Cornered! by James McKimmey Read Free Book Online

kill another, and the river had gone to rapids, cascading into dangerous and deadly currents.
    It was a chance incident. She had never heard of Tony Fearon. But she plainly saw him kill a man that evening: stepping forth from a large black car, firing at the man standing before one of the white houses built flush on a steep San Francisco street. She saw him kill and flee in the heavy black car.
    It made no difference to her the reasons behind Tony Fearon’s reason to kill. The thing had been done and she’d seen it. She’d reported it and become a part of it. The river had run into rocks, and the river was her life.
    The trial was a blur. Gambling was at the bottom of it. Tony Fearon headed one group or syndicate, and the slain man had moved in.
    But that made no difference to Ann. All that did matter was that she had witnessed the murder and had the obligation of swearing in court to what she saw. Tony Fearon was convicted, judged guilty and sentenced to death. Despite endless and desperate legal maneuvering the sentence had held. But Tony Fearon had, that day of sentencing, promised loudly that he would know the destruction of this girl who had sounded his death knell…
    That had been over a year ago. Now the end was approaching. The date for Tony Fearon’s final breath was coming near. Ann had been running ever since the end of that trial. But where had she run? And what good had it done? That morning, she asked herself exactly that.
     
    It was a day like any other winter’s day on a farm outside Arrow Junction.
    You could look across the farmyard and see the snow lying white and new on the ground and on the sheds and on the roof of the barn beyond. In the snowless days the farmhouse and the sheds and the barn were ugly to the eyes with their weather-gray nakedness. But now the snow was a bright and fancy decorator. Yet, snow or not, Ann had not really complained since she married Ted Burley eleven months ago. There had been plenty of reasons. But she had tenaciously ignored these reasons, telling herself steadily that she had not married Ted Burley solely to escape the threat of Tony Fearon in the anonymity of Arrow Junction…
    Ted Burley had arisen that early morning from the cot bed he’d chosen to sleep in almost from the start of their marriage. The cot had been Ted Burley’s since he’d been four years old. From the second bed in the room, the large iron-framed bed that had been used by Ted Burley’s parents before they died and left him the farm, Ann watched her husband arise. Ted Burley walked heavily into the kitchen, his shoulders hulking beneath the fabric of long underwear. He put on a pair of overall pants and started a large pot of coffee.
    Ann got up then too, looking at the alarm clock to realize there were still fifteen minutes before their normal time to arise. She switched off the alarm lever and put on a wool robe over her flannel pajamas. She stopped in the living room to light the stove and followed her husband into the kitchen.
    “I would have gotten the coffee ready.”
    “I’ve already done it.” Ted Burley walked to the back door and looked sourly through the top frame of glass at the still-dark morning.
    “You got up before the alarm again.”
    “Said I would last night.”
    Ann knew he’d said no such thing, but she did not argue. “What would you like? Scrambled eggs? Bacon?”
    “Yes,” he said, and there was almost a pouting tone to his voice.
    “All right, Ted,” she said gently. She did not yet like to admit that talking to him as she would a child was something required. She had thought when she met him in Omaha that he was a very strong man. She set the kitchen table and poured beaten eggs into a frying pan. “Sit down, Ted. It’ll be ready in a minute.”
    “I wish you’d quit nagging me.” He remained standing at the kitchen door, staring out grimly.
    She started to retort, then did not. Her mind this morning kept switching back to her father. She’d had a