a lie. If the skeleton hadn’t been so old, I would have bet she’d done it.”
Becca turned slowly in the half-open door, her arms aching with the heavy bags, and said, “Melissa Katzen was murdered, ma’am, and not by me. That isn’t a lie. Does anyone know anything yet?”
“No,” called out Mrs. Peterson, the cashier, who had bright red dyed hair. “We’re not even one hundred percent sure that it is Melissa Katzen. The DNA tests haven’t come back yet. It takes weeks, Sheriff Gaffney said.”
“No, I’m the one who told you that,” Mrs. Ella said. “Sheriff Gaffney doesn’t keep track of DNA sorts of stuff, I do. As for you, Ms. Matlock, I’m going to tell the sheriff that you’re here again just as soon as I can raise him on his cell phone, which he usually doesn’t carry because he hates technology.”
When Becca got back to the car, the notes in Krimakov’s handwriting were gone. She hoped the sheriff wouldn’t get to her anytime soon. She hoped that her little trip to Food Fort wouldn’t backfire. Surely Krimakov knew she was here now, surely.
Riptide, she thought as she got into the Toyota, her haven once upon a time, with its Food Fort on Poison Oak Circle and Goose’s Hardware on West Hemlock. She drove slowly along Poison Ivy Lane, then turned onto Foxglove Avenue, down two blocks to her street, Belladonna Drive. She turned yet again on Gum Shoe Lane, drove past Tyler’s house, then turned back onto Belladonna Drive to Jacob Marley’s house. It was getting a bit cooler, thank God, even though the sun was still high in the summer sky. Maine gave you the earliest sunrise and latest sunset.
She was still wearing the light-blue cotton sundress that Sherlock had brought back to New York with her, and she wished she had a sweater. Fear seemed to leach the heat right out of her.
The house was cooler. She made iced tea, put together a tuna salad sandwich, and sat out on the wide veranda, watching night slowly fall. She wondered if anyone would slip into Jacob Marley’s house. The wristband was one-way.
Odd, but she didn’t think about Krimakov. She thought about Adam, his face now clear in her mind.
He’d snuck up on her, just as, she supposed, she’d snuck up on him. She smiled. He was a good man, sexy as hell, which she wouldn’t tell him just yet, and he had a streak of honor a mile wide. Even when she’d bitten his hand and cursed him, wanted to kick him into the dirt, she’d known that honor of his was real and wouldn’t ever change to suit the circumstance.
And Adam knew her father a lot better than she did. And he’d never said a word. What did that say about this mile-wide honor of his? She’d have to think about that.
She took the last bite of her sandwich and wadded up the napkin. It was nearly dark now. Surely Krimakov would do something soon. Her Coonan was in the pocket of her sundress. She hadn’t told anyone about the gun, but she suspected that Adam knew she had it. He’d kept his mouth shut, a smart move, or else she might have bitten him again.
She hadn’t seen a soul, at least not a soul who was here especially for her. It would be soon, she felt it. Krimakov was close. Everyone else was close, too. She wasn’t alone in this. And she thought of Sam and of Krimakov’s note.
She waited and looked up at the sliver of moon in the dark sky. She prayed that Sheriff Gaffney had decided not to come see her tonight. Finally, she walked into the house, shut and locked the front door. She closed and locked all the windows. She didn’t want to go upstairs to the bedroom where he’d hidden in her closet and stuck a needle in her arm.
She was on the stairs when the phone rang. Her fingers clutched at the oak railing so tightly they turned white. The phone rang again. It had to be Krimakov.
It was. She pushed the small button on the wristband and pressed her wrist close to the phone receiver.
“Hello, Rebecca. It’s your boyfriend.” His voice was playful, filled with crazy fun. It scared her to death. “Hey, I hope I didn’t hurt you too badly when I threw you out of the car in New York?” His voice was still mischievous, but now he’d pitched it lower, maybe even put a handkerchief over the mouthpiece. She wondered if her father would recognize his voice after twenty years.
