THE FBI THRILLERS COLLECTION Books 1-5 (159 page)

Thomas said, “Agent Hawley and Agent Cobb, this kidnapping will stay amongst us. It doesn’t go to anyone else in the FBI. All right?”

“No problem,” said Tellie Hawley. “Hell, we’re in this thing to the end. That bastard butchered four of my people. I want him as much as you do. If Savich and Sherlock aren’t saying anything to the higher-ups, why should we?”

“Let’s get rolling,” Sherlock said once Thomas had given her several papers with Krimakov’s handwriting. “We’ll meet at Reagan in an hour?”

“No,” Thomas said. “We’ll go over to Andrews Air Force Base. I’ll have a plane ready for us.”

They were nearly out the door when Thomas’s private phone rang. He looked undecided, then said, “Hold on. It’s got to be important if it’s on that phone.”

Slowly, because she didn’t really want to, Becca forced herself to pull away from Adam. “I’m all right,” she said.

“I’m not,” he said, and smiled at her. “We’ll get through this.”

They all followed Thomas back to his study, watched him pick up the phone on the edge of the mahogany desk.

“Yes? . . . Hello, Gaylan.”

It was Gaylan Woodhouse, the CIA director. They all watched Thomas’s face stiffen, then slowly turn pale and set. “Oh no,” he said, his voice bleak. “You’re absolutely certain of all this?”

They watched him lower the phone and stare over at them. He looked shaken, dazed. “This is just too much,” he said. “Just too much.”

“What the hell is it?” Adam was at Thomas’s side in but a moment.

Thomas shook his head, his eyes dazed. There was a fine tremor in his hands. “You’re not going to believe this. CIA Agent Elizabeth Pirounakis was blown up when she went into Vasili Krimakov’s apartment in Iráklion. Krimakov must have worked there, left notes there, evidence of his plans.

“The whole building blew up. It’s now rubble. Agent Pirounakis is dead, the two other Greek agents with her dead as well. Gaylan isn’t certain yet, but given the time of the explosion, thankfully very few people were in the apartment building.”

“He did this before he left Crete,” Agent Hawley said. “It’s not something he’s just done.”

Adam said, “At least now there has to be an inquiry about the guy they buried. Surely now they can’t hang on to the fiction that the man in the car accident was Vasili Krimakov?”

Thomas looked at Adam. “It doesn’t much matter now. There’s hell to pay over there, but that doesn’t help us.”

“Time,” Adam said. “It’s what he hasn’t given us.”

Thomas nodded, then paused another moment and looked over at his daughter. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

She gave him a smile filled with rage and said, “Yes. Lock and load.”

I
t was hot that day in Maine, even by the water. Lobster boats bobbed up and down in the inlets, fishermen, their hats pushed back on their heads, lay in the shade of the awnings on their boats, if they were lucky enough to have awnings.

The white spires of the Riptide churches shone beneath the bright afternoon sun. There wasn’t much movement anywhere. It was just too hot. The tourists weren’t wandering around taking photos of the quaint Maine town, they were holed up in air-conditioned pubs.

The hot weather didn’t bother the birds. Osprey dove for fish off the spruce-covered points. Gulls squawked and whirled over the lobster boats. The smell of dead fish left too long in the heat sent out odors that meant you had to take shallow breaths to survive. Cumulus clouds in fantastic shapes dotted the steel-blue sky. There was no breeze at all. Still, hot air blanketed the land.

Becca was so scared that all the beauty of the land and ocean, the sound of the birds, the incredible blue of the sky—none of it penetrated her brain. She felt frozen in the near hundred-degree heat.

She’d driven herself in a rented white Toyota from a
private airfield near Camden. It had taken her nearly an hour to negotiate the tourist traffic on Highway 1 south to Riptide, just below Rockland. Her hands were clammy, her heart slowly thudding in her chest. She tried to think of all that could go wrong, but her mind just wouldn’t slip into gear.

When a mosquito bit her as she was pumping gas, she was pleased that she felt it. She wasn’t even aware of being pissed off that the rental agency hadn’t filled her car before renting it to her.

