Riptide (20 page)

“I was supposed to keep her safe,” Adam said, staring at his clasped hands. “I've got to be the biggest fuckup in this damned world. He's got her, Savich. He's got her and we have no idea where.”

“Yes, he's got her,” Savich said, “and he's probably going to take her to Washington. That's it, isn't it? He wants her with him when he confronts Thomas? She's his leverage. Thomas would do anything to save her, including giving himself up to this maniac.”

“We're talking like Krimakov is alive, like we don't have any doubts about it at all,” Sherlock said.

Adam said slowly, “Forget the reports, forget what the operatives said. The body was cremated. That's all I need to know. It's Krimakov. Now, he must not have found out where Thomas is. Thomas owns a house in Chevy Chase, but it's a well-kept secret. The location of his condo in Georgetown is also a secret, but anyone could discover its location if they really wanted to. MAX could probably ferret it out in ten minutes flat. But not the Chevy Chase
house. He's very careful. I kid you not, I don't even think the president knows where his house is. So then Krimakov wouldn't know, either. That's why he got Becca. She's his leverage. He'll take her to Washington, to the condo.” Adam stopped cold. “We've got to leave now.”

Savich said, “I think you should call Thomas first, tell him what's happened. We've put it off long enough, don't you think? He's got to know.”

Adam cursed under his breath at the sound of Tyler McBride's angry voice. Tyler came into the kitchen, three agents right behind him, one holding his arm, and yelled, “What the hell is going on here? Every light in the place is on? Who are these guys? Let me go, dammit. Where's Becca?”

“Let him go, Tommy,” Savich said, nodding to one of Thomas's men who was guarding the front of the house. “He's a neighbor and a friend of Becca's.”

“What the hell is going on here, Adam?”

“He took her,” Adam said. “We think he's heading to Washington, D.C., with her. We're going to have to clear out soon.”

Tyler paled, then yelled, “You were supposed to protect her, you bastard! You really screwed up big-time, didn't you? I wanted to help but you just kissed me off, I was a civilian, of no use at all. What about you? All these big Fed cops, none of you could protect her. None of you were of any help at all!”

Savich said as he closed his fingers around Tyler's arm, “I understand your anger. But all these accusations aren't going to help anyone, particularly Becca. Believe me, we all know what's at stake here.”

“You're damned incompetent bastards,” Tyler yelled even louder, “all of you.” He jerked away from Savich.

“Tyler,” Adam said quietly, “don't go to Sheriff Gaffney. That would be the worst thing you could do.”

“Why? How much more could things be fucked up?”

“He might kill her,” Adam said. “Don't tell anyone anything.”

After Tyler McBride was escorted from the house by three agents, Sherlock said, “Why not tell everyone now?”

Adam shoved his hand through his hair. “Dammit, because if some cop happens to see them, then you know our guy would kill her and take off. We can't take the chance. No, we've got to get to Washington, fast.”

“First you've got to call Thomas, Adam.”

Adam didn't want to, he really didn't.

Savich and Sherlock listened to Adam flail himself on the speakerphone.

There was silence on the other end. Finally, Thomas said, “Get over it, Adam. We've been dealt new cards now, we'll play them. I'm very relieved that Chuck is all right. His wife would roast me alive if he'd been killed. Now, if this is Krimakov, then he at least knows I'm in Washington, probably knows about the condo. I'll stay here. I'll be ready for him. Get back here as quickly as you can, Adam. Savich? Can you and Sherlock stick with us?”

“Yes, Thomas.”

“Now, I've got to get myself ready for Krimakov. It's been so many years. Many times I thought he'd finally given it up, but it appears that he's just been biding his time.”

“He could really be dead,” Sherlock said.

“No,” Thomas said. “Adam, you, Savich, and Sherlock hang around there for a while. Try to get a line on this guy. He's got to be somewhere. He's got to be traceable. Find him. Oh, and Adam?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Stop beating yourself up. Guilt just slows down your brain. I want that brain of yours sharp. Get it together and find my daughter.”

