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 unnervingly smooth. She knew she would recognize that voice from hell anywhere. Carruthers’s voice was different. But who was he? And why was he so interested in her?
Adam stretched. He went through a few relaxing tae kwon do moves to ease his muscles. He was just in the process of slowly raising his left leg, his left arm extended fully, when she said from behind him, “Your arm is a bit too high. Lower your elbow at least an inch and extend your wrist, yeah, and pull your fingers back a bit more. That’s better. Now, don’t even twitch or I’ll shoot your head off.”
He was faster than she could have imagined. She was a good six feet behind him. She had her Coonan.357 Magnum automatic, chambered with seven bullets, aimed right at him, and in the very next instant, his whole body was in motion, moving so fast it was a blur, at least until his right foot lightly and gracefully clipped the gun from her hand, and his left hand smacked her hard enough in the shoulder to send her flying backward. She landed on her back.
Becca grabbed the gun, which lay on the ground two feet to her left, and brought it up only to have him kick it out of her hand again. Her wrist stung for a moment, then went numb.
“Sorry,” he said, standing over her now. “I don’t react well to folks holding guns on me. I hope I didn’t hurt you.” He actually had the gall to reach out his hand to help her up. She was breathing hard, her shoulder was aching and her wrist was useless. She scooted backward, turned, and tried to run. She wasn’t fast enough. He grabbed her and hauled her back against him. “No, just hold it a minute. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She stopped cold and became very, very still. Her head fell forward and he knew in that moment that she had simply given up.
He knew her shoulder had to hurt, that her wrist was now probably hanging numb. “It’ll be all right. You’ll get feeling back in your wrist soon. It’ll burn a bit but then it’ll be okay again.”
Still drawn in on herself, she said, “I didn’t think he could be you-your voice is all wrong, I would have sworn to that-but I obviously was wrong.”
She thought he was the stalker, the man who had murdered that poor old woman in front of the museum, and then shot Governor Bledsoe. Automatically, he let her go. “Look, I’m sorry-” He was speaking to the back of her head. She’d taken off the second he’d let her go. She was off at a dead run, through the spruce trees, back toward her house.
He caught her within ten yards, grabbed her left arm, and jerked her around. She moved quickly. Her fist hit him solidly on the jaw. His head snapped back with the force of her sharp-knuckled blow. She was strong. He grabbed both her arms, only to feel her knee come up. His fast reflexes saved him, just barely, thank God, and her knee got him in the thigh. It still hurt, but not as bad as if she’d gotten him in the crotch. That would have sent him to the ground, sobbing his guts out. He whirled her around and brought her back against his chest. He clamped her arms at her sides and simply held her against him. She was breathing hard, her muscles tensing, relaxing, then tensing again. She was very afraid, but he knew she’d act again if he gave her the opening. He was impressed. But now he had her.
“I don’t know how you found me,” she said, still panting. “I did everything I could think of to hide my trail. How did you track me down?”
“It did take me two and a half days to track you to Portland, actually longer than I’d expected.”
She twisted her head to look at him. “You bastard. Let me go.”
“Not just yet. I want to hang on to my body parts. Hey, you didn’t do too badly for an amateur.”
“Let me go.”
“Will you stop with the violence? I can’t stand violence. It makes me nervous.”
Her look was incredulous as she chewed her bottom lip. Finally, she nodded. “All right.”
He let her go and took a quick step back, his eyes on her right knee.
She was off and running in a flash. This time, he let her go. She was fast, but he knew that from her dossier. She’d spotted him watching her house. It amazed him. He was always so very careful, so patient, as still as one of the spruce trees. In the past, his life had depended on it more times than he cared to remember. But she’d cottoned on to the fact that someone was out there, with her in his sights.
Well, the stalker had been after her for more than three weeks in New York. That had sharpened her senses, kept her alert. There was no doubt she was afraid, but it hadn’t mattered. She’d come out and confronted him anyway. He whistled as he walked over and bent down to pick up her Coonan automatic. It was a nice gun. It had a closed breech that gave it very high velocity. His brother had one of these babies, was always bragging about it. It was steady, reliable, deadly, and not all that common. He wondered how she handled the recoil. He dumped the seven rimmed cartridges into his hand, then dropped them into his pocket. He paused a moment, wondering if he shouldn’t leave the gun in her mailbox or slip it just inside her front door.
He imagined she wouldn’t feel safe without it.
He saw Tyler McBride and his son leave about ten minutes later. He saw her wave from the front porch. He saw her looking over toward where he quietly stood, surely not visible through the trees. She went back into the house after Tyler McBride and his son drove off. He waited.
Not three minutes later she was back, standing on the front porch, looking toward him. He saw her thinking, weighing, assessing. Finally, she trotted toward him.
She had guts.
He didn’t move, just waited, watching her. He realized when she was only about ten feet from him that she had a big kitchen butcher knife clutched in her hand.
He smiled. She was her father’s daughter.
9
Slowly, he pulled her gun out of his pants pocket and aimed it in her general direction. “Even that big honker knife can’t compete with this Coonan you managed to get off that guy you met at the restaurant in Rockland. He was, however, pissed that you wouldn’t go to bed with him.” He grinned at her. “Hey, you got what you needed. You did good.”
“How did you know about that? Oh, never mind. My knife can certainly compete with the Coonan now. I watched you take the bullets out.”
He grinned at her again, he just couldn’t help it, and held the automatic out to her, butt first.