“No, you didn’t hurt me too badly, but you already know that, don’t you? You killed four people in NYU Hospital to get to me and my father, but we weren’t there. You failed, you murdering butcher. Where the hell is Sam? Don’t you dare hurt that little boy.”
“Why not? He’s worth nothing except that he did get you here for me. I’ll just bet the CIA director got ahold of you really fast. Now you’re here and you’re alone, I see. You followed my instructions. Hard to believe they let you come here all by yourself, all unprotected.”
“I ran away. I’m waiting for you, you bastard. Come here and bring Sam.”
“Now, now, there’s no rush, is there?”
He was playing with her, nothing new in that. She drew a deep breath, tried to be calm. “I don’t understand why you didn’t want my father to come with me. It’s him you want to kill, isn’t that right?”
“Your father is a very bad man, Rebecca, very bad, indeed. You have no idea what he’s done, how many innocent people he’s destroyed.”
“I know that he shot your wife by accident a long time ago, and that you swore to get revenge. All the rest of it, it’s a fabrication of your own crazy mind. I don’t think anyone has killed more people than you have. Listen to me, please. Why not just stop it all now? My father was devastated when he accidentally shot your wife. He told me you had brought her with you, faking a vacation when you were really there to assassinate that visiting German industrialist. Why did you use your wife like that?”
“You know nothing about it. Shut up.”
“Why won’t you tell me? Did you really believe that she wouldn’t be in any danger if you took her with you?”
“I told you to shut up, Rebecca. Hearing you talk about that wonderful woman dirties her memory. You’re from his seed, and that makes you as filthy as he is.”
“All right, fine. I’m filthy. Now, why didn’t you want my father to come here with me? Don’t you still want to kill him?”
“I will, never fear. How and when I do it is up to me, isn’t it, Rebecca? Everything is always up to me.”
“What am I doing here alone? Why did you take Sam if you just wanted me to come here to Riptide?”
“It got you here quickly, didn’t it? You’ll find out everything in time. Your father was smart. He hid you and your mother very well. It took me a very long time to find you two. Actually, it was you I found first, Rebecca. There was an article about you in the Albany newspaper that was picked up in syndication. It talked about you. I saw your name and got interested. I found out about your mother, your supposedly dead father, and then I learned about your mother’s travels each year. It was then I knew. Most of her trips were to Washington, D.C.”
He laughed. Her skin crawled. “Hey, I’m real sorry about your mother, Rebecca. I had hoped to get to know her really well, but then she had to go so quickly into the hospital. I suppose I could have gotten into Lenox Hill easily enough and killed her, but why not let the cancer do it? More painful that way. At least I hoped it would be. But as it turned out, your mother didn’t have a lick of pain, that’s what a nice nurse told me. Then she patted my arm in sympathy. She just went away in her mind and stayed there. No pain at all. Even if I had come to her, she wouldn’t have known it, so why bother?
“But you’re different, Rebecca. I have you now and I will have your father, also. I will kill that bloody murderer.” She heard the rage now in his voice, low and bubbling, and it would build and build. She heard his breathing, harsh but more controlled now, and he said finally, “I want you to get in your car and drive to the gym on Night Shade Alley. Do it now, Rebecca. That little boy is depending on you.”
“Wait! What do I do when I get there?”
“You’ll know what to do. I’ve missed you. You have a lovely body. I touched you with my hands, ran my tongue all over you. Did you know I left that toilet bolt on that woman’s bed at NYU Hospital? It was for you, Rebecca, so that you would know that I was all over you, looking at you, feeling you, rubbing you. You hoped when you unscrewed that bolt that you could smash it in my eye, didn’t you?”
She was shaking with fear and rage, each so powerful alone, but mixed together they quaked through her, making her light-headed.
“You’re an old man,” she said. “You’re a filthy old man. The thought of you even near me makes me want to vomit.”
He laughed, a deep laugh that was terrifying. “I’ll see you very soon now, Rebecca. And then I’ll have a surprise for you. Never forget, this is my game and you will always play by my rules.”