They finally rang off. Thomas Matlock looked at the phone for a very long time before he slowly eased it back down. Then he leaned his head back against the soft leather of his chair. He closed his eyes to blot out the feeling of helplessness, for just a moment, an instant, but instead, he felt a deep, soul-corroding fear that a man should never
have to feel in his damned life. It was fear for his child, and the knowledge that he was helpless to save her.

It was Krimakov, he knew it, deep in his gut, he knew, and they had cremated the body. No, Krimakov wasn't dead—maybe he'd staged his death, murdered another man who resembled him. He'd somehow found out about Becca and he had begun his reign of terror. There was no doubt at all in Thomas's mind now. Krimakov, a man who had sworn to cut Thomas's heart out even if he had to chase Thomas to hell to do it, had his Becca.

He lowered his face in his hands.

S
he was aware of ear-splitting noise—men's and women's voices yelling loudly, car tire s screeching, horns blasting, and movement, she could feel the blur of movement everywhere, pounding feet, running fast. She was moving as well, no, she was flying, then she hit hard and the pain ripped through her. She lay on her side, smelling the hot tar of the street, a light overlay of urine, hot and sour, whiffs of food, of too many bodies, feeling the unforgiving cement beneath her. Cement?

People were yelling, coming closer now, and there were men and women shouting, “Stay back! Let us through!”

She tried to open her eyes, but her muscles were too weak, wouldn't obey her, and the pain was boiling up inside her. She was so very tired, nearly blown under with it. Then she felt a hideously sharp stab of pain somewhere in her body, fierce, unrelenting, and she knew tears were leaking out of her eyes.

“Miss! Can you hear me?”

She felt his hand on her shoulder, felt the sun beating down on her, hot on her bare skin—what bare skin? Her
legs were bare, that was it. But he was over her, a shadow blocking the sun.

“Miss? Can you hear me? Are you conscious?”

She opened her eyes then because he sounded so very afraid. “Yes,” she whispered, “I can hear you. I can see you. Not clearly, but I can see you.”

“My God, it's her! It's that Matlock woman!”

More shouting, yelling, some curses, and so much heat, the press of bodies, the running thuds of shoes and boots.

A woman lightly tapped her cheek. “Open your eyes for me. Yes, that's right. Do you know who you are?”

She looked up into Letitia Gordon's grim, incredulous face.

Maybe there was also a touch of worry in those unforgiving eyes. Becca whispered to that hard face over her, “You're the cop who hates me. How can you be here, right over me, speaking to me? You're in New York, aren't you?”

“Yes, and so are you.”

“No, that's not possible. I was in Riptide. You know, I never could figure out why you hated me and believed I was a liar.”

The woman's face contorted. Into anger? What?

“He drugged me,” she whispered, her mouth so dry she nearly swallowed her tongue. “He drugged me. I hurt so much but I just can't tell where.”

“All right. You'll be all right. Hey, Dobbson, is the ambulance here yet? Get off your butt, usher them through. Now!”

Letitia Gordon's face was really close to hers now, her breath minty on her cheek. “We'll find out what's happening here, Ms. Matlock. You just rest now.”

She felt hands pulling cloth down over her legs. Why were her legs bare? She realized then that there was pain in her legs. But it wasn't as bad as the other pain. Where was she? In New York? But that made no sense. Nothing made sense. Her brain nestled back into the shadows. The pain faded away. Becca sighed deeply and closed down.

***

S
he heard them speaking, soft, quiet voices not four feet away from her, talking, talking. Then they were closer, much closer, talking above her, which meant what? She opened her eyes. Blinked. She was flat on her back. The people speaking were on the left, and one of the people was Adam.

She wet her lips with her tongue. “Adam?”

He whirled around so fast he nearly lost his balance. Then he was at her side and he lifted her hand and held it hard between his two large ones. She felt the calluses on his palms.

“What's going on? Where are we? I dreamed I saw Detective Gordon, you know, that cop who hates me?”

