Riptide

“What the hell is it?” Adam was at Thomas’s side in but a moment.

Thomas shook his head, his eyes dazed. There was a fine tremor in his hands. “You’re not going to believe this. CIA Agent Elizabeth Pirounakis was blown up when she went into Vasili Krimakov’s apartment in Iráklion. Krimakov must have worked there, left notes there, evidence of his plans.

“The whole building blew up. It’s now rubble. Agent Pirounakis is dead, the two other Greek agents with her dead as well. Gaylan isn’t certain yet, but given the time of the explosion, thankfully very few people were in the apartment building.”

“He did this before he left Crete,” Agent Hawley said. “It’s not something he’s just done.”

Adam said, “At least now there has to be an inquiry about the guy they buried. Surely now they can’t hang on to the fiction that the man in the car accident was Vasili Krimakov?”

Thomas looked at Adam. “It doesn’t much matter now. There’s hell to pay over there, but that doesn’t help us.”

“Time,” Adam said. “It’s what he hasn’t given us.”

Thomas nodded, then paused another moment and looked over at his daughter. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

She gave him a smile filled with rage and said, “Yes. Lock and load.”

26

It was hot that day in Maine, even by the water. Lobster boats bobbed up and down in the inlets, fishermen, their hats pushed back on their heads, lay in the shade of the awnings on their boats, if they were lucky enough to have awnings.

The white spires of the Riptide churches shone beneath the bright afternoon sun. There wasn’t much movement anywhere. It was just too hot. The tourists weren’t wandering around taking photos of the quaint Maine town, they were holed up in air-conditioned pubs.

The hot weather didn’t bother the birds. Osprey dove for fish off the spruce-covered points. Gulls squawked and whirled over the lobster boats. The smell of dead fish left too long in the heat sent out odors that meant you had to take shallow breaths to survive. Cumulus clouds in fantastic shapes dotted the steel-blue sky. There was no breeze at all. Still, hot air blanketed the land.

Becca was so scared that all the beauty of the land and ocean, the sound of the birds, the incredible blue of the sky-none of it penetrated her brain. She felt frozen in the near hundred-degree heat.

She’d driven herself in a rented white Toyota from a private airfield near Camden. It had taken her nearly an hour to negotiate the tourist traffic on Highway 1 south to Riptide, just below Rockland. Her hands were clammy, her heart slowly thudding in her chest. She tried to think of all that could go wrong, but her mind just wouldn’t slip into gear.

When a mosquito bit her as she was pumping gas, she was pleased that she felt it. She wasn’t even aware of being pissed off that the rental agency hadn’t filled her car before renting it to her.

When she arrived in Riptide at three o’clock in the afternoon, she drove directly to Tyler’s house on Gum Shoe Lane. He was standing in the yard, waiting for her. He was quite alone.

Tyler held her very close, as if she were a lifeline, and so she stood there, his arms locked tightly around her. Finally, she eased back and looked up at him. “Any word at all?”

“Another note from Krimakov.”

“Let me see it.”

“This is all a huge mess, Becca.”

“Yes, I know, and I’m so sorry for it, Tyler. It’s all my fault. If I could go back into the past, make the decision not to come here, I swear I would. I’m so sorry. I swear that Sam will be all right. I swear it to you.”

He looked at her for a very long time, but he didn’t say anything, to either agree or disagree.

“Show me the new note. Then I’ll take both of them with me, okay?”

The note was handwritten, big strokes, black ballpoint: The boy will be all right for another eight hours. If Rebecca isn’t here, he’s dead.

She folded both notes, put them in the pocket of her sundress, and left for Jacob Marley’s house twenty minutes later. Undoubtedly Krimakov was watching Tyler’s house, at least he should be. She would call in another half hour just in case Krimakov hadn’t been watching. For sure he’d have a trace on Tyler’s phone.

She unlocked the front door of Jacob Marley’s house. It was so still and hot inside, so very silent, nothing moving at all, not a single sound, not even a floorboard. She opened all the windows and switched on the overhead fans. The hot air stirred, nothing more, until fresh air began creeping in. The curtains billowed ever so slightly.

So quiet. It was so very quiet in the house. She went into the kitchen and put on water to boil. She’d make iced tea, there were still bags in the cabinet. She opened the refrigerator, saw that it had been cleaned out, and wondered who had done it. Probably Rachel Ryan, she thought. It was a nice thing for her to do. She had to go to the Food Fort. Good, he could see her driving around, know that she was here, know that she was alone. She hoped she wouldn’t see Sheriff Gaffney because surely he’d want to talk to her.

When she got into the Toyota, she pulled out the small button on her wristband and said, “I’m heading out to Food Fort now. The cupboard’s bare. I’ll be back in under an hour. I want to make sure he knows I’m here. I’ll leave the notes on the front seat of the car at Food Fort.” Then she pushed the button back in.

She was greeted at Food Fort like she was a celebrity. Everyone knew who she was, impossible for them not to now, what with her photo and her story on every news station in the United States. People peered around corners to look at her, even stare at her, but they really didn’t want to get close enough to speak to her. She smiled, nothing more, and put stuff in her shopping cart.

When she was checking out, a woman behind her said, “Well, finally I get to see you. Sheriff Gaffney told me all about you, what a pretty girl you are, how there was this big fellow there at Jacob Marley’s house who really wasn’t your cousin. He didn’t buy that one for a minute. You really lied to him, didn’t you, and he couldn’t do anything about it. But now everyone knows who you are.”

“But I don’t know who you are, ma’am.”

“I’m Mrs. Ella, his chief assistant.”

It was the Mrs. Ella who’d kept her from getting hysterical when she’d called the sheriff’s office to report the skeleton falling out of the wall in the basement by telling her about all her dogs, every last one of them. Mrs. Ella, who also shopped at Sherry’s Lingerie Boutique. She was a big woman, muscular, with a corded neck and a mustache shadowing her upper lip.

“You’re a liar, Ms. Powell. No, you’re Ms. Matlock. You made up that name when you came here.”

“I had to lie. So nice to speak to you, ma’am.”

“Ha, I’ll just bet. Why are you back here?”

Becca smiled. “I’m a tourist now, ma’am. I’m going to go out on a lobster boat.” And she hefted her two grocery bags and left Food Fort.

“The sheriff will want to speak to you,” Mrs. Ella yelled after her. “It’s a pity he had to drive to Augusta on O-fficial Business.”

She heard Mrs. Ella say behind her, “She’s back here to do more bad things, you mark my words, Mrs. Peterson. Here she was all nice and hysterical when she found Melissa Katzen’s skeleton in her basement wall, but it was all a lie. If the skeleton hadn’t been so old, I would have bet she’d done it.”

Becca turned slowly in the half-open door, her arms aching with the heavy bags, and said, “Melissa Katzen was murdered, ma’am, and not by me. That isn’t a lie. Does anyone know anything yet?”

“No,” called out Mrs. Peterson, the cashier, who had bright red dyed hair. “We’re not even one hundred percent sure that it is Melissa Katzen. The DNA tests haven’t come back yet. It takes weeks, Sheriff Gaffney said.”