Riptide

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.”