She trusted Paul and was fascinated by his sauntering style, judging him in his bleached-out Waylon T-shirt and canvas shorts held up by twine to be free of the usual claims that clipped the wings of most young men. She also understood that women suffering hypnosis by criminals or mama’s boys was nothing new. Good-looking, quick-witted, a soul rented to darkness, Paul had everything. Evelyn had first met him at her parents’ house one nice night in May. Though she was in a rush to get back to the ranch, he seduced her on her walk to, and finally inside of, her car; it was that kind of abandonment, from the beginning. She didn’t even know what he did aside from turning up in Bozeman on a “fact-finding mission” for some agency. He’d met her father at a local association concerned with treason in national life, and the two became immediate friends despite their great difference in age. Had it not been for Sunny Jim Whitelaw’s success in conveying the glamour of the entrepreneur’s life, Paul might have satisfied his mother’s dreams and gone to graduate school.
