She said very gently, “No, you know I couldn’t do that, Tyler.”
Even after that, it took her another couple of minutes to get Tyler out of the house. She was locking the door when he said from behind her, “I’m not a sexist.”
She turned around to grin at him. “Aha! So you were eavesdropping. I thought you were probably lurking back there. I was afraid that you were going to try to throw Tyler out of the house.”
“Maybe I would have if you hadn’t finally gotten a grip and pushed him out. I wasn’t a bully or a know-it-all, either, when I was growing up. I never tortured you.”
“Don’t become part of your own script, Adam. I can also write whatever I want to on that script, since it involves me.”
“I’m not gay, either.”
She just laughed at him.
He grabbed her by the shoulders, jerked her against him, and kissed her fast and hard. He said against her mouth, “I’m not gay, damn you.”
She pulled away from him, stood stock-still, and stared at him. She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth.
He streaked his fingers through his hair, standing it on end. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t mean to do that. I’m not gay.”
She started shaking her head, then, just as suddenly, unexpectedly, she threw back her head and laughed and laughed, wrapping her arms around herself.
It was a nice sound. He bet she hadn’t laughed much lately. She hiccuped. “You’re forgiven for trying to enforce your manhood. Got you on that one, hmmm?”
He realized he’d leapt for the bait. How could that have happened? He looked down at his fingernails, then buffed them lightly against his shirtsleeve. “Actually, what I should have said is I’m not at all certain yet that I’m gay. I’m still thinking about it. Kissing you was a test. Yeah, I’m still not certain one way or the other. You didn’t give me much data.” Not much of a return hit, but it was something.
She walked past him into the kitchen. She started measuring out coffee. When she finished, she turned the machine on and stood there, staring at the coffee dripping into the pot. Finally she turned and said, “I want to know who you are. Now. Don’t lie to me. I can’t take any more lies. Really, I just can’t.”
“All right. Pour me that coffee and I’ll tell you who I am and what I’m doing here.”
While she poured, he said, leaning back in his chair, balancing it on its two back legs, “Because you’re an amateur I looked at the problem very differently. But like I already told you, you didn’t do badly. Your only really big mistake was your try at misdirection with the flight from Dulles to Boston, then another flight on to Portland. Another thing: I reviewed all your credit card invoices. The only airline you use is United. Since you’re an amateur, it wouldn’t occur to you to change.”
She said, “Trying another airline flicked through my brain, but I wanted out as fast as I could get out and I feel comfortable dealing with United. I never thought, never realized-”
“I know. It makes excellent sense, just not in this sort of situation. I didn’t even bother checking any of the other airlines.”
“However did you get ahold of my credit card invoices?”
“No problem. Access to any private records is a piece of cake, for anyone. Thankfully, law enforcement has to convince judges to get warrants and that takes time, a good thing for you. Also, I’ve got a dynamite staff who are so fast and creative that I have to give them raises too often.
“No, don’t stiffen up like a poker. We’re talking absolute discretion here. Now, there were only sixty-eight tickets issued to women traveling alone within six hours of the flight you took to Washington, D.C. I believed it would be three hours, but we all wanted to be thorough. It turned out you called the airline to make reservations only two hours and fifty-four minutes before the flight, as a matter of fact. You moved very quickly once you made up your mind to get the hell out of Dodge. Then you had to buy a ticket to Boston, then on to Portland, Maine, when you arrived at Dulles in Washington, D.C. You didn’t want to buy it in New York, for obvious reasons. You ran up to the ticket counter, knowing full well that the next flight to Boston was in a scant twelve minutes. You wanted out of the line of fire and to get where you were going as quickly as you could. There was a flight from Dulles to Boston leaving only forty-five minutes after you landed in Dulles, but you turned it down. You didn’t have any checked luggage, too big a risk with that, which was smart of you. The woman at the check-in counter recognized your photo, said she realized you might miss that plane, but you insisted even though she tried to talk you out of it. She didn’t understand at the time, since there was another flight so soon. She told you the chances were very high that you’d miss the first plane to Boston.”
“I nearly did miss it. I had to run like mad to catch it. They were ready to close the gate and I just slipped right through.”
“I know. I spoke to the flight attendant who greeted you at the door when you came rushing onto the plane. She said you looked somewhat desperate.”
She sighed, but didn’t say anything, just crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, still as a stone. “Come on, let’s hear the rest of it.”
“It didn’t take long to find you on that flight to Portland. Your fake ID was pretty amateur. I’ll bet they were really busy at the check-in counters in New York and Dulles for you to get passed on through. At least you were smart enough not to use that driver’s license again to get yourself a rental car. You waited an hour for a flight from Boston to Portland, then you took a taxi into Portland-yes, one of my people found the driver and verified that it was you-and went to Big Frank’s Previously Owned Cars on Blake Street. You wanted your own car. That told me that you had a definite destination in mind, a place where you were going to burrow in for the long haul. I got all the particulars out of Big Frank, including your license plate number, the make, model, and color of your Toyota. I called a friend in the Portland PD to put out an APB on you and it didn’t take more than a day to net you. Remember when you got gas at the Union 76 station when you were first coming into town?”
She’d paid cash. No trail. No record. “I didn’t make any mistakes.”
“No, but it turns out that the guy who pumped your gas is a police radio buff with an excellent memory for numbers. He heard the APB, remembered your car and license plate, and phoned it in. It got to me really fast. Don’t worry, I canceled the APB. Needless to say, I owe a good-sized favor to Chief Aronson of the Portland PD. Also I spoke to the kid who pumped your gas, told him it had all been a mistake, thanked him, and slipped him a fifty. Oh yes, I got a good laugh over the name on the fake ID-Martha Clinton-a nice mix of presidential names.”
“I did, too,” Becca said, wondering why she’d bothered at all.
“At least Martha was young and had blondish hair. Did you buy it off a street kid in New York?”
“Yes. I had to try six of them before I could find an ID that looked anything remotely like me. I liked the name. When did you get here to Riptide?”
“Two days ago. I went immediately to the only bed-and-breakfast in town and of course you had stayed there for one night. Scottie told me you’d taken the old Marley place.” He splayed his fingers. “Nothing to it.”
“Why didn’t you come to see me right away?”
“I wanted to get the lay of the land, watch you awhile, see what was happening, who you spoke to, things like that. It’s an approach I’ve always used. I’ve never believed in rushing into things, if I have a choice.”
“It was so easy for you.” She sighed, her arms still crossed over her chest. “That means that the FBI should be ringing the doorbell at any minute.”
“Nah, they’re not as smart as I am.”