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 grinned at her. “Give me a goodly amount of lime and then Sherlock and I will go out and buy some brandy.” He then looked long at her. He wanted to tell her that her father was worried sick about her, that she looked a lot like him, that, when this was all over, he would come into her life for the very first time. But for now, Savich couldn’t say anything at all. They’d promised Thomas Matlock that they’d keep him in the shadows until the mess was all cleared up. Thomas had said, “Until I can be certain that Krimakov is really dead, I just can’t take the chance. And for me to believe that, really believe it all the way to my gut, I’ve got to see a photo of him lying on a slab in a Greek morgue.”
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 sunny smile. “Why don’t we go look in the woods and try to uncover a trail for this guy?”
“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 announce that he was here and ready to play again.”
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.”
“You’re good,” Savich said some thirty minutes later to Adam. “You said there was no trail and there isn’t.”
Adam grunted. “Let’s go out a bit farther. Maybe we’ll see some tire tracks.”
“No way,” Sherlock said. “The stalker is a pro, which means that he isn’t really a stalker. That’s just a cover. A misdirection.”
Savich nodded. “I agree. He isn’t a stalker.”
Becca said, “What do you mean, exactly?”
Adam said, as he slowly lifted leaves some ten feet away, “It doesn’t make sense, Becca. Usually stalkers are sick guys who, for whatever strange reason, latch on to someone. It’s an obsession. They’re not pros. This guy’s a pro. This was well thought out.”
And Savich thought:
Becca was shaking her head. “But he sounds nuts whenever he’s called me. He called a couple of hours ago. He said much of the same things. He sounded all sorts of excited, very pleased with himself, like he couldn’t wait. I know he’s toying with me, getting a real kick out of my fear, my anger, my helplessness.” She stopped a moment, looked at Adam, and added, “The thing is, I can’t help but feel that inside, he’s just dead.”
Sherlock said, “Maybe he’s dead on the inside, but it’s the outside we’ve got to worry about. One thing we know for sure is that he’s clever; he knows what he needs to do and he does it. He found you, didn’t he? Now, could we go back to the house and Becca can tell us everything? You said he called you again. Tell us exactly what he said. Then we can put all our brainpower together and solve this mess.”
“Another thing,” Savich said as he brushed his black slacks off, “I don’t want us out in the open like this. It isn’t
