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Consciousness came and went. He managed to get the door closed behind him before he faded, then regained consciousness long enough to crawl to the bed before losing it again. He didn’t give a thought to the wood stove, or heat, or the blood that covered his back. All he wanted was to bury himself under the down comforter and rest.

He was lying on the floor on his stomach, trying to find the strength to hoist himself onto the mattress, when something touched his shoulder.

Thinking that John had stayed after all, he whipped out an arm in rage and tried to roll away, but the movement cost him dearly. He gave an anguished cry, then broke into a spasm of coughing, and the agony of that was pure hell. He was beginning to think that death wouldn’t be so bad when he realized that the murmur above him was coming from Bumble.

He let down his guard and went as limp as his cold, cramped body would allow. Bumble was there. When he’d been alone and hungry as a little boy, she had come by sometimes with food. She would know what to do.

The hours that followed were harrowing. The pain was relentless, worse at times when Bumble bathed him, turned him, and put salves on his mangled skin. He floated in and out of consciousness, breathing shallowly, swallowing moans that kept coming and coming, but he let her do as she wished. He had neither pride nor modesty. The full force of his energy at any given moment was focused on surviving until the next.

Survive he did, through that endless night, and then for two days during which he was alternately feverish and chilled. By the third day, the fever had broken, and he slept. By the fourth, he was pushing himself to get out of bed. By the fifth, he was beginning to understand what had happened and what it meant to his life.

One thing was clear. He was leaving Timiny Cove. Pam had been right: John was vicious enough to carry out every one of his threats. Lying in bed all those hours, helpless and hurting, he had come to the realization that there were two things he wanted above all others in life.

One was Pam.

The other was John.

He intended to get both.

Chapter 16

New York, early June 1990

H
ILLARY STARED AT CUTTER
. “I don’t believe you.”

He shrugged, raised his champagne glass to his mouth, and sipped the sparkly as his eyes skimmed the crowd.

Her eyes didn’t leave his face. She was trying to find some sign that he was putting her on. “John wouldn’t do that.”

Cutter remained silent. After a minute he gave another elegant shrug.

“Say something, Cutter. Tell me that of course he’d do it, because he’s a monster at heart.”

He looked at her with what she thought was a flicker of pity. In an instant it was gone, replaced by the hardness that attested to the truth of his words. “It’s not my place to tell you what to think, Hillary. You asked why I deserted Pam while I claimed to love her so much, and I answered.”

“You never mentioned it before.”

“You never asked before.”

“But it was such a significant thing. If what you say is true, he left you for dead.”

“I didn’t die.”

“You could have. You could have bled to death, or frozen to death.”

“I didn’t.”

“Because Bumble was there.”

He nodded his head subtly. “And because I made up my mind not to die.” He extended his hand to the man who approached. “Steve.” He introduced Hillary, then gave the connection: “Steve and I lost money together in a fiasco in Kansas City last year.”

If true, Hillary decided, it had to have been a rare experience for Cutter. Barring those few months when he had first come to New York, Cutter had managed to make money hand over fist. Looking at him now, at the way he held himself with his shoulders back and his head at a confident angle, at the comfortable way he wore his tuxedo and handled both the slim, fluted glass and his erstwhile partner, it was hard to believe that he had dropped out of school at sixteen and spent eight years in the mines in Maine.

“. . .?read everything he’s written,” Cutter was saying as she tuned back into the conversation. That she believed. He was as voracious a reader as ever. She might be the writer, but he was the one who had received the engraved invitation to the reception they were attending. It was in honor of the newest Fletcher Grady thriller, which, rumor had it, was about to debut at the top spot on the
Publishers Weekly
bestseller list. Not that Cutter had been invited simply because he read Fletcher’s books. The two were good friends.

Hillary marveled at Cutter. He wasn’t showy or gregarious. But something about his silent way spoke of competence and dignity, plus an independence that intrigued people. As a kid, he had had a renegade streak. Now, softened, it worked in his favor. He was nearly as charismatic as John.

“The figures are impressive,” his friend was saying.

“It’s a solid company. Efficiently organized and well run. A good investment, Steve.”

“Ten grand worth?”

“More.”

Steve’s eyes widened, and Hillary was about to ask what the investment was, thinking that maybe she’d chip in a little herself if the company in question was so solid, when Cutter caught her eye.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to talk business. It just creeps up sometimes.” To Steve he said, “Talk with you next week?”

The man nodded, smiled at Hillary, and moved on.

“His business is . . . ?” she asked.

“Commercial appliances. He supplies some of the largest hotel chains.”

“How did you meet him?”

“I was on a shoot in Palm Springs seven or eight years back. He’d just outfitted a new resort there. We played golf together. Still do, sometimes.”

She gave him a wry smile. “Golf. Who’d’a guessed?”

He gave another of his negligent shrugs.

This time the gesture drew her eyes to his shoulder and she was reminded of the punishment he had suffered. Her smile faded fast. “John
beat
you?”

Cutter was silent for so long that she wondered if he was retracting his story. Her hopes had barely risen, though, when he said with quiet purpose, “Had me beaten, then tore my back raw with a belt he borrowed from his biker friend.”

“John doesn’t have biker friends.”

“Change ‘friend’ to ‘lackey.’ I’m sure he was hired, then paid well to forget what he’d done and seen. And to dispose of the belt.”

Still Hillary resisted. “Timiny Cove is a small place. Someone would have known.”

