Riptide

by Catherine Coulter

  She smiled. She nearly had her breathing back to normal.

  “I had one of the two upstairs bathrooms redone, too,” he said, looking straight ahead. They climbed the three deep steps to walk across the narrow veranda to the large white front door. He stuck a key in the lock and turned it. “My mom said that no woman wanted to bathe in a claw-footed tub that was so old rust was peeling off the toes.”

  “That does sound pretty gross. Oh my, Adam, it’s lovely.”

  They stood together in a large entryway, with a ceiling that soared two stories, a chandelier hanging down over their heads and a lovely buffed oak floor. “I know, you redid the floors. Your mom told you no woman would marry you if she had to be carried into a house across a mess of old ratty linoleum.”

  “How did you know?”

  He’d preserved all the original charm of the house—the deeply carved, rich moldings, the high ceilings, the lovely cherry wood carved fireplaces, the incredible set-in windows.

  They prepared to hunker down in the library, a light-filled room with built-in bookshelves, beautiful oak floors, a big mahogany desk, and lots of red leather. She looked around at the bookshelves stuffed with all kinds of books—nonfiction, fiction, hardcovers, paperbacks—stuck in indiscriminately.

  Adam said as he handed her two folders, “My mom also told me that women liked to read all cozied up in deep chairs. It was just men, she said, who preferred to read in the bathroom.”

  “You’ve even got women’s fiction here.”

  “Yeah, it seems a man can never stack the deck too much in his favor.”

  “I want to meet your mama,” Becca said.

  “Undoubtedly you will, real soon.” Then he couldn’t stand it. He walked to her and pulled her tightly against him. She looked up at him and said, “I want to forget Krimakov for just a minute.”

  “All right.”

  “Have I told you lately that I think you’re really sexy?”

  He smiled slowly and kissed her lightly on the mouth. “Not since last night.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed him back, thoroughly.

  “I don’t want you to forget it,” she said after several minutes had passed. “You’ve gotten me a bit breathless. I really like it, Adam.”

  “We’re in my house now,” he said, and this time he kissed her, really kissed her, no holding back, letting himself crash and burn, letting himself burrow into her. He brought her tightly against him, feeling all of her against him, and he wanted to jerk down her jeans, he wanted to devour her, take her until both of them shattered with the pleasure of it. He wanted to kiss her breasts, touch and kiss every inch of her, and not stop until he was unconscious. And then there was her mouth. Jesus, he was making himself crazy. It was so good he really didn’t want to stop, and why should they stop?

  His hands were on the buttons of her jeans when he felt the change not only in himself but in her. It was Krimakov and he was there, just over their shoulders. Waiting. He was close, too close. Krimakov was out there, only it wasn’t really Krimakov now. Whoever he was, he was a madman. Adam sighed, kissed her once more, then once again, and said, “I want you very much, but now, at this moment, we’ve got to solve this thing, Becca.”

  “I know,” she said when she could speak. “I’m getting myself back together. I’m getting myself focused now. You’re quite a distraction, Adam, it’s hard.” She pulled away from him, stiffened her legs. “Okay, I’m ready to think again.”

  “I promise there’ll be more,” he said, grabbing her and giving her one last kiss. “How about a lifetime full of more?”

  She gave him a dazzling smile. “Given that gorgeous modern kitchen and how I believe, without a doubt, that you’re about the best kisser in the whole world, I think bunches of years might be a wonderful thing.” Then she looked at his groin and he nearly expired on the spot.

  “Good,” he said finally, just a slight shiver in his voice, and she loved the way those dark eyes of his were brilliant with pleasure in the afternoon light shining in through the windows. “Now, let’s do it.”

  Two hours, three cups of coffee, and a demolished plate of Wheat Thins and cheddar cheese later, Adam looked up. “I was going over my notes on Krimakov’s travel out of Greece over the years. It’s been here all the time, just staring up at me, and I didn’t see it until now.” He gave her a mad grin, jumped up, and gathered her beneath her arms and lifted her, then swung her in a circle. He kissed her once, then again, and set her back down. He rubbed his hands together. “Hot damn, Becca, I think I’ve got the answer.”

