Riptide

and within an hour knew all about
    how Becca Matlock had met Tyler McBride at Dartmouth College.
    Had the two of them been college sweethearts? Lovers? Perhaps.
    It was interesting. And now everyone believed the skeleton
    was Tyler McBride's missing wife, Ann. He'd find out everything
    he could about Tyler McBride. He supposed there was a certain
    possible irony at play here. What if she'd managed to get away from

one stalker only to stumble upon a man who'd done away with his
    wife?
    Yep, her luck sucked, big-time.
    He still wasn't ready to approach her, she was too spooked. So
    he kept an eye on her that evening as well. She didn't leave the
    house. Since it stayed light so late in Maine during the summer
    months, five guys, all armed with chain saws, came to take care of
    the old fallen hemlock that lay along the west side of the house.
    They pulled the limb out of the upstairs window and sawed it up.
    They cut off and sawed up the branches from the tree, then
    wrapped thick chains around the trunk and dragged the tree away.
    Through all of this, Becca read outside on the wraparound
    porch, sitting in an old glider, rocking back and forth until he was
    nearly nauseated watching that slow back and forth, that never-ending
    back and forth, and hearing the small creaking sounds that
    went with every movement in between the loud grating bursts
    from the chain saws.
    She went to bed early.

    Around noon the next day, Becca was thanking the windowpane
    guy for replacing the glass in her bedroom window. Not half
    an hour later,Tyler and Sam were there, eating tuna fish sandwiches
    at her kitchen table. She said, "We should be hearing from Sheriff
    Gaffney soon,Tyler. It should be today, that's what he said when he
    came yesterday. They're sure taking their time. Then all this nonsense
    will be over."
    He was silent for the longest time, chewing his sandwich, helping
    Sam eat his, then said finally, some anger in his voice, which
    surprised her, "You're quite the optimist, Becca."
    But she wasn't thinking about the skeleton at that moment. She

was wondering why that man--Adam Carruthers--was watching
    her house. He was standing motionless just to the right, in amongst
    the spruce trees, not twenty feet away. He wasn't the stalker. It
    wasn't his voice, she was sure of that. The stalker's voice was not
    old, not young, but unnervingly smooth. She knew she would recognize
    that voice from hell anywhere. Carruthers's voice was different.
    But who was he? And why was he so interested in her?

    Adam stretched. He went through a few relaxing taste kwon do
    moves to ease his muscles. He was just in the process of slowly raising
    his left leg, his left arm extended fully, when she said from behind
    him, "Your arm is a bit too high. Lower your elbow at least an
    inch and extend your wrist, yeah, and pull your fingers back a bit
    more. That's better. Now, don't even twitch or I'll shoot your head
    off."
    He was faster than she could have imagined. She was a good six
    feet behind him. She had her Coonan .357 Magnum automatic,
    chambered with seven bullets, aimed right at him, and in the very
    next instant, his whole body was in motion, moving so fast it was
    a blur, at least until his right foot lightly and gracefully clipped
    the gun from her hand, and his left hand smacked her hard enough
    in the shoulder to send her flying backward. She landed on her back.
    Becca grabbed the gun, which lay on the ground two feet to her
    left, and brought it up only to have him kick it out of her hand
    again. Her wrist stung for a moment, then went numb.
    "Sorry," he said, standing over her now. "I don't react well to
    folks holding guns on me. I hope I didn't hurt you." He actually
    had the gall to reach out his hand to help her up. She was breathing
    hard, her shoulder was aching and her wrist was useless. She
    scooted backward, turned, and tried to run. She wasn't fast enough.

He grabbed her and hauled her back against him. "No, just hold it
    a minute. I'm not going to hurt you."
    She stopped cold and became very, very still. Her head fell forward
    and he knew in that moment that she had simply given up.
    He knew her shoulder had to hurt, that her wrist was now probably
    hanging numb. "It'll be all right. You'll get feeling back in
    your wrist soon. It'll burn a bit but then it'll be okay again."
    Still drawn in on herself, she said, "I didn't think he could be
    you--your voice is all wrong, I would have sworn to that--but I
    obviously was