“In the middle of winter? The snow fell for three days. It was a while after that before anyone moved far, and anyway, the gem pits were closed for the winter. We were just sifting, sorting, and matching. Work was sporadic.”

“But no one called?” It seemed bizarre. “No one came looking for you?”

“The phone line had been cut. By the time anyone came looking—if anyone did, which I doubt, since I didn’t have that kind of relationship with the guys—I was gone.”

“Two weeks after the beating,” she said skeptically.

“That’s right.”

“And you showed up at my door looking hale and hardy.”

“Did I?”

Thinking back, she recalled that he had looked unsettled. At the time, she assumed he was overwhelmed by New York City. “You were standing straight.”

“I was stiff. My ribs were still hurting, and my back was scabbed over.”

Feeling vaguely ill, she tipped the glass to her lips with far less finesse than Cutter affected. “You stayed at my place for a week,” she said. “If you’d been suffering, I would have known it.”

“How?”

“You’d have moved funny.”

“I didn’t move much. I slept.”

He was right, she realized, but still she insisted, “I’d have known it.”

“Did I show you my back?”

“No.”

“Did I ever walk around without a shirt?”

“No.” She grew quiet. “I thought you were modest.” Something struck her then. “If your back was all mangled and scarred, how could you do the work you did?”

“I had the face they wanted. The look.” He came close enough for their sides to meet, and his voice softened. “Touch my back.”

She eyed him questioningly.

“Go on,” he coaxed. “Run your palm over it.” He waited until she raised her hand. “No, not over the jacket. Slip it inside. That’s it. Now move your hand. More. What do you feel?”

She swallowed. “Texture.” And she knew it wasn’t his shirt, since that was of finely pressed silk. The flesh beneath the silk felt rutted, the way the ground used to be in Timiny Cove at the end of mud season.

Unable to deny the evidence, she gripped his cummerbund buckle and whispered in horror, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What was the point? You had a thing for John. What he did to my back was between him and me.”

“But you came to my place.
Knowing
I had a thing for John, you came to my place. If it wasn’t for vengeance, what was it for?”

“I needed a place to stay,” Cutter said simply. “I wanted money and I wanted power. New York had more of both than any other city, and you were the only person I knew in New York. So I went to your place. I figured we had a hometown in common. It never occurred to me to take vengeance on John through you.”

But he had in a way, just then, by giving her proof of John’s cruelty. She felt sick inside.

A week later she met with Arlan at the United Nations Plaza. She had hoped to be uplifted by the bright June sun and the delegates in their native garb, but there were few in sight.

Arlan, who had been drinking Coke from a super-size take-out cup, released the straw. “You’re doing good, Hillie. You were right. You’ve got a story.”

She said nothing.

He nudged her. “Aren’t you pleased?”

“Very.”

He stopped walking. “You don’t sound it.”

She ambled on another few steps before stopping at a large geometric sculpture with a concrete base. She lowered herself to the base. “I thought I had a story without all this.”

“This makes it stronger.” He propped a foot on the concrete. “How well did you know Cutter in Timiny Cove?”

“Not well. He was three years behind me in school—when he was there.”

“Do you remember him as a troublemaker?”

“I remember that the town thought of him that way. I always felt bad for him. He was different. Like me.”

“And John.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So out of the blue one day Cutter just showed up at your door. What excuse did he give for leaving Timiny Cove?”

“He said that he was tired of being a nobody, that he wanted to make it big, and that he wouldn’t be able to do either in Timiny Cove. I could identify with that.”

“Did you know he wanted to get back at John?”

“Not at first. He talked about wanting to make something of himself so that he could have Pam. He wanted somehow to get into the upper echelons of St. George Mining, but I didn’t realize he wanted it for revenge until we’d talked more. After a while, his anger came out. No wonder. There was so much of it.”

Arlan had the straw in his mouth again. Without quite taking it out, he said, “I’m surprised he didn’t go to the cops.”

“Where?” She slanted him a droll look. “Timiny Cove? You think Verne would have done anything?”

“He could have gone to Portland. What John did was assault and battery.”

“Of which Cutter had no proof.”

“His back. His back.”

“No proof that John did it. Besides, he wanted to put space between himself and Timiny Cove. He believed John’s threats. He was sure that if he caused trouble, the men at the mine would suffer.”

“Then he was being altruistic?”

“He was being selfish. He didn’t want the responsibility.”

“Would John have carried out his threats?”

She let her eyes travel up the East River to the spot where the tram carried people from Roosevelt Island to Manhattan. The aerial car was halfway across. She felt she was the one hanging in mid-air. “Maybe.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“I don’t want to. But then, I didn’t want to believe that he whipped Cutter, but it’s true. Pam confirmed it, and she has seen Cutter’s back. Even Bumble confirmed it.”

Arlan looked surprised. “You talked with her?”

“Went up there last week, a day after the party.”

“She must be ancient,” he said in a hushed voice.

Remembering the bent and weathered woman, Hillary gave a small smile. “Not as old as people think. Maybe seventy-five.”

“That’s old enough,” he drawled.

“But we thought she was double that twenty years ago!” He eyed her with the utmost admiration. “So you went to the pack rat’s midden.”

Hillary’s smile tilted. Arlan was reacting just as the people of Timiny Cove would have done if they’d known she had visited Bumble.

“The pack rat’s midden,” she enlightened him, “is actually a small house on the far side of the woods from Cutter’s place. I wouldn’t exactly call it a dung heap. It is quite well equipped.”