Catherine Coulter - Riptide

She sighed, but didn’t say anything, just crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, still as a stone. “Come on, let’s hear the rest of it.”

“It didn’t take long to find you on that flight to Portland. Your fake ID was pretty amateur. I’ll bet they were really busy at the check-in counters in New York and Dulles for you to get passed on through. At least you were smart enough not to use that driver’s license again to get yourself a rental car. You waited an hour for a flight from Boston to Portland, then you took a taxi into Portland-yes, one of my people found the driver and verified that it was you-and went to Big Frank’s Previously Owned Cars on Blake Street. You wanted your own car. That told me that you had a definite destination in mind, a place where you were going to burrow in for the long haul. I got all the particulars out of Big Frank, including your license plate number, the make, model, and color of your Toyota. I called a friend in the Portland PD to put out an APB on you and it didn’t take more than a day to net you. Remember when you got gas at the Union 76 station when you were first coming into town?”

She’d paid cash. No trail. No record. “I didn’t make any mistakes.”

“No, but it turns out that the guy who pumped your gas is a police radio buff with an excellent memory for numbers. He heard the APB, remembered your car and license plate, and phoned it in. It got to me really fast. Don’t worry, I canceled the APB. Needless to say, I owe a good-sized favor to Chief Aronson of the Portland PD. Also I spoke to the kid who pumped your gas, told him it had all been a mistake, thanked him, and slipped him a fifty. Oh yes, I got a good laugh over the name on the fake ID-Martha Clinton-a nice mix of presidential names.”

“I did, too,” Becca said, wondering why she’d bothered at all.

“At least Martha was young and had blondish hair. Did you buy it off a street kid in New York?”

“Yes. I had to try six of them before I could find an ID that looked anything remotely like me. I liked the name. When did you get here to Riptide?”

“Two days ago. I went immediately to the only bed-and-breakfast in town and of course you had stayed there for one night. Scottie told me you’d taken the old Marley place.” He splayed his fingers. “Nothing to it.”

“Why didn’t you come to see me right away?”

“I wanted to get the lay of the land, watch you awhile, see what was happening, who you spoke to, things like that. It’s an approach I’ve always used. I’ve never believed in rushing into things, if I have a choice.”

“It was so easy for you.” She sighed, her arms still crossed over her chest. “That means that the FBI should be ringing the doorbell at any minute.”

“Nah, they’re not as smart as I am.”

She threw her empty coffee cup at him.

He snagged the cup out of the air and set it back on the table. His reflexes were good. He was very fast. She said, “I’m awfully glad I didn’t come any nearer to you. You could have nailed me in a flash, couldn’t you?”

“Probably, but that’s not the point. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to protect you.”

“My guardian angel.”

“That’s right.”

“Why don’t you think the cops and FBI will be here any moment?”

“They have to follow all sorts of legal procedures to get to the goodies. Also, they tend to use a shovel when a scalpel would work best.” He paused a moment, grinning at her. “And I also sent them on a wild-goose chase. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“All right. Let’s cut to the chase. If you’re not a cop, then who are you and who hired you to help me?”

He shook his head. “For the time being I’m not at liberty to tell you that. But someone wants me to clean up this mess you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“I didn’t do anything at all. It was that demented man stalking me who’s responsible. Oh, maybe like the cops in New York and Albany, you don’t believe me, either?”

“I believe you. Would you like to know why the cops in New York and Albany didn’t believe you? Thought you were a screwed-up fruitcake?”

She nearly fell out of her chair. “I don’t believe this. You know something the cops don’t? They thought I was crazy or malicious or infatuated with the governor. Come on, what do you know?”

“They believed you were a fake because someone close to the governor told them that it was all a sick sexual fantasy. When the cops called from New York, that’s what the Albany police told them. However, the threat to the governor was quite real, no question about that, since someone shot him. They had to refocus, think things over again.”

“Who in the governor’s office said that about me? Don’t you dare just sit there staring at me. Damn you, I deserve to know who betrayed me.”

“Of course you do. I’m sorry, Becca. It was Dick McCallum, the governor’s senior aide.”

She nearly fell over in shock. “Oh, no, not Dick McCallum. Oh, no, it doesn’t make any sense. Not Dick.” She looked stricken and he was sorry for it.

She was shaking her head at him, not wanting to believe him but afraid not to. “But why? Dick has never said anything mean to me or acted like he had it in for me. He never asked me out, so there wouldn’t be any sort of rejection involved. I didn’t threaten him in any way. I was sure he liked me. I wrote most of the governor’s speeches, for God’s sake. I didn’t head up strategy sessions or conduct policy meetings or have anything to do with spin or scheduling or anything that would be in his bailiwick. Why would he do it?”

“That I don’t know yet. But to be realistic about it, it will probably come down to money. Someone paid him a lot of money to do it. Now, one of the cops in Albany told me he’d come to them, supposedly feeling all sorts of guilty, but swearing he had no choice because he was afraid you’d go after the governor. I promise you I will find out why he did it. He’s got to be the key to this.” Actually, he thought, Thomas Matlock was going over everything in McCallum’s background, including where he got the small knife tattoo on the back of his right shoulder blade.

She said slowly, thinking aloud really, “If Dick McCallum said those things about me, then he must know about the stalker, maybe even who he is and why he picked me to terrorize. Maybe Dick even knows who is trying to kill the governor.”

“Yes, all of that is possible. We’ll see.”

“Do you mean ‘we’ as in you and me?”

“No.”

“Let me call the cops again. I’ll tell them I know about what Dick McCallum told them. I can tell them he’s lying. Won’t they have to question him more thoroughly?”

“No, Becca, it’s too late. I’m really sorry about this.”

“What do you mean, it’s too late? I know I can get ahold of Detective Morales.”

“We’ll have to go another route to find out why Dick McCallum did what he did, and who probably paid him a whole lot of money to do it.”

She became very still. She shook her head. He said very gently, “I’m sorry, Becca, but someone ran Dick McCallum down in front of his apartment building in Albany. He’s dead.”

There wasn’t a single thought in her mind, just numbing horror.

“They think you could be involved. Everyone’s gone nuts. Actually, they were nuts the moment the governor was shot. No one could believe the distance on that shot. Now they’re very serious about finding you and finding out what you know, if you’re involved in any way. I planted information for them to find and got them off on a wrong track, so you’re safe for a while.”

He sat back in his chair and cradled his head against his arms. He gave her a big fat smile. “They’re not going to find you anytime soon, trust me on that.”