be back? Has she signed out?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you check?” he asked impatiently, then sighed. “I was supposed to meet her this morning. I’m worried.”
“She was here a little while ago. I saw her myself, and she looked fine. Do you want to leave a message?”
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!”
“We’ll escape him.”
“He has everything covered, Cutter. I’ve thought and thought and I can’t find a way out.”
“We’ll run away.”
“He’ll be right after us.”
“We’ll get married.”
“I’m too young. He’ll take you to court.”
“No court will listen if you say you love me.”
“His court will. He knows the judges.”
“So we’ll wait three months. You’ll be old enough then.”
“That won’t do any good,” she cried. “He’ll ruin you!”
“There’s not much left to ruin if I lose you.”
With an anguished sound, she pressed her face to his chest, then looked up and reached for his mouth. He tasted the desperation in her kiss—or in his, he didn’t know which, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were together then and there.
All but bodily lifting her, he opened the door of the pickup, slid her in, and followed.
Pressing her flat on the bench seat, he kissed her and touched her until the December air turned hot and heavy between them.
Then, disturbed by what she had said and needing a reaffirmation of her love, he began pulling at her jeans.
“God, no, Cutter!” she cried.
“I need you.” He caught her mouth again and ate hungrily from it until his need surpassed that. Rising to his knees, he used both hands on her pants.
“Not here!” she whispered, frantic. “We can’t!”
He tugged the denim over her hips. “We can, dammit.
We can do what we want.”
“If someone comes—”
“No one will.” He unzipped his fly and released himself, then came down to her. “It’s dark. No one will see.” He entered her in a single strong stroke, then thrust again and again, grasping her bottom and lifting her to deepen the penetration until she cried out at the pleasure he gave her.
She came, clutching his shirt, murmuring, “I love you I love you,” and he climaxed seconds later.
But he stayed hard, because having her once was never enough.
Her breathing had barely slowed before he was moving again.
He pushed deeper, harder, and again she rose to meet him.
The sound that tore from his throat when he climaxed this time came from deep in his soul.
It echoed in the cab of the pickup long after their passion was spent and their clothing repaired.
The chilly air seeped over them quickly. “What are we going to do?” Pam asked. Her cheek was against his chest. She was as curled around him as a human being could be on the front seat of a small truck, and he held her tightly.
“I can’t give you up yet.”
“He’ll do something awful.”
“Then we’ll fight him.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but there has to be a way.”
“Maybe when I’m eighteen.”
“I’m supposed to stay away from you till then?”
“If he catches us, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“I don’t care. I’ll face him. Maybe it’s time.”
“But it’s not just us,” she insisted; and, much as he didn’t want to, he had to listen. “There are others involved. Innocent people. He’ll hurt them, too.”
“Maybe he’s bluffing.”
“What if he isn’t?”
“He can only hurt people so much before the hurt boomerangs.”
“And in the meantime?”
Cutter thought about the meantime, and there was nothing comforting about it.
He could quit the mine and leave Timiny Cove, but it was his home, the only place he knew.
If he belonged anywhere, it was there, where he finally was respected to some extent.
And the respect was two-sided. While it wasn’t exactly affection he felt for the people, he recognized their struggles and felt loyalty to them.
They depended on him in subtle ways. While he wouldn’t go so far as to call them friends, he couldn’t desert them.
Nor could he desert Pam. She depended on him too. Even if he hadn’t loved her so much, he would have wanted to be there to protect her as Eugene would have done.
A spark of light came from his left. Pam whispered a frightened, “Oh God,” while he peered through the fogged-up windows. “It’s the security patrol.” She pushed away from him. “I have to leave. If the guard finds me here with you—”
“Too late.” Cutter caught her hand. He rolled down his window as the guard approached. “Evening, sir.” He glanced at the wrist where a watch would have been if he owned one. “We still have some time, don’t we?”