Catherine Coulter: Riptide

Sam. What was she going to do? There was something very wrong, triggered, she supposed, by Krimakov’s kidnapping of him. She heard Tyler walking back toward the kitchen. She had to clear this up, quickly and cleanly. She had to think what she could do to help Sam.

She’d gotten the name of a really good child psychologist in Bangor from Sherlock. She would start there.

But she didn’t have a chance to start anything because Tyler said from the doorway, “I love you, Becca.”

“No, Tyler, no.”

Tyler just smiled at her, an intimate smile that chilled her to the bone. “I’ve loved you from that first time I saw you in Hadley’s freshman dorm at Dartmouth. You were looking lost, wondering where to find a bathroom.”

She smiled at that, no recollection at all of that meeting. “You didn’t love me, Tyler. You dated lots of girls in college. You married Sam’s mother, Ann. You loved her.”

He came into the kitchen and sat down across from her. “Sure I loved her for a while, but she left me, Becca. She left me and she didn’t plan to come back. She was even going to take Sam, but I didn’t let her.”

What was he talking about? Of course things couldn’t have been smooth between them, since Ann had ended up leaving him. They’d faced off about it? There’d been a confrontation? But that didn’t concern her now. She said, “I’m really sorry if you’ve gotten the wrong idea, Tyler. Please believe me. I am your friend and I hope I always will be. I would like to see Sam grow up.”

“Since you’re going to be his mother, of course you’ll see him grow up. You’ll make him well again, Becca. He’s been silent and withdrawn ever since his mother left.”

“Would you like some coffee?”

“Sure, if you’re going to make some.” He watched her measure the coffee into the machine, then pour in the water. He watched her press the switch, watched it turn red.

“Tell me about Ann,” she said, wanting him to remember the woman he’d loved, distract him from her. Why had Ann left him? Had there been another man? Why hadn’t she taken Sam with her? So what if Tyler had tried to fight for custody? Sam was still her child, not his. But she had just run away without him.

Tyler was still watching the coffeemaker. She watched him breathe in the aroma. Finally, he said, “She was beautiful. She’d been married to a guy who left her the minute he found out she was pregnant. We hooked up kind of by accident. She couldn’t get the gasoline cap off her car. I helped her. Then we went to Pollyanna’s Restaurant.” He shrugged. “We got married a couple months later.”

“What happened?”

He said nothing for a very long time. “The coffee’s ready.”

She poured each of them a cup.

He took a drink, then shrugged. “She was happy and then she wasn’t. She left. Nothing more, Becca. Listen, I swear I’ll make you happy. You won’t ever want to leave. We can have more kids, yours and mine. Sam was Ann’s kid anyway.”

“I’m going to marry Adam.”

He threw the coffee at her. He roared to his feet, sending the wooden chair crashing against the wall, and shouted, “No, you’re not going to marry that goddamned bastard! You’re mine, do you hear me? You’re mine, you damned bitch!”

The coffee wasn’t scalding anymore, thank God, but it hurt, splashing on her neck, on the front of her shirt, soaking through to her skin.

He leapt toward her, his hands out.

“No, Tyler.” She ran, but he was blocking any escape out the back door. There was no place to go except down to the basement. But she’d be trapped down there. No, wait, there was another small entry on the far side of the basement where long-ago Marleys had had their winter cords of wood dumped. She saw it all in a flash, and ran to the basement door, jerked it open, then pulled it closed behind her. She locked it, flipped on the light, saw the naked bulb dangling from the ceiling by a thin wire, even as she heard him pulling on the knob on the other side, yelling, calling her horrible names, telling her that he would get her, that she wouldn’t leave him, not ever.

She ran down the wooden stairs. She looked at the wall where she’d found Sam propped up, bound and gagged, then at the far wall that still gaped open from when the skeleton had fallen out of it after that storm.

She heard the basement door splinter. Then he was on the stairs. She pulled and jerked at the rusted latch that held the small trapdoor down. It was about chest high. Move, move, but she was shrieking it in her mind, not out loud. What the hell was going on with him? It had happened so quickly. He had snapped, just snapped, and turned into a wild man. Oh God, a crazy man.

She heard his feet clattering to the bottom steps. The latch wouldn’t give. She was trapped. She turned to see him running across the concrete floor. He came to a stop. He was panting. Then he smiled at her.

“I nailed that trapdoor shut last week. It was dangerous. I didn’t think we should take the chance that a kid could open it and fall through. Maybe hurt himself. Maybe even kill himself.”

“Tyler,” she said. Be calm, be calm. “What’s going on here? Why are you acting like this? Why this rage? At me? Why?”

He said, all calm and serious, and he actually waved his finger at her, like a lecturing teacher, “You’re like the others, Becca. I hoped you would be different, I would have wagered everything that you were different, that you weren’t like Ann, that faithless bitch who wanted to leave me, wanted to take Sam and go far away from me.”

“Why did she want to leave you, Tyler?”

He shrugged. “She thought I was smothering her, but that was just in her mind, of course. I loved her, wanted to make her and Sam happy, but she started pulling back. She didn’t need all those other friends of hers, they just wasted her time, took her away from me. Then she told me that night that she had to leave me, that she couldn’t stand it anymore.”

“Stand what?”

“I don’t know. I tried to give her everything she wanted, both her and Sam. I just wanted her for myself, wanted her to commit herself only to me, and all I asked was that she stay close to me, that she look to me for everything. And she did for a while, and then she didn’t want to anymore.”

“She left?”

In that instant, Becca knew that Ann McBride hadn’t gone anywhere. She was still here in Riptide.

“Where did you bury her, Tyler?”

“In Jacob Marley’s backyard, right under that old elm tree that was around when World War One began. I dug her deep so no animals would dig her up. I even gave her a nice service. She didn’t deserve anything, but I gave her all the religious trappings, the sweet and hopeful words. After all, she was my wife.” He laughed, remembering now and said with a smirk, “Old Jacob had been dead by then nearly three years so I didn’t worry about getting rid of him that time.”

He started laughing then. “I killed that ridiculous old dog of his-Miranda-a long time ago. The bitch didn’t like me, always growled when I came near. The old man never knew, never.”

She remembered the sheriff telling her how much Jacob Marley had loved that dog, how she’d just up and died one day. Her heart was pounding, slowly, painfully. Somehow she had to reach him. She had to try. “Listen to me, Tyler. I didn’t betray you. I would never betray you. I came here to Riptide because of what you’d told me about it. I was here to hide out. This was sanctuary for me. You helped me, so very much. You don’t know how much I appreciate that.” Were his eyes calmer now? Maybe, but he frowned and she tried to still her fear, said quickly, “That madman was trying to kill both me and my father. The last thing I wanted to think about was falling in love with anyone. I never meant for you to believe there was more to it than friendship.”