Mitch’s face hardened, bleak and guarded. He made a half-hearted signal with his head; Terry obeyed, returning to her place at the corner of the porch and sitting down. Georgie came out with Theodore right behind him; Theodore said crossly, “He wasn’t noplace near it.”

Georgie had a cunning look on his face; he turned an innocent glance on Mitch but his eyes were at odds with his lips. The three men stood in an awkward triangle for an intolerable length of time before Georgie stirred nervously and said, “I got to”—and glanced at her with a tentative smile—”relieve myself?”

Theodore’s eye rolled toward Terry. She tried to ignore him. He said to Mitch, “Okay. You better go with him.”

Theodore fixed her with what passed for a smile. She held her breath until Mitch said, “I guess not,” and slowly went past Theodore to the inside of the porch, where he put his shoulder blades against the wall and hooked both thumbs in his pockets. “You go with him if you think he can’t do it for himself.”

“It ain’t that,” Theodore said. “He needs watching.”

“What for?”

“He just does.”

“Then watch him yourself.”

Georgie said waspishly, “I don’t need no nursemaid,” and walked off the porch. He hurried up the street toward a half-crumpled shack. Theodore made as if to follow him, but changed his mind. He circled toward Mitch—and stopped, frowning, as if he had forgotten what he was going to say. He shook his head in exasperation. Looking past Mitch he spotted Billie Jean up the street, making circles in the dust with the toe of her shoe, and abruptly Theodore swung that way, saying out of the side of his mouth, “Both of you stay put.”

Terry let her breath out. When Mitch came over to her and sat down she had to fight down the impulse to burst out wailing. She drew her knees up and rested her chin on her knuckles and heard Mitch say as if he were a long distance away, “Ever have the feeling the world was falling down around your ankles?”

“That’s not funny,” she muttered.

“Sorry.”

“I just can’t stand it, sitting here—waiting. Not doing anything.”

“I know.”

“My car’s right there in the barn. Couldn’t we at least try—”

“Floyd has the keys in his pocket.”

“Well, they hot-wire them or something, don’t they? When they steal cars?”

“I wouldn’t know how. Maybe if I had a couple hours I could figure it out if I didn’t electrocute myself trying. But we couldn’t walk from here to the barn without getting Theodore all over us.”

“You’re not a hell of a great big lot of help, you know that?” Her eyes filled and she blinked furiously.

“Look, I’m just as scared as you are. What do you want?” He gave her an angry look. “Damn it, cut that out. I don’t know what to do when girls cry.”

“I’m not crying.”

“Oh. I suppose it’s hay fever.”

“Suppose what you like,” she snapped. She sniffed and rubbed her eyes. “Oh, hell,” she bawled softly. “Oh, hell and damn and shit. I don’t want to be killed, Mitch. I want to live. Jesus, I want to get married and have kids and live in some little town someplace with a husband who comes home every night at five thirty and mows the lawn on weekends and every once in a while tells me how beautiful and cuddly I am.”

She blew her nose. Mitch said, “That’s not so much to ask.” He looked clumsy and savage with brooding anger.

“It isn’t,” she said. “It isn’t. God damn it, it’s just not fair!” She thrust her hair back from her face with an angry swipe of her hand. He was watching her gravely, even tenderly. She whispered, “Oh, Mitch.”

That was when Floyd’s Oldsmobile wheeled into the street, trailing dust. Billie Jean and Theodore gathered at the barn door with Georgie, who came along dreamy-eyed, not too steady on his feet. Billie Jean kept carping like a magpie until Theodore slapped her on the rump and barked at her. Floyd drove into the barn, leaving a hazy pall in the air. Terry watched them all the way she would have watched a circling school of barracuda. Mitch slowly got to his feet and stood above her protectively; he was trying to smile. She felt distantly grateful, slightly warmed; it only lasted an instant. Fear had kept coming all day in waves, at intervals she could never anticipate; now it welled up like bile in her throat. She had difficulty breathing, difficulty keeping her eyes in focus, and there was a taste on her tongue like dry brass.

Floyd appeared in the barn door with an armload of equipment that looked like a telephone repairman’s gear. He was smiling coolly. He walked forward with a springy, cocky stride. The others trailed him toward the porch. He climbed up and stood two paces from her, vibrating like a time bomb; he watched Georgie stumble up into the shade and then he wheeled and grabbed the front of Mitch’s shirt in his fist and dragged Mitch up on his toes. Floyd’s eyes glittered frostily. He said in a very gentle voice, “Who gave him the stuff?”

“What?”

“Georgie’s had his fingers in the cookie jar.”

Mitch’s glance whipped around toward Georgie, who stood gaunt and oblivious and smiling oafishly. “I told Theodore to watch him.”

“I don’t like excuses, Mitch. I can tolerate mistakes, but not excuses.”

“He’s your brother. You take care of him. I’m not his keeper.”

Floyd still had Mitch’s shirt bunched in his fist; he seemed indifferent to the effort it required to hold Mitch off the floor. Mitch colored and batted his arm up against Floyd’s arm; Floyd let him go with a gesture of contempt. “You’re forgetting, my fine buffoon, who owns the air you breathe. I can cut it off—any time.”

“Go ahead, then,” Mitch said bitterly. Terry backed up until her shoulders were pressed against the wall.

Georgie snuffled nervously and darted inside. Theodore stood behind Floyd, leering at Terry with his ugly eye until Floyd said over his shoulder, “Get in there and watch him. And this time do it right.”

Theodore, with a low growl, turned inside. Floyd stepped aside to let Billie Jean pass but instead of following them in he stopped to rest his frightening eyes on Terry. “You won’t have too much longer to wait, Sweetness.”

“You talked to my father?” Her voice sounded like a stranger’s.

“Mais certainment. He’ll make the drop in the morning. After that you can go home. How does that sound?”

She shook her head, mute, distrusting. She didn’t believe him for a moment. They had treated her too casually, keeping no secrets from her; a part of her mind knew they wouldn’t let her go free—and another part refused to believe that, either. She felt chilled and dismal.

Floyd said casually, “Funny thing. Your daddy was pretty tough on the phone—almost as if his interest was less passionate than pecuniary. I almost had the feeling he’d rather part with you than the half million dollars.”

He smiled, and after a beat he added, “But he’ll go through with it.” And went inside lugging his lineman’s gear.

A cold knot tightened inside her. Floyd’s words echoed—she almost wanted them to kill her. It would punish her father—the only kind of punishment he would understand.

Mitch stirred and said to her in his soft kind voice, “Maybe you’ll get out of this yet.”

She was no longer certain she wanted to.

C H A P T E R Ten

Carl Oakley turned the playback switch and settled back in Earle’s chair to listen to the tape for the fourth time. In the background he heard Orozco’s muffled voice, talking into the phone. Frankie Adams sat at the back of the room and cleared his throat, hoarse from the fifty cigarettes he had consumed in the last eight hours.

The tape replayed the click of the telephone and the voice—uncannily Earle Conniston’s voice: “Yes?”

“Conniston?”

“Yes.”

“You know who this is.”