would have ever guessed that he came back to the house while we were out looking for him. How’d he get me out of the house without being seen?”
“Sherlock figured that one out really fast. Also he knocked out Chuck and tied him up. That’s how he escaped with you.” He saw the worry in her eyes and quickly added, “He’s okay-just a headache for a while. I’m sorry, Becca, so sorry. Did he hurt you?” God, it hurt to say it, but he did: “Did he rape you?”
“No. He licked my face. I told him not to do it again because it was creepy. That made him really mad, but you see, that drug he shot into me, it also calmed me, made me all loose, so when I woke up that first time I wasn’t afraid of him. I don’t think I was afraid of anything. It was a side effect of the drug, he said, and he didn’t like it. He wanted me to be real afraid, he wanted me to beg and plead, just like Linda Cartwright did.” She shuddered as she said the name. “He said she didn’t matter. She was just his present to me.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
She shook her head. She said to her father, “I can’t even describe him. He never let me see him. When he had me tied down to a bed, he always stood in the shadows, just beyond what I could make out. I don’t think he was old, but I can’t be one hundred percent certain. Was he young? I just don’t know. But when he cursed, he used a mixture, some American, some British, and some in a language I didn’t recognize. Isn’t that strange?”
“Yes, but we’ll figure it out.”
Thomas was standing beside her bed, opposite Adam. He was wearing a dark suit, the dark-red tie loosened. He looked tired and worried and, oddly enough, happy. Because of her? Evidently so, and that pleased her very much. He picked up her left hand and held it. His hand was strong, lightly tanned. He was wearing a wedding ring. She stared at that ring, just stared and stared, touched her fingers to it, then said finally, “My mother gave you that ring?”
“Yes, when we got married. I wore it all our married lives. I plan to wear it until it finally dissolves off my finger sometime in the distant future. I loved your mother very much, Becca. Like I said, I had to leave both of you so you wouldn’t be killed. I know it’s all still very confusing. There are lots of facts and details, but the bottom line is exactly what I already told you. I accidentally killed a man’s wife and he swore he would kill my family, and then he would kill me, but only after I saw, firsthand, how he had killed everyone I loved. I had no choice. I had to leave my family in order to protect them.”
Adam said, “We believe this man who is stalking you, who murdered that old bag lady, who shot the governor, we believe it’s Krimakov and somehow he found you and began terrorizing you.” He paused for a moment, nodding to Thomas.
Thomas was looking down at this lovely young woman who was his only child. It took him a moment before he said, “Vasili Krimakov was one of the KGB’s top agents back in the seventies, as I was for the CIA. Again, there’s a whole lot more, but it can wait for a while. Right now, what’s important is that we find him, that we neutralize him once and for all.”
“You’re sure it’s Krimakov.”
He smiled then. “Oh yes, I’m very sure, particularly after what he told you.”
“‘Say hello to your daddy.’”
“Yes. No one else would know that.”
“My mom wore a ring just like yours. When she died-” She couldn’t speak, the tears clogged her throat, burned her eyes. He said nothing at all, just held her hand, squeezed it a bit more tightly. She swallowed, looked away from him toward the window. It was black out there, no sign of stars from her vantage point. “-I wanted desperately to have something to connect me to her and I almost took that ring, but then I remembered how much she loved you, and I just couldn’t take it from her.
“Sometimes when she spoke to me of you, she would start crying and I hated you for leaving us, for leaving her, for dying. I remember when I was a teenager I told her she should get married again, that I would be going off to college, and she needed to put you in the past. She needed to find someone else. She was so young and beautiful, I didn’t want her to be alone. I remember she’d only smile at me and say she was just fine.” Then, suddenly, Becca said, “Oh God, he came after me so he could get to you.”
“Yes,” Adam said. “That’s exactly right. But he didn’t know where Thomas was, so he came up with a way to flush Thomas out. He dumped you right in front of One Police Plaza.”
“What I don’t understand,” Thomas said, “is why he didn’t simply announce all over the media that he had her, threaten to kill her if I didn’t show myself in Times Square. He must have known that I would be there. But he didn’t.”
Adam said, “Who knows? Maybe a cop saw him, saw an unconscious woman in the backseat, and he was forced to dump Becca in order to escape. However, it’s far more likely that he planned this down to the exact spot he’d leave her. I think it’s gamesmanship. He wants to prove he’s better than you, smarter than all of us, and he wants you to suffer big-time in the process.”
“He’s succeeded admirably,” Thomas said. “He has flushed me out. I guess maybe that’s why he didn’t let you see him, Becca. He wants to keep playing this insane game. He wants to terrorize you and now he can continue the terror, with me squarely in the game with you.”
“And only he knows the rules,” Becca said.
“Yes,” Adam said. “I wonder if he’s been living on Crete all this time.”
“Probably so,” Thomas said.
“Wait,” Becca said, chewing on her bottom lip. “Now I recognize those curses-they were Greek.”
“That settles that,” Thomas said. “We’ve got all the proof we need that the ashes in that urn in the Greek morgue aren’t Krimakov’s.”
He leaned down and kissed Becca’s forehead. “I won’t leave you again. Now we’ll find Krimakov, and then you and I have a lot of catching up to do.”
“I’d like that,” she said. Then she smiled over at Adam, but she didn’t say anything.
21
Detective Letitia Gordon and Detective Hector Morales of the NYPD looked over at the woman who lay in that skinny hospital bed, looking pale and wrung-out, IV lines running obscenely into her arms, her eyes shiny with tears.
Detective Gordon cleared her throat and said to the room at large, “Excuse me,” and flashed her badge, as did Hector Morales, “but we need to speak to Ms. Matlock. The doctor said it was all right. Everyone out.”
Thomas straightened and looked at them, assessing them, quickly, easily, and smiled even as he walked forward, blocking their view of his daughter. “I’m her father, Thomas Matlock, detectives. Now, what can I do for you?”
“We need to speak to her now, Mr. Matlock,” Letitia Gordon said, “before the Feds get here and try to big-foot us.”
“I am the Feds, Detective Gordon,” Thomas said.
“Damn. Er, a pleasure to meet you, sir.” Detective Gordon cleared her throat. “It’s important, sir. There was a murder committed here in New York, on our turf. It’s our case, not yours, and your daughter is involved.” Why had she said all that? Because he was a big federal cheese, and that’s why she’d tried to excuse herself, tried to justify herself. What was he going to do?
Detective Morales smiled and shook Thomas’s outstretched hand. “Hector Morales, Mr. Matlock. And this is Detective Gordon. We didn’t realize she had any relatives other than her mother.”
“Yes, she does, detectives,” Thomas said. “There’s still some drug in her system, so she’s not really completely back yet, but if you would like to speak to her for a couple of minutes, that probably wouldn’t hurt. But you need to keep it low-key. I don’t want her upset.”
“Look, sir,” Detective Gordon said, pumping herself up, knowing that she should be the one giving the orders here, not this man, this stranger who was with the government. “Ms. Matlock ran away. Everyone was looking for her. She is wanted as a material witness in the shooting of Governor Bledsoe of New York.”
Thomas Matlock merely arched a very patrician brow at her and looked intimidatingly forbearing. “Fancy that,” he said mildly. “I can’t imagine why she would ever want to leave New York what with all the protection you offered