  She was laughing, stroking her hands over his arms, so excited she couldn’t hold still. “Come on, Adam. What is it? Spill the beans.”

  “Krimakov went to England six times. His trips to England stopped about five years ago.”

  “And?”

  “I never stopped to wonder why the hell he went to England all those times, until now. Becca, think about it. Why did he go? To see a former colleague, to see a friend from the good old days? Not a woman, he’d remarried, so no, I don’t think so.”

  She said slowly, “When he moved to Crete, he was alone. No relatives with him. Nobody.”

  “Yeah, but his files had been purged. Remember, there wasn’t even anything about his first wife. It was like she never existed, but she did. So why did the KGB purge her?”

  Becca said slowly, “Because she was important, because—” Suddenly, her eyes gleamed. “Oh my God. Sherlock is right. It isn’t Krimakov, but neither is it a friend or a former colleague. It’s someone a whole lot closer to him.”

  “Yep. Somebody so close he’s nearly wearing his skin. We’re nearly there, Becca. The timing of his visits —they’re in the early fall or very late spring. Every one of them.”

  “Like the beginning or the ending of school terms,” Becca said slowly. “And then they stop like there’s no more school.” Then she remembered what had happened in the gym in Riptide, and it all fell together.

  When they got back to Thomas’s house, only Thomas and Hatch were there, their conversation desultory, both of them looking so depressed that Adam nearly told Hatch to go smoke a cigarette. Becca heard Hatch cursing. It sounded like Paul Hogan and his sexy Aussie accent.

  “Cheer up, everyone,” Adam said. “Becca and I have a surprise for you. One that will get you dancing on the ceiling. All we’ve got to do now is have Savich turn on MAX and send him to England. Now we’ve got a chance.” He bent down and kissed Becca, right in front of Thomas. She raised her hand and lightly touched her fingertips to his cheek. “Yes, we do,” she said.

  The doorbell rang, making everyone suddenly very alert and very focused. It was Dr. Breaker. “Hello, Savich.” He nodded to everyone else. “We’ve found something none of you is going to believe.” And he told them about the very slight abnormalities in Becca’s blood that a tech had caught. Then he checked Becca’s shoulder, and finally he checked her upper arm. It wasn’t long before he looked up and said, “I feel something, right here, just beneath her skin. It’s small, flexible.”

  Adam nodded. “The visit to Riptide makes sense now. You know what’s in your arm, don’t you, Becca?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Now all of us know.” She raised her hand when her father would have begun arguments. “No, I’m not leaving. No more people are going to die in my place, like Agent Marlane. No one is going to be bait in my stead. No, no arguments. I stay here with you. Hey, I’ve got my Coonan.”

  For the first time in more nights than she could count, Becca wanted to stay awake, stay alert, keep watch. He was close. She wanted to see him with clear eyes and a clear mind and her Coonan in her hand. She wanted to shoot him between the eyes. And she wanted to know why he was doing this. Was he really mad? Psychotic?

  Oh damn, she didn’t think she’d be able to hang on. She was nearly light-headed she was so tired. She’d been so hyped up the past couple of nights, she’d just lain there and blinked at the rising moon outside
the bedroom window.

  Adam had insisted on tucking her in. She wanted him to stay just a little longer, but she knew he couldn’t. He kissed her, just a nibble on her earlobe, and said against her ear, “No, I don’t want another cold shower. But dream of me, Becca, okay? I’ve got the first watch. It starts soon.”

  “Be careful, Adam.”

  “I will, everyone will. Try to sleep, sweetheart. He knows the house. He knows which room is Thomas’s. We’ve got Thomas well guarded.” He kissed her once again and rose. “Get some sleep.”

  She didn’t want to. After he eased out of her bedroom door, closing it quietly behind him, she sat up in bed, thinking, remembering, analyzing. She was asleep in under six minutes. She dreamed, but not of the terror that was very close now, not of Adam.

  She found herself in a hospital, walking down long, empty corridors. White, so much white, unending, going on and on, forever. She was looking for her mother. She smelled ether fumes, sweet and heavy, the ammonia scent of urine, the stench of vomit. She opened each white door along the corridor. All the beds were empty, the white sheets stretched military tight. No one. Where were the patients?