“Yes, I know. She left just a little while ago. She'll be back, but later, when you've got it together again. You're going to be all right, Becca. There's nothing to worry about. Just take it easy and breathe nice shallow, light breaths. That's right. Does your head hurt?”

She thought about that. “No, not really, it's just that I'm all fuzzy. Even you're kind of fuzzy, Adam. I'm so glad to see you. I thought I was going to die, that I'd never see you again. I couldn't bear it. Where are we?”

He lightly touched his fingertip to her cheek. “You're at New York University Hospital. The guy who took you from your bed in Jacob Marley's house, the guy who was holding you, he shoved you out of his car right in front of One Police Plaza.”

“It was Krimakov?”

“We believe so. At least it's a strong possibility.”

She said, “I asked him if he was Krimakov but he wouldn't answer me. We're in New York City?”

“Yes. You did see Detective Gordon. She was one of the cops who came running. It was early in the afternoon, bunches of people around, lots of cops heading out for lunch. Detective Gordon was there because she had some meetings with the Narcotics Division.”

“My lucky day,” Becca said.

“Damn, I'm sorry, Becca, so sorry. I really fucked up and just look what happened.”

She heard the awful guilt in his voice, the fear, and finally, overlaying all of it, the relief that she was alive. He couldn't be as relieved as she was. “It's okay, Adam, really.”

“Hi, Becca.”

She smiled up at Sherlock and Savich, one on either side of her hospital bed. “We're sure glad to see you.”

“Me, too. I thought you were in Riptide.”

“We can move quickly when we have to,” Sherlock said, lightly patting Becca's shoulder. “Dillon got a call from Tellie Hawley, the SAC at the New York City office. Tellie told him what happened. We got here three hours later.”

“What happened to him? Did they get him?”

Sherlock said, “Unfortunately, no. There was mass confusion. He shoved you out of the car, then jumped out while the car was still rolling and disappeared into the crowd. The car hit three other people before it smashed into a fire hydrant and drenched another fifty people. It was a zoo. We've gotten some descriptions, but no one agrees with anyone else so far.”

He was still out there, free. She felt flattened. “So he got away again,” she said, and wanted to shriek with the helplessness that flooded her.

Adam was clearing his throat. “We'll get him, Becca. You've got to believe that. Now, there's someone here for you to meet.”

Her head came up, fast. “Please, no doctors, Adam. I hate doctors. Oh, God, so did my mother.” And she started crying. She didn't know where all the tears came from, but they were there, swamping her, and she was sobbing, tears streaming down her face, and she wanted her mother desperately. “My mom died in a hospital, Adam. She hated it, then she just didn't care because she was in a coma. No one could do anything. She died in a hospital just like this one.” The tears kept coming, she couldn't stop them.

Then suddenly someone was holding her, drawing her close, and a man's dark, smooth voice said next to her ear, “It's all right, my darling girl. It's all right.”

And she stilled. Strong arms were around her. She felt his heart pounding rhythmically, powerful and steady against her cheek. “I'm sorry, I don't mean to carry on like this. I miss my mother. I loved her so much and she died. There isn't anyone else for me.”

“I miss your mother, too, Becca. It's going to be all right. I swear it to you.”

She pulled back just a bit and looked up at an older man who looked oddly familiar to her, but that was impossible, wasn't it? She was sure she'd never seen him before in her life. The drugs were still affecting her, holding her brain back, scrambling things, making her cry. “I'm nobody's darling girl,” she whispered, and raised her hand to lightly touch her fingers to the man's cheek. He was so handsome, his face lean, his nose thin, straight, his eyes a soft light blue, dreamy eyes. Now that was strange. Her mother had told her that she had dreamy eyes, summer dreamy eyes. “I don't understand,” she said, frowning up at the man's face. “Who are you?”

The man looked as if he would cry with her, but he swallowed, several times, and cleared his throat. “I'm your father, Becca. I'm Thomas Matlock. I can't bring your mother back, but I'm here now, and I'll stay.”

“You're Thomas? You're the man Adam and Savich are working for?”

“Well, let's say they're helping me out.”

