Riptide

“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 i

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!”

Thomas 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.”

“For a while, that’s right,” Thomas said. “But actually, it was an analysis of handwriting by some very smart FBI agents that started your downfall. I had samples of your father’s handwriting. They compared yours to his. Remember the notes you wrote to Mr. McBride in Riptide? There was no comparison, of course, so it couldn’t be Vasili.

“Then Adam remembered that your father had traveled to England quite a number of times. He wondered why, particularly since the visits were always at the begi

“It wasn’t tough then to track you down, the son whose father had sent him to England to be educated, so that one day he could avenge the murder of his dearest mother. You were at that private boys’ school at Sundowns.”

Thomas continued, “Your father molded you, taught you to hate me, to hate everything I stood for, programmed you for this.”

“I was not programmed. I do this all of my own free will. I am brilliant. I have won. Even though you found out about me, it is I who am standing here in control. It is I who run this show.”

Thomas said, “Fine. You run the show. Now tell us how you got into NYU Hospital without being stopped by the FBI agents.”

He laughed, preened. “I was a young boy, so sorry-looking in my slouchy clothes, my pants halfway to my knees, and my baseball cap, holding my broken arm, and everyone wanted to help me, to send me here, to send me there, and I came up to those stupid agents, crying about my arm, and then I shot them both. So easy, all of it. In the room when I saw neither of you were there, I just killed them, too, but with the woman, it was very close, too close. But I escaped. I was out of there before anyone realized what had happened.”

Thomas said, “Why, Mikhail? What did your father tell you to make you want to do this? What?”

“He didn’t make me do anything. He simply told me how you butchered my poor mother, went through her to get to him. You shot her in the head and laughed as my father held her until she died. Then you tried to kill him but he managed to get away. He told me that, and he began teaching me to prepare myself to avenge her. And I’m here now. I’ll kill you just as you killed my mother.”

“You killed your stepmother, didn’t you, and her children?” Becca said.

He laughed, actually laughed. “Yes, I hated her as much as she hated me. She didn’t want me ever to come back during my vacations. And her spawn-they weren’t all that surprised when I killed them because they had guessed that I hated them. As for her, she pleaded just like her pathetic daughter.”

Becca said, “And your own little brother? Your father’s other son?”