  So long, the hallway just went on and on and there were moans coming from behind all those doors, people in pain, but there were no nurses, no doctors, no one at all. She knew the rooms were empty, she’d looked into all of them, yet the moans grew louder and louder.

  Where was her mother? She called out for her, then she started running down the corridor, screaming her mother’s name. The moans from those empty rooms grew louder and louder until—

  “Hello, Rebecca.”

  29

  Becca lurched up in bed, sweaty, breathing hard, her heart pounding. No, it wasn’t her mother, no, it was someone else.

  Finally he was here. He’d come to her first, not to her father. A surprise, but not a big one, at least to her. She lay very still, gathering herself, her control, her focus.

  “Hello, Rebecca,” he said again, this time he was even closer to her face, nearly touching her.

  “You can’t be here,” she said aloud. He’d gotten past everyone, but again, that didn’t overly surprise her. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’d gotten both the house plans and the security system plans. And now he wasn’t even six inches from her.

  “Of course I can be here. I can be anywhere I want. I’m a cloud of smoke, a sliding shadow, a glimmer of light. I like how frightened you are. Just listen to you, your voice is even trembling with fear. Yes, I like that. Now, you even try to move and I will, very simply, cut your skinny little throat.”

  She felt the razor-sharp blade against the front of her neck, pressing in ever so slightly.

  “We knew you would come,” she said.

  He laughed quietly, now not even an inch from her ear. She felt his hot breath touch her skin. “Of course you knew I’d find you. I can do anything. Your father is so stupid, Rebecca. I’ve always known it, always, and now I’ve proved it the final time. I figured out how to find his lair, and poof—like shimmering smoke—I’m here. You and your bastard father lose now. Soon, you and I are going down the hall to his bedroom. I want him to wake up with me standing over him, you in front of me, a knife digging into your neck. Even with those hotshot FBI guards he’s got positioned all around this house, I got through with little effort. There’s this great big oak tree that comes almost to the roof of the house. Just a little jump, not more than six feet, and I was on the roof, and then it was easy to pry open that trapdoor into the attic. I took care of the security alarm up there, cut it off for all of the upstairs. No one saw me. It’s nice and dark tonight. Stupid, all of you are stupid. Now, get up.”

  She did as he said. She felt calm. He kept her very close, the knife across her neck as he opened her bedroom door and eased her out into the hallway. “The last door down on the right,” he said. “Just keep walking and keep quiet, Rebecca.”

  It was nearly one o’clock in the morning; Becca saw the time on the old grandfather clock that sat in its niche in the corridor.

  “Open the door,” he said against her ear, “slowly, quietly. That’s right.”

  Her father’s bedroom door opened without a sound. There was a night-light on in the connecting bathroom off to the left. All the draperies were open, beams of the scant moonlight coming in through the balcony windows. There was no movement on the bed.

  “Wake up, you butchering bastard,” he said, one eye on the balcony windows.

  There was still no movement on the bed.

  She heard his breathing quicken, felt the knife move slightly against her neck. “No, you don’t move, Rebecca. Just one little slice and your blood will spew like a fountain all over the floor.” Suddenly, he said, nearly a yell, “Thomas Matlock! Where are you?”

  “I’m right here, Krimakov.”

  He whirled Becca around, facing Thomas, who was standing, fully dressed, in the lighted doorway of the bathroom, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “It’s about time you got here,” Thomas said easily, his eyes on the knife that was pressing into Becca’s neck. “Don’t hurt her. We’ve been waiting for you. I was starting to believe you’d lost your nerve, that you’d gotten too scared, that you’d finally run away.”

  “What do you mean? Of course I got here quickly, at least as quickly as I wanted to. As I told Rebecca, your defenses are laughable.”

  “Get that knife away from her neck. Let her go. You’ve got me. Let her go.”

  “No, not yet. Don’t try anything stupid or I’ll cut her throat. But I don’t want her dead just yet.”

