Cornered! by James McKimmey

apart on that and that alone. That’s no real marriage, Ann. If you’re going to think, please think about that. I’m selfish. I’ll admit that. I want you. Do you understand that?”
    She looked up at him. Then she said, “Please. Not now, Hugh.”
    He nodded. “I’ll leave you alone—you’d better stay here tonight. Lock the door when I leave, and don’t open it to anyone but me. We’ll talk in the morning.”
    “Yes,” she said. “Thank you, Hugh—”
    He opened and closed a hand. “I love you, Ann,” he said simply. Then he was gone.
    From the window of the office just darkened, she watched him make his way to his car parked at the curb below. The wide main street of Arrow Junction was now simply a straight white mark between store buildings, like a wide strip of adhesive tape.
    Hugh Stewart’s car coughed, spurting gray exhaust clouds into the snowy wind. Then it moved slowly down the street and turned left at the near intersection. She watched the car disappear from the shifting circle of light created by the swinging street lamp hung in the very center of the intersection. Then she watched his lone car lights moving along the small off-street. The lights disappeared then, shut out by the invisible but real framework of cottonwoods and elms clustered thickly at the next intersection.
    Still, Ann continued to look out, beyond the wind-swaying street lamp, hung like a metal dish above the intersection, beyond the dark shaft of the small street and the invisible leaf-stripped cottonwoods and elms, beyond to the black of the night and the snow and the wind and the deepening cold. It was, now, an unseeing look—while her thoughts turned slowly. But if that look had been properly focused, capable of X-ray vision and telescopic power, it would have, at that moment, stared straight into the black cold eyes of Billy Quirter as he lay, gun tucked against belly, in that silent barn.

 
chapter ten
     
    Shortly before dawn the next morning, Sam Dickens swung his legs over the mattress and sat up on the edge of the bed in his section of the motel. He sat that way for a moment, feeling the soreness in his back created by the sag in the mattress. It seemed that ever since he and Gloria had left home, they had yet to find a room that did not have a sag in the mattress. He tried to shake the sleep from his mind, staring at the closed door leading to Gloria’s room, thinking it certainly wasn’t anything else but a sagging mattress that had made his back sore this morning.
    He stood up, shivering with cold, and walked over to look at the thermostat. Mouth set grimly, he yanked it over to full temperature, then disappeared into the bathroom.
    Presently, shaved and showered, dressed and warm now with the finally heated room, he was feeling normal again. Normal and faintly sardonic—and, if he would admit it, scared all over again. He’d been thinking again about that upcoming business with Johnny Masters. He lit a cigarette and looked at Gloria’s closed door. He’d purposely made some noise getting dressed and repacking his bag, in the hope that it would awaken her, fresh and restimulated. Now there was the faint rustle of her movement in the other room.
    He smiled, feeling a lot better all of a sudden. He had not realized, until this trip, just how much he really felt for Gloria. If it hadn’t done anything else, coming out here had taught him that.
    He sat down, listening to the activity on the other side of the door, finally hearing the snap of her suitcase going shut. He grinned and stood up hopefully, thinking now that everything would be all right.
    The door swung open, and Gloria paused, not wearing slacks now, but one of her good dresses and the mink coat he’d given her. Her hair was sleekly done up, her makeup expertly applied. Her beauty was like a vision. He had not, he was certain, ever seen a more lovely creature in his life.
    “Glory,” he said softly, smiling.
    She looked at him coldly. The