Riptide

Actually, if she
    never saw him again, it would be just fine by her. "I haven't seen
    you around town before, Mr. Carruthers."
    "No, I just got here yesterday. The first thing I heard about was
    your finding that skeleton. The second thing I heard was it was the
    missing wife of your neighbor, Tyler McBride, and that you were
    seeing him and now wasn't that interesting?"
    A reporter, she thought. Oh God, maybe he was a reporter or a
    paparazzo, and they'd found her. Her brave new world in the
    boondocks was going to be over just as it was beginning. It wasn't
    fair. She began backing away from him.
    "Are you all right?"
    "Yes, of course. I'm very busy. It was a pleasure to meet you.
    Goodbye." And she was nearly running down the aisle lined with
    different kinds of breads, hamburger buns, and English muffins.
    He stared after her. She was taller than he'd expected, and too
    thin. Well, he'd be skinny, too, if he'd been under as much pressure
    as she was. What mattered was that he had found her. Amateurs, he thought, even very smart ones, couldn't easily disappear. He
    thought about how he had managed to misdirect the FBI, and
    grinned at the jars of low-fat jams and jellies. They had more procedures,
    more requirements, more delays built into the system, a
    system that could have been designed by a criminal to give himself
    the best shot at escaping. Another thing they didn't have was his contacts. He was whistling when he carried his can of French roast

drip coffee to the checkout counter. He watched her climb into
    her dark green Toyota and drive out of the parking lot.
    He went back to his second-floor corner room at Errol Flynn's
    Hammock, booted up his laptop, and wrote a quick email:

    I met her over a broken jar of peanut butter in Food Fort. She's fine,
    but nervous as hell. Understandable. You won't believe this, but now
    she's embroiled in a mess here in Riptide. A skeleton fell out of her
    basement wall. Everyone in town believes it's a neighbor's wife who
    disappeared over a year ago. Who the hell knows? Will keep you informed.
    Adam

    He sat back in his chair and smelled the coffee perking in the
    Mr. Coffee machine he'd bought at Goose's Hard-ware when he'd
    gotten into town.
    She was wary of him, maybe even afraid. Well, he couldn't blame
    her, a big guy trying to pick her up in Food Fort after she'd
    found a skeleton in her basement, while already on the run from
    the FBI, the NYPD, and a murderous madman. He didn't think
    she'd been amused by his peanut butter wit, which meant she
    wasn't a dolt.
    He poured a cup of coffee, sipped it, and sighed with bone-deep
    satisfaction. He leaned back in the dark-brown nubby chair, which
    was surprisingly comfortable. The TV played quietly on its stand
    against a far wall, providing background noise. He closed his eyes,
    seeing Becca Matlock again.
    No, now she was Becca Powell. Under that name she'd quickly
    rented the Jacob Marley place and promptly had a skeleton fall out
    of her basement wall after that incredible storm that had battered
    the Maine coast.
    The woman had pretty sucky luck.

Now all he had to do was make her come to trust him.
    Then, just maybe, he would have a very big surprise for her.
    But first he had some reconnaissance to do. It never paid to rush
    into things.
    So Adam kept his distance the next day, watched her house during
    the morning and saw Tyler McBride and his little boy, Sam, pay
    her a visit around eleven o'clock. The kid -was really cute, but he
    didn't yell and jump around like other kids his age. Was everyone
    right? Had the son witnessed McBride killing his mother, or was it
    just talk?
    Adam wondered what was going on between Tyler McBride
    and Becca Matlock Powell. He watched Sheriff Gaffney pay her a
    visit, even overheard the sheriff speaking to her outside the front
    door, on the big wraparound porch. He heard them clearly.
    "Nothing yet from the medical examiner's office, Sheriff?"
    "They say hopefully tomorrow. I just wanted to go over the
    basement again, see what I could sniff out. My boys didn't find any
    fingerprints, but just maybe there's something there that we all
    missed. Oh, and another thing, Rachel Ryan asked me to tell you
    that some boys would be arriving to remove the tree and fix the
    window for you."
    The sheriff left after an hour, a chocolate chip cookie in his
    hand. Adam knew it was chocolate chip. He could smell the
    chocolate from twenty yards and was salivating.
    He sent an e-mail after lunch