  Thomas saw that he was dressed in black from the ski mask that covered both his face and his head to the black gloves on his hands. “You’re the one who’s lost,” Thomas said, and he saluted him. “There’s really no need for you to wear that black mask over your head anymore. We all know who you are. As I said, we’ve been waiting fourteen hours for you to finally show up.”

  Adam spoke quietly into the wristband. “He can’t see me. I’m only a shadow at the corner of the balcony door. I can’t get him. He’s got Becca plastered against the front of him, a knife against her throat. I can’t take the risk, even this close. They’ll keep him talking. Thomas is good. He’ll keep control.”

  And he prayed with everything that was in him that it would be so.

  “Just keep alert,” Gaylan Woodhouse said. “The minute he makes a move toward Thomas, he’ll ease up on her. Then you take him down.”

  “Damn,” Adam said, “now the bastard’s pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket. It’s small, looks like a Glock sub-compact 27. He’s pointed it straight at Thomas. Oh God.” And he concentrated, readied himself, saying over and over, Let Becca go, you crazy fuck. Just twitch.

  “Turn on the bedside light, Matlock.”

  Thomas walked slowly into the bedroom, leaned over, and switched on the light. He straightened.

  “Now, don’t move. Those draperies are open. There’s probably a sniper out there, and I don’t want the bastard to have a clean shot. He’ll get you, Rebecca, if he pulls the trigger.”

  Thomas said, “I wanted very much for you to be my old enemy, but you aren’t. You’re something far more deadly than Vasili, something deadly and monstrous that he spawned. Perhaps after he brainwashed you, he realized what he’d produced, realized that he’d unleashed uncontrolled, unrelenting evil, and that’s why he kept you away from his new family. He didn’t want the evil he’d spawned and nurtured to live in his own house, to be close to all those innocent, pure lives. Pull off the mask, Mikhail, we know who you are.”

  Stone-dead silence, then, “Damn you, you can’t know, you can’t! No one knows anything about me. I don’t exist. No records show me as Vasili Krimakov’s son. I’ve covered everything. It isn’t possible.”

  “Oh yes, we know. Even though the KGB tried to erase you, to protect you, we found out all about you.”

  “Damn you, pull those draperies closed, now!”

  Tho
mas pulled them closed, knowing that now Adam was blind to what was going on in the room. He turned and said slowly, “Take off the mask, Mikhail. It really looks rather silly, like a little boy playing hoodlum.”

  Slowly, his movements jerky, furious, he pulled off the black mask. Then he shoved Becca over toward the bed. Thomas caught her, held her close to his side. But she moved away from him. She sat down on the bed, drew her legs up.

  Thomas stared at Vasili Krimakov’s son, Mikhail. There was some resemblance to his father in the high, sharp cheekbones, the wide-set eyes, the whiplash-lean body, but the dark, mad eyes, those were surely his mother’s eyes. Thomas could still see her eyes, wide, staring up at him.

  Becca knew Mikhail had wanted shock, but it was denied him when he realized they knew who he was. Still, he threw back his head and said, “I am my father’s son. He loved me. He molded me to be like him. I am here, his avenger.”

  His dramatic moment got nothing except a laugh from Becca.

  “Hi, Troy,” she said, giving him a small wave. “Cute, preppy name. Tell me, what if I’d decided to go out with you that night after you planted that little micro homing chip in my upper arm? How would you have gotten out of it?” She said to her father, “I told you how he managed to have the arm of that big old chest machine swing into me as I was walking by, and then he was right there, patting me, making sure I was okay, flirting with me. That was when you planted that little chip in my arm, isn’t it, Troy? You were good. I didn’t feel a thing, just the sting from that machine arm hitting me. It hurt a little longer than it should have, but who would really notice?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head back and forth. “This isn’t possible. You couldn’t have found that chip. It’s plastic mixed with biochemical adhesives, almost immediately becomes one with your skin. After just a few minutes, no one could even tell it was there, least of all you. No, you weren’t even aware of it. You and everyone else were just worried about that dart in your shoulder. I fooled you, I fooled all of you. You were all so worried about that ridiculous dart in her shoulder, about that stupid note I wrapped around it.”