Catherine Coulter: Riptide

She’d bought a gun from a guy she met in a restaurant in Rockland, Maine. She’d taken a big chance, but it had, thank God, worked out. The gun was a beauty-a Coonan.357 Magnum automatic, and the guy had taken her just next door, where there was a sports shop with an indoor range, and taught her how to shoot. He’d then asked her to go to a motel with him. He was child’s play to deal with after the maniac in New York. All she’d had to do was say no very firmly. No need to draw her new gun on the guy.

She gently laid the Coonan in the top drawer of her bedside table, a very old mahogany piece with rusted hinges. As she closed the drawer she realized that she hadn’t cried when her mother died. She hadn’t cried at her funeral. But now, as she gently placed a photograph of her mother on top of the bedside table, she felt the tears roll down her cheeks. She stood there staring down at her mother’s picture, taken nearly twenty years before, showing a beautiful young woman, so fair and fine-boned, laughing, hugging Becca against her side. Becca couldn’t remember where they were, maybe in upstate New York. They’d stayed up there for a while when Becca was six and seven years old. “Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry. If only you hadn’t locked your heart away with a dead man, maybe there could have been another man to love, couldn’t there? You had so much to offer, so much love to give. Oh God, I miss you so much.”

She lay down on the bed, held a pillow against her chest, and cried until there were no more tears. She got up and wiped the light sheen of dust off the photo, then carefully set it down again. “I’m safe now, Mom. I don’t know what’s going on, but at least I’m safe for the time being. That man won’t find me here. How could he? I know no one followed me.”

She realized, as she was speaking to her mother’s photo, that she also ached for the father she’d never known, Thomas Matlock, shot and killed in Vietnam so long ago, when she was just a baby. A war hero. But her mother hadn’t forgotten, ever. And it was his name that her mother had whispered before she’d fallen into the drug-induced coma. “Thomas, Thomas.”

He’d been dead for over twenty-five years. So long ago. A different world, but the people were the same-both good and evil, as always-mauling one another to get the lion’s share of the spoils. He’d seen her before he’d gone, her mother had told her, seen her and hugged her and loved her. But Becca couldn’t remember him.

She finished hanging up her clothes and arranging her toiletries in the old-fashioned bathroom with its claw-footed bathtub. The teenagers had even scrubbed between the claws. Good job.

There was a knock on the door. Becca dropped the towel she was holding and froze.

Another knock.

It wasn’t him. He had no idea where she was. There was no way he could find her. It was probably the guy to check the one air-conditioning unit in the living room window. Or the garbage man, or-

“Don’t be paranoid,” she said aloud to the blue towel as she picked it up and hung it on the very old wooden bar. “Do you also realize you’ve been talking out loud a whole lot recently? Another thing, you don’t sound particularly bright.” But who cared if she sang to the towel rack, she thought, as she walked down the old creaking stairs to the front entrance hall.

She could only stare at the tall man who stood in the doorway. It was Tyler, the boy she’d known in college. She’d been one of his few friends. He’d been a geek loner and hadn’t managed to make more than a few non-geek friends. Only he wasn’t a geek anymore. No more heavy-rimmed glasses and pen protector on his shirt pocket. No more stooped shoulders and pants worn too high, his ankles showing his white socks. He was wearing tight jeans that fit him very well indeed, his hair was long, and his shoulders were wide enough to make a woman blink. He was buff, in very good shape. Yes, he was a good-looking man. It was amazing. She had to blink at him a couple of times to get her bearings.

“Tyler? Tyler McBride? Is it really you? I’m sorry I’m gawking. You look so very different, but it’s still you. Actually, to be perfectly honest about this, you’re very sexy.”

He gave her a huge grin and gripped her hands between his. “Becca Matlock, it’s good to see you. I came over to see my new neighbor, never dreaming it could be you. Is Powell your married name? I can’t imagine why you’re here of all places, the end of the world. But whatever. Welcome to Riptide.”

She laughed and squeezed his hands and said, “Goodness, you’re not a nerd anymore. Listen, Tyler, it’s because of you that I’m here. I would have called you. I just haven’t gotten to it yet. Can I really be so lucky to have you for a neighbor?”

He gave her a very nice smile and just stood there, waiting. Had he had braces? She couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter, he had gorgeous teeth now. What a difference. Incredible.

“Oh, yes, everyone’s a neighbor in Riptide, but yes, I live just one street over, on Gum Shoe Lane.”

She let go of his hands although she didn’t want to, and stepped back. “Do come in. Everything, including the furnishings, is ancient, but there aren’t any springs sticking up in the sofa, and it’s fairly comfortable. Mrs. Ryan sent an army of teenagers here to clean the place. They did a pretty decent job. Come in, Tyler, come in.”

She managed to make two cups of tea on the ancient stove while Tyler sat at the kitchen table watching her. “What do you mean you came here because of me?”

She dipped a tea bag in and out of the cups of hot water. “I remembered your talking about your hometown, Riptide. You called it your haven.” She paused a moment and stared down into her teacup. “I’ll never forget your saying that Riptide was in the boondocks, near nothing at all, so private you nearly forgot that you were even here. Just out on the edge of the world, nearly falling into the ocean, and nobody knew where it was, or cared. You also said that Riptide was the place where the sun first rose in the U.S. You said for those moments, the sky was an orange ball and the water was a cauldron of fire.”

“I said that? I didn’t know I was such a poet.”

“That’s nearly word for word, and, as I told you, that’s why I came. Goodness, I can’t get over how you’ve changed, Tyler.”

“Everyone changes, Becca. Even you. You’re prettier now than you were back in college.” He frowned a moment, as if trying to remember. “Your hair’s darker and I don’t remember you having brown eyes or wearing glasses, but otherwise, I’d know you anywhere.” Well damn, she thought, that wasn’t good. She pushed the glasses higher on her nose.

He accepted the cup of tea, not speaking until she sat down at the table across from him. Then he smiled at her and said, “Why do you need a haven?”

What to tell him?

That the governor had been shot in the neck because of her? No, no, she couldn’t feel responsible. That madman shot the governor. She stalled.

He backed off and said, “You went to New York, didn’t you? You were a writer, I remember. What were you doing in New York?”

“I was writing speeches,” she said easily, “for bigwigs in various companies. I can’t believe you remember that I went to New York.”

“I remember nearly everything about people I like. Why do you need a haven? No, wait, if it isn’t any of my business, forget it. It’s just that I’m worried about you.”

She wasn’t a very good liar, but she had to try. “No, it’s okay. I’m getting away from a very bad relationship.”

“Your husband?”

No choice. “Yes, my husband. He’s very possessive. I wanted out and he didn’t want to let me go. I thought of Riptide and what you’d said.” She didn’t want to tell him about her mother dying. To mix that with a lie was just too much. She managed to shrug and raise her teacup to click it against his. “Thanks, Tyler, for being at Dartmouth and talking about your hometown to me.”