Riptide

They both froze when there was a knock on the front door.

Then they heard the front door slam open, voices low and muffled.

Becca grabbed her Coonan and crept toward the kitchen door. “Stay put, Adam. I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“Becca, I’ll be all right. Just hold it a second.” Adam was right on her heels, his voice low, his hand on her gun arm.

“Who is it?” he called out.

A man yelled, “You guys all right? This door looks like an army tried to shoot its way in.”

“I don’t know who it is,” Adam said. “Do you recognize his voice?”

She shook her head.

“Who the hell is out there? What are your damned names? Tell me or I’ll blow your heads off. We’re a bit on the cautious side here.”

“I’m Savich.”

“I’m Sherlock. Thomas sent us. Said we needed to meet Adam and Becca, talk to them, get all the facts straight and together. Then maybe we can nail this stalker.”

“I told him not to,” Adam said and slipped his gun back onto the kitchen table and walked out into the hallway. A big man stood there, a 9mm SIG pistol held snug in his hand. A woman stood just behind him, as if shoved there for protection. She stepped around the man and said, “Don’t be alarmed. We’re the good guys. As Dillon said, Thomas sent us. I’m Sherlock and this is my husband, Dillon Savich. We’re FBI.”

It was the man Thomas wanted to save his daughter’s butt. His friend’s son, the computer hotshot at the Bureau. Adam didn’t like it, any of it. He stood there frowning at the two of them. A man brought his wife to a possible dangerous situation? What kind of an idiot was he?

Becca stepped forward. “You’ve got a neat name, Sherlock. You’re Mr. Savich? Hello. Now, I don’t know who this Thomas is, but he’s probably Adam’s boss, only Adam refuses to tell me anything about who hired him and why. I’m Becca Matlock. The man who’s been stalking me and shot the governor, he was just here. He called me and then he tried to kill us. I hit him, I know it. Adam found some blood, but he’s gone, covered his trail, and I had to bandage Adam up and so-”

“Now we understand everything,” Sherlock said and smiled at the young woman facing her. Sherlock thought she was pretty, but she looked like she’d been ground under for a long time now. She’d been pushed over the line. She said to the big man, Adam, who was standing beside Becca, “Dillon here is great with wounds. Do you want to have him look at your arm?”

Adam was pissed and he felt like a jerk for feeling pissed. If the guy really was a genius with computer tracking programs, or whatever it was he did, maybe it could help. He shook his head. “No, I’m fine. I hope to heaven the sheriff doesn’t show up here, what with all that gunfire.”

“This place is set way back from its neighbors,” Savich said. “And all those thick trees, it’s doubtful anyone heard the shots unless he was real close.”

Becca blinked up at him, then said, “I hope you’re right. This is Adam Carruthers. He’s here as my cousin. He’s here to help clean up this mess, and to protect me. As I said, I guess he works for this Thomas character. I told the guy down the street that he’s gay because I’m afraid he’s jealous of Adam, but he’s really not.”

Sherlock said, “He’s really not jealous?”

“No, Adam really isn’t gay.”

Savich, that big guy who’d been standing very still until this instant, looking solemn and mean, began to laugh. And laugh.

The woman with the beautiful bright red curly hair looked up at her husband, cocked her head to one side, sending all that hair to bouncing around her head, and began laughing herself.

“I’m glad you’re not gay,” Savich said. “What? You really think this other guy is jealous of Adam here?”

Becca nodded. “Yes, and it’s so stupid really. This is a life-and-death situation. Who would ever think of jealousy or sex at a time like this? That’s just nuts.”

“That’s right,” Sherlock said. “No one would. Right, Dillon?”

“That’s exactly what I would have said,” Savich said.

Adam watched Savich slip the SIG back into its shoulder holster. Well, shit. All right, maybe the two of them could help. He’d wait and see what they did before he said anything more.

Becca said, “Adam is drinking a diet Dr Pepper since I don’t have any brandy to help him get over the shock of being wounded. Ice or lime in yours?”

Savich gri

Sherlock had said, “But if he’s not dead, sir, and he is orchestrating all this, then he already knows about Becca and is trying to terrorize her with the ultimate goal of getting to you through her.”

Thomas had said, “I know only enough to scare myself spitless, Sherlock. I just want to keep a lid on all of this until I’m certain. In the meantime, I want to keep her hidden from all the cops and the FBI because I’m certain that they can’t protect her from this stalker.”

Becca said over her shoulder as she led them into the kitchen, “Before anyone comes over, you’ve got to tell me who you are and why you’re here. As I told you, Adam’s cover is that he’s my gay cousin.”

Adam said as he cocked the soda can at Savich, “You want to be her other gay cousin?”

“Then what would that make me?” Sherlock said. “I can’t keep my hands off him. That would blow the cover right off.”

“Maybe we’ll be your friends, Adam. I know quite a bit about you and your background. You and I went to school together, how about that?” Savich said.

“Then what the hell are you doing in Riptide, Maine?”

Sherlock took a glass of soda from Becca, sipped it, and said, “We’re here because of that skeleton that fell out of your basement wall, Becca. You guys wanted some help, and since we live in Portsmouth, it wasn’t tough for us to get up here.”

“How do you know where I went to school?” Adam said, his eyes dark and hard on Savich’s face.

“MAX gave me most of your particulars. It took him a while longer to find out about all your other activities. You went to Yale. No problem. Did we crew?”

Well, damn, Adam thought, it was a good idea. “Yeah,” he said. “We did crew. We also beat Harvard, that bunch of pissy little wimps.”

Sherlock wondered why Adam Carruthers didn’t want her or Dillon there. Didn’t he realize that they could help? The stalker was here in Riptide, he’d tried to kill them.

Sherlock gave Adam a su

“Yeah,” Savich said, rising. “Then we need to figure out why he would want to kill Becca like this. It doesn’t make sense. He’s into terrorizing her. Why just shoot her and end it all? He’d have no more fun.”

“Good question,” Becca said. “We haven’t had time to think about anything since it happened. Me, I don’t think he wanted to kill either of us, just scare us real bad, just a

Becca sucked in her breath. “Oh dear, we need to get the front door repaired before our neighbor, Tyler McBride, or the sheriff come to visit. I don’t want to try to explain bullet holes in the door.”

“Let’s check for a trail first,” Sherlock said. “Then, Becca, you can tell us what the stalker said to you this time while we all repair the door.”