Riptide

The man stuck out his arm and helped her over the shards of glass. “Young Jeff is a teenage boy with raging hormones,” he said, very aware that she had pulled away from him again. “I’m afraid you’re now the object of his affection.”

She shuddered. “No, I’m the object of everyone’s curiosity, nothing more, including poor Young Jeff.” She stopped. The man couldn’t help it that she was spooked. She drew a deep breath, gave him a nice big smile, and said, “I’ve got a few more things to buy, Mr.-?”

“Carruthers. Adam Carruthers.” He stuck out his hand and she automatically shook it. Big hand, hard, just like the rest of him. She’d bet the last dime in the bottom of her purse that even the soles of his feet were hard. She knew without being told that he was very disciplined, very focused, like soldiers or bad guys were focused, and that made her so afraid she nearly ran out right that minute. Which was silly. Only one thing she really knew for sure-she didn’t ever want to have to tangle with him. Actually, if she never saw him again, it would be just fine by her. “I haven’t seen you around town before, Mr. Carruthers.”

“No, I just got here yesterday. The first thing I heard about was your finding that skeleton. The second thing I heard was it was the missing wife of your neighbor, Tyler McBride, and that you were seeing him and now wasn’t that interesting?”

A reporter, she thought. Oh God, maybe he was a reporter or a paparazzo, and they’d found her. Her brave new world in the boondocks was going to be over just as it was begi

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, of course. I’m very busy. It was a pleasure to meet you. Goodbye.” And she was nearly ru

He stared after her. She was taller than he’d expected, and too thin. Well, he’d be ski

He went back to his second-floor corner room at Errol Fly

I met her over a broken jar of peanut butter in Food Fort. She’s fine, but nervous as hell. Understandable. You won’t believe this, but now she’s embroiled in a mess here in Riptide. A skeleton fell out of her basement wall. Everyone in town believes it’s a neighbor’s wife who disappeared over a year ago. Who the hell knows? Will keep you informed. Adam

He sat back in his chair and smelled the coffee perking in the Mr. Coffee machine he’d bought at Goose’s Hardware when he’d gotten into town.

She was wary of him, maybe even afraid. Well, he couldn’t blame her, a big guy trying to pick her up in Food Fort after she’d found a skeleton in her basement, while already on the run from the FBI, the NYPD, and a murderous madman. He didn’t think she’d been amused by his peanut butter wit, which meant she wasn’t a dolt.

He poured a cup of coffee, sipped it, and sighed with bone-deep satisfaction. He leaned back in the dark-brown nubby chair, which was surprisingly comfortable. The TV played quietly on its stand against a far wall, providing background noise. He closed his eyes, seeing Becca Matlock again.

No, now she was Becca Powell. Under that name she’d quickly rented the Jacob Marley place and promptly had a skeleton fall out of her basement wall after that incredible storm that had battered the Maine coast.

The woman had pretty sucky luck.

Now all he had to do was make her come to trust him.

Then, just maybe, he would have a very big surprise for her.

But first he had some reco

So Adam kept his distance the next day, watched her house during the morning and saw Tyler McBride and his little boy, Sam, pay her a visit around eleven o’clock. The kid was really cute, but he didn’t yell and jump around like other kids his age. Was everyone right? Had the son witnessed McBride killing his mother, or was it just talk?

Adam wondered what was going on between Tyler McBride and Becca Matlock/Powell. He watched Sheriff Gaffney pay her a visit, even overheard the sheriff speaking to her outside the front door, on the big wraparound porch. He heard them clearly.

“Nothing yet from the medical examiner’s office, Sheriff?”

“They say hopefully tomorrow. I just wanted to go over the basement again, see what I could sniff out. My boys didn’t find any fingerprints, but just maybe there’s something there that we all missed. Oh, and another thing, Rachel Ryan asked me to tell you that some boys would be arriving to remove the tree and fix the window for you.”

The sheriff left after an hour, a chocolate chip cookie in his hand. Adam knew it was chocolate chip. He could smell the chocolate from twenty yards and was salivating.

He sent an e-mail after lunch and within an hour knew all about how Becca Matlock had met Tyler McBride at Dartmouth College. Had the two of them been college sweethearts? Lovers? Perhaps. It was interesting. And now everyone believed the skeleton was Tyler McBride’s missing wife, A

Yep, her luck sucked, big-time.

He still wasn’t ready to approach her, she was too spooked. So he kept an eye on her that evening as well. She didn’t leave the house. Since it stayed light so late in Maine during the summer months, five guys, all armed with chain saws, came to take care of the old fallen hemlock that lay along the west side of the house. They pulled the limb out of the upstairs window and sawed it up. They cut off and sawed up the branches from the tree, then wrapped thick chains around the trunk and dragged the tree away.

Through all of this, Becca read outside on the wraparound porch, sitting in an old glider, rocking back and forth until he was nearly nauseated watching that slow back and forth, that never-ending back and forth, and hearing the small creaking sounds that went with every movement in between the loud grating bursts from the chain saws.

She went to bed early.

Around noon the next day, Becca was thanking the windowpane guy for replacing the glass in her bedroom window. Not half an hour later, Tyler and Sam were there, eating tuna fish sandwiches at her kitchen table. She said, “We should be hearing from Sheriff Gaffney soon, Tyler. It should be today, that’s what he said when he came yesterday. They’re sure taking their time. Then all this nonsense will be over.”

He was silent for the longest time, chewing his sandwich, helping Sam eat his, then said finally, some anger in his voice, which surprised her, “You’re quite the optimist, Becca.”

But she wasn’t thinking about the skeleton at that moment. She was wondering why that man-Adam Carruthers-was watching her house. He was standing motionless just to the right, in amongst the spruce trees, not twenty feet away. He wasn’t the stalker. It wasn’t his voice, she was sure of that. The stalker’s voice was not old, not young, but u