Catherine Coulter - Riptide

Becca lurched up in bed, sweaty, breathing hard, her heart pounding. No, it wasn’t her mother, no, it was someone else.

Finally he was here. He’d come to her first, not to her father. A surprise, but not a big one, at least to her. She lay very still, gathering herself, her control, her focus.

“Hello, Rebecca,” he said again, this time he was even closer to her face, nearly touching her.

“You can’t be here,” she said aloud. He’d gotten past everyone, but again, that didn’t overly surprise her. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’d gotten both the house plans and the security system plans. And now he wasn’t even six inches from her.

“Of course I can be here. I can be anywhere I want. I’m a cloud of smoke, a sliding shadow, a glimmer of light. I like how frightened you are. Just listen to you, your voice is even trembling with fear. Yes, I like that. Now, you even try to move and I will, very simply, cut your skinny little throat.”

She felt the razor-sharp blade against the front of her neck, pressing in ever so slightly.

“We knew you would come,” she said.

He laughed quietly, now not even an inch from her ear. She felt his hot breath touch her skin. “Of course you knew I’d find you. I can do anything. Your father is so stupid, Rebecca. I’ve always known it, always, and now I’ve proved it the final time. I figured out how to find his lair, and poof-like shimmering smoke-I’m here. You and your bastard father lose now. Soon, you and I are going down the hall to his bedroom. I want him to wake up with me standing over him, you in front of me, a knife digging into your neck. Even with those hotshot FBI guards he’s got positioned all around this house, I got through with little effort. There’s this great big oak tree that comes almost to the roof of the house. Just a little jump, not more than six feet, and I was on the roof, and then it was easy to pry open that trapdoor into the attic. I took care of the security alarm up there, cut it off for all of the upstairs. No one saw me. It’s nice and dark tonight. Stupid, all of you are stupid. Now, get up.”

She did as he said. She felt calm. He kept her very close, the knife across her neck as he opened her bedroom door and eased her out into the hallway. “The last door down on the right,” he said. “Just keep walking and keep quiet, Rebecca.”

It was nearly one o’clock in the morning; Becca saw the time on the old grandfather clock that sat in its niche in the corridor.

“Open the door,” he said against her ear, “slowly, quietly. That’s right.”

Her father’s bedroom door opened without a sound. There was a night-light on in the connecting bathroom off to the left. All the draperies were open, beams of the scant moonlight coming in through the balcony windows. There was no movement on the bed.

“Wake up, you butchering bastard,” he said, one eye on the balcony windows.

There was still no movement on the bed.

She heard his breathing quicken, felt the knife move slightly against her neck. “No, you don’t move, Rebecca. Just one little slice and your blood will spew like a fountain all over the floor.” Suddenly, he said, nearly a yell, “Thomas Matlock! Where are you?”

“I’m right here, Krimakov.”

He whirled Becca around, facing Thomas, who was standing, fully dressed, in the lighted doorway of the bathroom, his arms crossed over his chest.

“It’s about time you got here,” Thomas said easily, his eyes on the knife that was pressing into Becca’s neck. “Don’t hurt her. We’ve been waiting for you. I was starting to believe you’d lost your nerve, that you’d gotten too scared, that you’d finally run away.”

“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 innocent, pure lives. Pull off the mask, Mikhail, we know who you are.”

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?”