When she arrived in Riptide at three o’clock in the afternoon, she drove directly to Tyler’s house on Gum Shoe Lane. He was standing in the yard, waiting for her. He was quite alone.

Tyler held her very close, as if she were a lifeline, and so she stood there, his arms locked tightly around her. Finally, she eased back and looked up at him. “Any word at all?”

“Another note from Krimakov.”

“Let me see it.”

“This is all a huge mess, Becca.”

“Yes, I know, and I’m so sorry for it, Tyler. It’s all my fault. If I could go back into the past, make the decision not to come here, I swear I would. I’m so sorry. I swear that Sam will be all right. I swear it to you.”

He looked at her for a very long time, but he didn’t say anything, to either agree or disagree.

“Show me the new note. Then I’ll take both of them with me, okay?”

The note was handwritten, big strokes, black ballpoint:
The boy will be all right for another eight hours. If Rebecca isn’t here, he’s dead.

She folded both notes, put them in the pocket of her sundress, and left for Jacob Marley’s house twenty minutes later. Undoubtedly Krimakov was watching Tyler’s house, at least he should be. She would call in another half hour just in case Krimakov hadn’t been watching. For sure he’d have a trace on Tyler’s phone.

She unlocked the front door of Jacob Marley’s house. It was so still and hot inside, so very silent, nothing moving at all, not a single sound, not even a floorboard. She opened all the windows and switched on the overhead fans. The hot air stirred, nothing more, until fresh air began creeping in. The curtains billowed ever so slightly.

So quiet. It was so very quiet in the house. She went into the kitchen and put on water to boil. She’d make iced tea, there were still bags in the cabinet. She opened the refrigerator, saw that it had been cleaned out, and wondered who had done it. Probably Rachel Ryan, she thought. It was a nice thing for her to do. She had to go to the Food Fort. Good, he could see her driving around, know that she was here, know that she was alone. She hoped she wouldn’t see Sheriff Gaffney because surely he’d want to talk to her.

When she got into the Toyota, she pulled out the small button on her wristband and said, “I’m heading out to Food Fort now. The cupboard’s bare. I’ll be back in under an hour. I want to make sure he knows I’m here. I’ll leave the notes on the front seat of the car at Food Fort.” Then she pushed the button back in.

She was greeted at Food Fort like she was a celebrity. Everyone knew who she was, impossible for them not to now, what with her photo and her story on every news station in the United States. People peered around corners to look at her, even stare at her, but they really didn’t want to get close enough to speak to her. She smiled, nothing more, and put stuff in her shopping cart.

When she was checking out, a woman behind her said, “Well, finally I get to see you. Sheriff Gaffney told me all about you, what a pretty girl you are, how there was this big fellow there at Jacob Marley’s house who really wasn’t your cousin. He didn’t buy that one for a minute. You really lied to him, didn’t you, and he couldn’t do anything about it. But now everyone knows who you are.”

“But I don’t know who you are, ma’am.”

“I’m Mrs. Ella, his chief assistant.”

It was the Mrs. Ella who’d kept her from getting hysterical when she’d called the sheriff’s office to report the skeleton falling out of the wall in the basement by telling her about all her dogs, every last one of them. Mrs. Ella, who also shopped at Sherry’s Lingerie Boutique. She was a big woman, muscular, with a corded neck and a mustache shadowing her upper lip.

“You’re a liar, Ms. Powell. No, you’re Ms. Matlock. You made up that name when you came here.”

“I had to lie. So nice to speak to you, ma’am.”

“Ha, I’ll just bet. Why are you back here?”

Becca smiled. “I’m a tourist now, ma’am. I’m going to go out on a lobster boat.” And she hefted her two grocery bags and left Food Fort.

“The sheriff will want to speak to you,” Mrs. Ella yelled after her. “It’s a pity he had to drive to Augusta on O-fficial Business.”

She heard Mrs. Ella say behind her, “She’s back here to do more bad things, you mark my words, Mrs. Peterson. Here she was all nice and hysterical when she found Melissa Katzen’s skeleton in her basement wall, but it was all 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?