Catherine Coulter: Riptide

She closed the front door behind her and stepped into the howling wind. She was wet clear through before she’d taken three breaths. No hope for it. She ran through the heavy rain to the Toyota and fumbled with the lock even as her hair was plastered to her head. Finally she got the door open and climbed in behind the wheel. When she turned the key in the ignition, the car growled at her, then stopped. She didn’t want to flood it so she didn’t turn the ignition again. No, give it a rest for a moment. Again, finally, she turned the key, and Lord be praised, the engine turned over, started. Tyler’s house was just about a half-mile down the road, the first street to the right, Gum Shoe Lane.

At a loud crack of thunder, she looked back at Jacob Marley’s house. It looked like an old Gothic manor in the English countryside, hunkered down in the rain, filled with lost and ancient spirits. It looked menacing even without billowing fog to shadow it in more gloom. A sharp lightning flash streaked down like a silver knife. The house seemed to shudder, as if from a mortal wound. It looked like the gods wanted to rip it apart. She was very glad she was leaving. Maybe Jacob Marley Senior really had poisoned his wife and God was just now getting around to some punishment. “Thanks a lot for waiting until I was here,” she yelled heavenward. She waved her fist. “I come here and you decide, finally, to mete out divine justice. You’re a little bloody late!”

The huge hemlock that could have so easily smashed right into the side of the house lay on its side nearly parallel to the west wall. That one very full and long branch that had crashed through her bedroom window looked like a hand that had managed to reach into the house. She shuddered at the image. Everything suddenly seemed alive and malevolent, closing in on her, like the man who had called her and stalked her and murdered that old woman and shot the governor. He was near, she felt him.

Just stop it. She drove very slowly down the long narrow drive, no choice there. Debris filled the road, wind bent trees nearly to the ground. The boughs glanced off her windshield. Branches whipped toward her, rain hammered against the windshield, pounded against the car, making her wonder if she’d come to Maine only to be done in by a wretched storm. She had to get out of the car twice to pull fallen branches out of the way. The wind and rain slammed hard into her, making it impossible to stand straight and nearly impossible to walk. She knew there had to be dents in the car fenders. The insurance company was going to love this. Oh dear, she’d forgotten, she didn’t have any insurance. That required being a real person with real ID.

Suddenly headlights cut through the thick, swirling sheets of rain, not twenty feet from her. They were coming toward her, fast, too fast. Damnation, to get killed on Belladonna Way. There had to be some irony in that, but she couldn’t appreciate it right then. She’d come to hide herself and be safe, a tree branch came into her bedroom, and now she was going to die because she couldn’t bear to stay in that old house, knowing it would collapse on her, swallow her alive. She smashed down on the horn, jerked the steering wheel to the left, but these headlights kept coming inexorably, relentlessly toward her, so fast, so very fast. She threw the car into reverse but knew that was no good. There was so much debris behind her that it was bound to stall her out. She slammed on the brakes and turned off the engine. She jumped out of the car and ran to the side of the road, feeling those damned headlights crawl over her, so close she wondered if the stalker hadn’t found her and was now going to kill her. Why had she ever left the house? So there was a tree branch in her bedroom dripping on a rag rug. It was still safe, but not out here, in the middle of a wind that was whirling around her like a mad dervish, ready to hurl her into the air, and a car that was coming after her, a madman at the wheel.

Then, suddenly, miraculously, the headlights stopped about eight feet from her car. Rain and lightning battered down, blurring the headlights, turning them a sickly yellow. She stood there, the wind beating at her, breathing in hard, soaked to her bones, waiting. Who was going to get out of that car? Could he see her, huddled next to some trees that were nearly folding themselves around her from the force of the wind? Did he want to kill her with his own hands? Why? Why?

It was Tyler McBride and he was yelling, “Becca! For God’s sake, is that you?” He had a flashlight and he pinned her with it, the light diffused from all the rain, pale, blue-rimmed, and it was right in her eyes. She brought up her hand.

She opened her mouth to yell back at him and nearly drowned. She ran to him and clutched his arms. “It’s me,” she said, “it’s me. I was coming to your house. A tree branch crashed through the bedroom window and it sounded like the house was going to collapse.”

If he wanted to smack her because she was teetering on the edge of hysteria, he didn’t let on, just gripped her shoulders in his big wet hands and said very slowly, very calmly, “I thought I saw some car lights but I couldn’t be sure. All I thought about was getting to you. It’s okay. That old house won’t fall down. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Now, follow me back home. I left Sam alone. He’s asleep but I can’t count on him staying that way. I don’t want him to wake up and be scared.”

She got herself together. She wasn’t helpless, not like Sam was. The wind tore at their clothes, the rain was coming down so hard it hurt where it struck. Her jeans felt stiff and hard and heavy. But she didn’t care. She wasn’t alone. Tyler wasn’t the crazy man from New York. She took a deep breath and watched as he drove at a snail’s pace back to his house on Gum Shoe Lane. It took another ten minutes to get to the small clapboard house that sat back in a lovely lawn that was planted heavily with spruce and hemlock. She jumped out of the car and yelled as she ran to the front door, “Gum Shoe, what a wonderful name.” She began to laugh. “Gum Shoe Lane!”

“It’s okay, Becca, we’re home now. We made it. Jesus, this is one of the worst storms I can remember. As bad as the one back in ’78, they said on the radio. I remember that one, I was a little kid and it scared me shitless. I’ve got to say that your timing is wild, Becca, coming to Riptide just before this mother of all storms hits.” He gave her another look, then added, slowly, his voice calm and low, “It’s sort of like the Mancini virus that came along last year and crashed every computer in this small software company called Tiffany’s. They called me in to fix it. That was a job, I’ll tell you.”

Becca stood dripping in the small entrance hall, staring at him. He was trying to talk her down and doing a good job of it. “Computer humor,” she said, and laughed after him when he fetched some towels from the bathroom. A slash of lightning came through the window and lit up the pile of newspapers on the floor beside the sofa. “I’m okay,” she said when Tyler began to lightly rub his palm over her wet back. He drew back, smiling down at her. “I know. You’re tough.”

Sam was still asleep, curled on his side, his left hand under his cheek. The world was exploding not ten feet away and Sam was probably dreaming about his morning cartoons. She pulled the blanket over him, paused a moment, and said quietly to Tyler, who was standing just behind her, “He is precious.”

“Yes,” he said.

She wanted to ask him why Sam didn’t talk much, was so very wary, but she heard something in his voice that made her go still and keep her question to herself. There was anger there, bitterness. Because his wife had left him? Walked away without a word? With not a single regret? Well, it made sense to her. Her own mother had left her, and she felt sick with rage at being left alone. Not her mother’s fault, of course, but the pain of it. She looked down at Sam one last time, then turned and left the small bedroom, Tyler on her heels. He gave her one of his wife’s robes, pink and thick and on the tatty side, well worn, and she wondered what sort of woman Ann McBride had been. Why hadn’t she taken her robe? She couldn’t ask Tyler now. The robe fit her very well. It was warm, comfy. She and Ann McBride were of a size.