She didn't say anything then, just frowned a bit, trying to assemble things in her mind, in her memory, to make some sense of them, realizing suddenly that she recognized his eyes because he'd given them to her, realizing—“When he slipped the needle into my arm that second time,” she whispered, looking directly into his eyes, “just before I went under, he said right against my ear, ‘Tell your daddy hello for me.' ”

His face paled and he grew vague, indistinct, his arms
loosening. She grabbed his shirt with her fist, trying to pull him closer. “No, don't leave me, please.”

“Oh, God, I won't.” Thomas looked up at Adam. “I guess that says it all.”

“Yes,” Adam said. “At least now we know for bloody sure.”

“Amen to that,” Sherlock said. Then she added, “Why don't we all go out to get a cup of coffee while Thomas gets to know Becca a bit better?”

When she was alone with the man who'd said he was her father, she looked up at him and said, “Why did you leave us? I don't even remember what you looked like I was so young when you left. There is this old photograph of you and Mom, and you looked so young and so handsome. Carefree. It's a wonderful picture.”

He held her very close for a long time, then slowly he said, “You were all of three years old when it happened. I was a CIA operative, Becca, and I was very good. There was this other KGB spy—”

“Krimakov.”

“Yes. I was sent over to what is now Belarus, to stop him from killing a visiting German industrialist. Krimakov had brought his wife, as if they were there on some sort of vacation. It was in the mountains. There was a gunfight and she tried to save him. I hadn't seen her, hadn't even known she was there.” He paused a moment, memory stark and alive in his eyes. He said simply, “I shot her in the head and killed her. Krimakov promised me he would kill not only me but my family. He vowed it. I believed him.

“He managed to escape me. I decided that I would have to kill him to protect you. When I tried, I found out that he'd simply disappeared. There was no trace of him. The KGB helped him, obviously, and he stayed buried until very recently, when I was told he was killed in an auto accident in Crete. You know the rest.”

“You left us to protect us?”

“Yes. Your mother and I discussed it. Matlock is a common name. She took you and moved to New York. I saw
her four, maybe five times a year. We were always very, very careful. We couldn't tell you. We couldn't put you in danger. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life, Becca. Believe me.”

All of a sudden she had a father. She stared at his face, seeing herself in him, seeing also a stranger. It was too much. She heard him say something, heard Adam arguing with someone just inside the door, sharp and loud, then she didn't hear anything at all. That was a good thing, she thought as she slipped away, back where there were no dreams, just seamless darkness, without
him,
no worries or voices to tear her apart. Her father was dead, dead since she was very young. It was impossible that he was here, there was just no way. Maybe she was dead, too, and had seen what she wanted to see. Dead. It wasn't bad, truly it wasn't. She heard a sound, like a wounded animal. It had come from her, she realized, but then there was nothing at all.

When she awoke, it was dark in her room except for a small bedside lamp that was turned to its lowest setting. The small hospital room was filled with shadows and quiet voices. There were needles in both of her arms connected to bags of liquid beside both sides of her bed. There were two men sitting in chairs next to the window, in low conversation. One was Adam. The other was her father—oh yes, she believed him now, perhaps even understood a bit—and he'd called her his darling girl. She blinked several times. He didn't fade back into her mind. He remained exactly where he was. She saw him very clearly now, and she could do nothing but stare, breathe him in, settle his face, his features, his expressions, into her mind. He used his hands while he spoke to Adam, just like she did when she was trying to make a point, to convince someone to come around to her way of thinking. He was her father.

She cleared her throat and said, “I know I'm not dead because I would kill for some water. And I don't believe that if someone is dead, she's particularly thirsty. May I please have some water?”

Adam was on his feet in an instant. When he bent the
straw into her mouth, she closed her eyes in bliss. She drank nearly the entire glass. She was panting when she finished. “Oh goodness, that was delicious.”

He didn't straighten, just placed one large hand on either side of her face on that hard hospital pillow. He was studying her face, her eyes. “You okay?”

“Yes. I realize I'm not dead, so you must be real. I remember you told me that he threw me out of the car. Is there anything bad wrong with me?”