Catherine Coulter - Riptide

Becca said, “Or would you prefer raw meat?”

“That’s really quite enough, Becca,” Adam said, finally annoyed. “I’m going to take another sandwich and go talk to the guys, see how they’re doing. The moon’s nearly full tonight. It’s quiet. Don’t worry about the boyfriend being out there to shoot me. I’ll take my gun. Oh yeah, if I had attacked Savich, I would have coldcocked him before you could have hurt me, Sherlock.”

He left the kitchen.

Sherlock couldn’t help herself; she laughed. Savich looked back and forth between the two women, stood slowly, nabbed a sandwich, then said, “I think it’s a little thick in here. See you later, Sherlock. I’m going to go give my mom a call and see how she’s faring with our boy.”

“Call me when you’ve got him on the phone,” Sherlock said, then took a big bite out of an apple.

Savich walked to the living room, where the only phone in the whole house was. He heard Adam whistling outside.

He hated to lie to his mom when she asked him exactly what he and Sherlock were doing, but he did, and cleanly. “It’s a background check on someone very important who’s being considered for the Supreme Court. All very hush-hush and that’s why Jimmy Maitland asked me and Sherlock to take care of it. Don’t worry, Mom, we’ll be back in a couple of days. I met a really cute little boy today. It seems his mother abandoned him and his father over a year ago and he hasn’t said much since then. Is that Sean gurgling in the background? I’d sure like to speak to him, Mom.”

The phone rang sharply at midnight. Everyone heard it, but Becca was the fastest. She was on her feet, running down the front stairs to the living room by the second ring.

It was him, she knew it, and she wanted to talk to him. There wasn’t the need to keep him on for any specified length of time. The slammer was instantaneous, the identification there in a flash.

Her hand shook as she picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“I don’t know if I want to be your boyfriend anymore. You shot my dog, Rebecca.”

Shot his dog? “That’s a lie and you know it. Besides, no animal would have anything to do with you. You’re too crazy and sick.”

“His name was Gleason. He was very fat and you shot and killed him. I’m really upset, Becca. I’m coming to get you now. Not long. Hey, honey, you want to send flowers to poor Gleason’s funeral?”

“Why don’t you bury yourself with him, you murdering psycho?”

Adam heard his hitching breath, the flutter of rage. She’d gotten to him. Good.

He saw Savich write down the name and address from the slammer and sit down on the sofa, opening his laptop. He pressed close to Becca.

“You got that big guy there with you, Becca? Listening to me?”

“Yeah, I’m here listening to you, you pathetic piece of shit. Cheer up, you killed the front door, but we’re so good we even brought it back to life. It probably looks better than you do.”

Becca could feel the black fury in the silence that flooded over the phone line. She could nearly feel the stench of it-hot and rancid, that fury. “I’ll kill you for that, you bastard.”

“You already tried, didn’t you? Not much good, are you?”

“You’re a dead man, Carruthers. Soon. Very soon now.”

“Hey, where are you holding Gleason’s wake? I wanna come. You want me to bring a priest? Or isn’t your kind of crazy into religion?”

The breathing speeded up, rough and harsh. “I’m not crazy, you bastard. I’ll have Rebecca watch you die. I promise you that. I see you got two more folk there with you. I also know they’re FBI. You think they’re going to do anything to help? No one can catch me. No one. Hey, Rebecca, the governor call you yet?”

Adam gave her a cool nod, a thumbs-up sign. She said, “Yeah, he called me. He wants to see me. He told me he loves me, that he wants to sleep with me again. He said his wife is such a bitch, she doesn’t understand him, and he wants to leave her for me. The dear man, do you think he’s well enough yet for me to tell him where I am?”

Cold, dead silence, then, very gently, they heard the phone line disconnect.

She stared at the phone. The slammer was showing “501-4867, Orlando Cartwright, Rural Route 1456, Blaylock” in black letters on a bright-green screen.

Sherlock said, “Everyone stay still for a moment. Savich will have all the information in just a moment. He sounded healthy enough, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Adam said.

“Then it was only a flesh wound, more’s the pity,” Sherlock said, and scratched behind her left ear. Her curling red hair was all over her head. She was wearing a sleep shirt that said across the front: I BRAKE FOR ASTEROIDS. Savich had pulled on a pair of jeans. He was bare the rest of the way up. So was Adam.

“That dog bit,” Adam said, “it was an excellent ploy on his part. All right, let’s head out of here and go get the bastard. You got our directions, Savich?”

“In a second,” Savich said.

Adam took Becca in his arms. “You did great, Becca, really great. You rattled him. Now, let’s get dressed and go nail that little bastard.”

“We’re all going,” Becca said.

Savich looked up and grinned. “It’s a farmhouse some six miles northwest of here, outside a small town called Blaylock. Let me call Tommy the Pipe.” He got him quickly on his cell phone.

“Yeah, Tommy, call all the others and head on out there, but don’t go in. This guy is very dangerous. Just keep him under wraps until we get there. I’ll find out everything I can on the way there. Yeah, on MAX.”

In the backseat of Adam’s Jeep, Savich kept up a running commentary. “Here we go. The farmhouse belonged to Orlando Cartwright, bought the place back in 1954. He’s dead now. Oh yeah, that’s good, MAX. He had one daughter, she was with him until he died three weeks ago at Blue Hills Community Hospital. Lung cancer, Alzheimer’s. Oh, no, she’s still there, alone.”

“Shit,” Adam said.

“What’s her name?” Becca asked, turning in the seat to look at him.

“Linda Cartwright. Just a minute here, okay, good hunting, MAX. She’s never been married, age thirty-three, and she’s on the heavy side, one hundred and sixty-five pounds, but she’s really pretty, even on her DL photo. She’s a legal secretary for the Billson Manners law firm in Bangor, been there for eight years. Hold on a second, let me get into her personnel file. Yes, she’s got very good evaluations-in 1995 she complained about sexual harassment. Hmmm, the guy was eventually fired. Her work record is clean. Her mother died back in 1985, a drunk driver killed both her and Linda’s younger sister. No, MAX, there’s no need to go into police files, probably a waste of time.”

“She’s single and she’s alone,” Sherlock said. “Not good at all. Hurry, Adam.”

“She’s alone,” Becca said. “She’s alone, just like I was.”

At one o’clock in the morning, beneath a nearly full, brilliant summer moon, Adam pulled his black Jeep next to a dark-blue Ford Taurus parked on the side of a two-lane blacktop road. They were some fifty yards from the old farmhouse with its peeling white shutters and sagging narrow front porch.

There was no need for introductions.

Two men, both in their thirties, fit, one wearing glasses, the other smoking a pipe, were leaning against the side of the car. Savich said, “The guy in there?”

“The lights are still on, but we haven’t seen any movement at all. No one left since we got here. Chuck and Dave are around the back.” He took out his walkie-talkie. “You guys see anything?”

The answer was clear and loud. “He hasn’t come out this way, Tommy. You and Rollo haven’t seen anything?”