see him as clearly as you did. Yeah, he’s pretty smart, all right.” She
gave the sheriff a brilliant smile.
“So, you want me to keep my mouth shut about this, Mr.
Savich?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, all right, but if any of them cause any trouble, I’ll be back.
This resort of yours–it wouldn’t go spoiling any of the natural
beauty around here, would it?”
“No way,” Savich said. “That’s the prime goal of the group I
work with.”
Becca eyed Savich after she let the sheriff out the front door,
which smelled, he said on his way out, really nice and clean.
“You’re something, Savich. I really believed you there for a minute.
Goodness, I wanted to ask you the name of the planned resort.”
Savich said, “The phone call gave me time to come up with a
decent story.”
“It was him, wasn’t it?” Becca said as she turned to Adam, who
was still standing by the phone.
“Yes, it was him. He wanted to speak to you but I told him you
weren’t here. He always calls you Rebecca, not Becca?” At her nod,
Adam said,”He was calling from a public phone booth in Rockland.
Tommy the Pipe just tracked it down, so there’s nothing we can do.”
Sherlock said slowly, studying a bruised knuckle she’d gotten
when she’d clipped Tyler McBride’s jaw, “We’ve got to get him
back. We’ve got to set up a meeting somehow.”
“Next time I’ll speak to him,” Becca said. “I’ll set one up.”
“You won’t be bait,” Adam said, his voice sharp as a knife. “No
way.”
“Look, Adam, he wants me. If you made yourself the bait, he’d
just shoot you and walk away. But not so with me. He wants me
up close and personal. Only me. Help me figure out a way to do
this, please.”
“I don’t like it.”
Chapter 18
Hatch, short, built like a young bull, sporting a large mustache,
pulled off a tweed Sherlock Holmes hat to show his shaved head.
For some reason she couldn’t quite fathom, Becca thought he was
so impishly cute she wanted to hug him. She thought from the
cocky grin on Sherlock’s face that she wanted to hug him right
along with her.
This guy was potent. He had more charm than a person deserved,
she was thinking a few minutes later when Adam held out
his hand and said to him, “Give me the pack of cigarettes in your
right pocket, Hatch, now, or you’re fired.”
“Yeah, sure, boss.” Hatch obligingly handed Adam a nearly full
pack of Marlboros. “Just one, boss, no more, and I didn’t inhale
much. All I had, just one. I don’t want to smoke anywhere near
sweet Becca. I wouldn’t want to ever take a chance of hurting her
lovely lungs. Now, tell me what to do to catch this creep so Becca
can go back to writing speeches and smiling a lot.” Then he turned
those dark-brown twinkling eyes on her and said, “Hi.”
Becca grinned and pumped his hand. “Hi, Hatch. Listen, I’m
ready. The next time he calls–I’m ready. We’re going to set a trap
for him. I’m going to be the bait.”
“Hmmm. I don’t think the boss likes that. His jaw is all knotted
up.”
Adam unknotted his jaw. “No, I don’t like it. It’s crazy. I don’t
want her to take this kind of risk. Ah, shit, I can tell by the look on
your face, Becca, that you’re going to do it regardless of what I
think.”
“Look, Adam,” Savich said, “if I could think of another way, I’d
dive on it, but there are enough of us to keep her protected. Now,
Hatch, according to Adam, you have a pretty awesome reputation
to maintain. Tell us what you’ve found out.”
Hatch took a slim black book out of his jacket pocket, licked his
fingers, and ruffled some pages. “Most of this is from Thomas’s
guys, who’ve been working their butts off trying to verify Kriakov’s
death. Thomas got everyone working on it right away.
Now, the CIA has actually spoken to the cop who was the one
who poked around his body. Apollo–no shit, that’s his name–said