Riptide

“Tell me, now.”

“All right, then. I’m here to do research on why women dye their hair.”

She very nearly ran at him with the knife. She was so mad she nearly forgot the bone-grinding fear. “All right, you jerk, I want you to lie on the ground and fold your hands underneath you. Do it now.”

“No,” he said. “The windbreaker is new. It looks good on me, hey, maybe it even looks dangerous and sexy. What do you think? Women like black, I’ve heard. Nope, I don’t want it to get dirty.”

“I called Sheriff Gaffney. He should be here any minute.”

“Nah, you can’t bluff me on that. The last person you want here is the sheriff. If I spilled the beans, he’d have to call the New York cops and the FBI.”

She was so pale he thought she’d pass out. Her hand trembled a bit, but then she got ahold of herself. “So you know,” she said. “I don’t think you’re the stalker—your voice is all wrong and you’re too big—but you know all about him, don’t you?”

“Yes. Now listen to me, Becca. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to—Hey, think of me as your own personal guardian angel.”

“You’re so dark, you look more like the devil, but you’re taller than I think the devil is. What’s more, unlike the devil, I’ll bet you don’t have a lick of charm. The last thing you are is a guardian angel. You’re a reporter or a paparazzo, aren’t you?”

“Now you’ve offended me.” She nearly laughed. But she had to remember that he was dangerous, fast and dangerous. No, she couldn’t afford to forget that, not for an instant. She would still have laughed if her gut hadn’t been frozen with fear for nearly as long as she could remember. He was trying to disarm her, at least figuratively this time. Thank God he didn’t have use of her gun. And he was too far away to kick out at her. But he was fast. He had long legs. She took another step back, as insurance.

She waved the knife at him. “I’ve had it. Tell me who you are. Tell me now or I might have to hurt you. Don’t underestimate me, I’m strong. No, it’s more than that. I’m beyond frightened. I’ve got nothing to lose now.”

He looked at her—too pale, her flesh drawn tightly over her bones, too thin, so stressed out he could nearly see her insides quivering. He said slowly, his voice as unthreatening as he could make it, “To hurt me you’d have to come closer. You know better than to do that. Yeah, you’re strong, maybe I wouldn’t even want to run into you in a dark alley. But there’s a big something you’re wrong about. Everyone has something to lose, including you. Things have just gotten a bit out of hand for you, that’s all.”

“A bit out of hand,” she repeated slowly, then laughed, an ugly, raw sound. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” She waited, just stood there, the knife up and arched, her hand starting to cramp, her muscles starting to protest, staring at him, wondering what to do, wondering if she could believe him and knowing she’d be a fool even to consider it.

He said, “Actually, I do. What I wanted to say was that the media and the press are after you in full force, that’s a fact, but you should be safe here.”

“You found me.”

“Yeah, but I’m so good I occasionally even surprise myself.”

She raised the knife even higher. She felt the sun warm between her shoulder blades. It was a beautiful day and everything was a mess. He was her guardian angel? Her arm muscles were burning.

He started to say something more, then stopped. It was the look on her face that kept him quiet. It was like they were both frozen in time and place. Then she surprised the hell out of him. She dropped the knife to the ground and walked straight up to him. She stopped a foot short, looked up at him thoughtfully, then stuck out her hand. He shook hers, bemused, as she said, “If you’re my guardian angel, then get on the phone to the medical examiner’s office in Augusta and find out how long that poor woman who fell out of my basement wall was buried in there.”

He didn’t release her hand. She was tall. He didn’t have to look down that far. “All right.”

She snapped her fingers in front of his nose. “Just like that? You’re so powerful you can find out something just that fast?”

“In this case, yes, I can. You don’t look much like your mother.”

The hand stiffened, but she didn’t jerk free. She said calmly, “No, I don’t. Mom always told me that I’m the picture of my dad. My dad—his name was Thomas—he died at the very end of the Vietnam war. He was a hero. My mother loved him very much, probably too much.”