laptop. He pressed close to Becca.
“You got that big guy there with you, Becca? Listening to me?”
“Yeah, I’m here listening to you, you pathetic piece of shit. Cheer up, you killed the front door, but we’re so good we even brought it back to life. It probably looks better than you do.”
Becca could feel the black fury in the silence that flooded over the phone line. She could nearly feel the stench of it-hot and rancid, that fury. “I’ll kill you for that, you bastard.”
“You already tried, didn’t you? Not much good, are you?”
“You’re a dead man, Carruthers. Soon. Very soon now.”
“Hey, where are you holding Gleason’s wake? I wanna come. You want me to bring a priest? Or isn’t your kind of crazy into religion?”
The breathing speeded up, rough and harsh. “I’m not crazy, you bastard. I’ll have Rebecca watch you die. I promise you that. I see you got two more folk there with you. I also know they’re FBI. You think they’re going to do anything to help? No one can catch me. No one. Hey, Rebecca, the governor call you yet?”
Adam gave her a cool nod, a thumbs-up sign. She said, “Yeah, he called me. He wants to see me. He told me he loves me, that he wants to sleep with me again. He said his wife is such a bitch, she doesn’t understand him, and he wants to leave her for me. The dear man, do you think he’s well enough yet for me to tell him where I am?”
Cold, dead silence, then, very gently, they heard the phone line disconnect.
She stared at the phone. The slammer was showing “501-4867, Orlando Cartwright, Rural Route 1456, Blaylock” in black letters on a bright-green screen.
Sherlock said, “Everyone stay still for a moment. Savich will have all the information in just a moment. He sounded healthy enough, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Adam said.
“Then it was only a flesh wound, more’s the pity,” Sherlock said, and scratched behind her left ear. Her curling red hair was all over her head. She was wearing a sleep shirt that said across the front:
“That dog bit,” Adam said, “it was an excellent ploy on his part. All right, let’s head out of here and go get the bastard. You got our directions, Savich?”
“In a second,” Savich said.
Adam took Becca in his arms. “You did great, Becca, really great. You rattled him. Now, let’s get dressed and go nail that little bastard.”
“We’re all going,” Becca said.
Savich looked up and grinned. “It’s a farmhouse some six miles northwest of here, outside a small town called Blaylock. Let me call Tommy the Pipe.” He got him quickly on his cell phone.
“Yeah, Tommy, call all the others and head on out there, but don’t go in. This guy is very dangerous. Just keep him under wraps until we get there. I’ll find out everything I can on the way there. Yeah, on MAX.”
In the backseat of Adam’s Jeep, Savich kept up a running commentary. “Here we go. The farmhouse belonged to Orlando Cartwright, bought the place back in 1954. He’s dead now. Oh yeah, that’s good, MAX. He had one daughter, she was with him until he died three weeks ago at Blue Hills Community Hospital. Lung cancer, Alzheimer’s. Oh, no, she’s still there, alone.”
“Shit,” Adam said.
“What’s her name?” Becca asked, turning in the seat to look at him.
“Linda Cartwright. Just a minute here, okay, good hunting, MAX. She’s never been married, age thirty-three, and she’s on the heavy side, one hundred and sixty-five pounds, but she’s really pretty, even on her DL photo. She’s a legal secretary for the Billson Manners law firm in Bangor, been there for eight years. Hold on a second, let me get into her personnel file. Yes, she’s got very good evaluations-in 1995 she complained about sexual harassment. Hmmm, the guy was eventually fired. Her work record is clean. Her mother died back in 1985, a drunk driver killed both her and Linda’s younger sister. No, MAX, there’s no need to go into police files, probably a waste of time.”
“She’s single and she’s alone,” Sherlock said. “Not good at all. Hurry, Adam.”
“She’s alone,” Becca said. “She’s alone, just like I was.”
At one o’clock in the morning, beneath a nearly full, brilliant summer moon, Adam pulled his black Jeep next to a dark-blue Ford Taurus parked on the side of a two-lane blacktop road. They were some fifty yards from the old farmhouse with its peeling white shutters and sagging narrow front porch.
There was no need for introductions.
Two men, both in their thirties, fit, one wearing glasses, the other smoking a pipe, were leaning against the side of the car. Savich said, “The guy in there?”
“The lights are still on, but we haven’t seen any movement at all. No one left since we got here. Chuck and Dave are around the back.” He took out his walkie-talkie. “You guys see anything?”
The answer was clear and loud. “He hasn’t come out this way, Tommy. You and Rollo haven’t seen anything?”
“Nothing.”
Dave said, “There’s no movement in the house that we can see. Chuck wants to go up close and look through the windows.”
“Tell Chuck and Dave to stay put,” Adam said. “Here’s Savich, he’ll give you the rundown on what we’re facing.”
Savich was concise, his voice clipped.
“I don’t like this,” Tommy said and puffed frantically on his pipe. “Damn, a woman living way out here, all alone, no neighbors for a couple of miles. I’ll bet he scoped her out really fast and that he’s been here with her. God, this doesn’t look good. We’ve seen nothing of either of them. Maybe she’s not here. Maybe MAX is wrong and she was never here.”
“Yeah, right, Tommy,” Rollo said, and he sounded depressed. He was short, dressed all in black, and he was perfectly bald, his head shining brightly beneath the summer moon.
Tommy the Pipe said, “Maybe he left before we got here. It could be that he took her with him, as a hostage.”
Linda Cartwright was a woman alone, and Becca knew he’d been in there, with her.
Damn the bright moon, Adam was thinking, it lit them up as clearly as daylight from the front of the farmhouse. But there were thick pine trees crowding the eastern side of the small farmhouse. Folk grew potatoes in this area, and so much of the land was cleared, open, just occasional random clumps of pines and maples dotted here and there, but no place to hide. There was a big mechanical digger sitting in the middle of an open field. There was a small sagging porch in front of the house, a naked lightbulb burning over the front door.
On the eastern side of the house, he could get to within twenty feet of the structure before the pine trees played out. It would have to be good enough. He pulled out his Delta Elite, thoughtfully rubbed his temple with the barrel. Then he said, a feral gleam in his eyes, “I got a plan. Gather round.”
“I don’t like it,” Savich said after Adam had fallen silent. “Too dangerous.”
Adam said, “I was thinking that all of us could go in guns blazing, raising hell, but the woman might still be alive. We can’t take the chance he’d pop her then and there and then kill two or three of us, what with all this damned moonlight.”
“All right,” Savich said after a moment, “but I’ll go with you.”
“Bullshit,” said Adam. “I don’t care if you’re a damned FBI agent and your goal in life is to catch bad guys. You’re married and you’ve got a kid. What I need from you and everyone else is good cover. I hear you’re a pretty good shot, Savich. Prove it.”
“I’m coming with you, Adam,” Becca said. “I’ll cover your back from right behind you.”
“No.” He held up his hand. “I’m the professional here. Just say some prayers, that’s all I ask.”
“No,” Becca said, and he realized then that if he wanted her to stay put, he’d have to have one of the men tie her down. He didn’t like it, but he understood it. It could be dangerous, too dangerous. He just didn’t know what to do.
“I’m coming,” she said, and he knew she was committed. “I have to, Adam, just have to.”
