Catherine Coulter: Riptide

“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 beginning of the school term or at the end. He knew your father had remarried, so it probably wasn’t a woman he was visiting. He’d purged files, even your mother’s name, and we wondered why he would do that. After all, who cared if he had a wife, now dead, or any children?

“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?”

“I tried to kill him, burn him out of existence, just to leave ashes, but he survived. My father sent him to Switzerland, to this clinic that specializes in burns. He knew then what I’d done. I called him a coward, told him he’d let that wretched woman, those children, distract him from killing the man who butchered my mother. You know what he said? He said it over and over, tears in his eyes, wringing his goddamned hands-it had been an accident, he’d lied to me all those years. I didn’t believe him. He wanted it soft and easy-a woman in his bed, children around him-but I wasn’t going to let him forget my mother, just erase her memory, and turn away like you would turn away.

“Now I’ve got you both and I’m going to kill you, just as you killed my mother. It’s justice. It’s retribution.” He smiled as he raised his gun, aiming right at Thomas.

“No!” Becca yelled. “I won’t let you!” She hurled herself in front of her father.

Mikhail Krimakov gave a scream of rage when Thomas shoved Becca to the floor. But he didn’t have time to cover her with his own body. Mikhail shot him in the chest, knocking him backward.

Mikhail dropped to the floor, grabbed Becca’s ankle, and jerked her hard toward him. He slammed his arm around her neck, and pressed the gun against her ear even as the balcony glass door shattered inward and Adam leapt through the billowing draperies and the broken glass into the bedroom. He stopped dead in his tracks.

Mikhail smiled at him. “You try to kill me and the little bitch is dead. You got that?”

Mikhail said, the gun pointed in Becca’s left ear, “That bastard shot my mother in the head. He’s paid for it. You move and I’ll blow her head off. You won’t even recognize what’s left.”

Adam couldn’t believe it, just didn’t want to accept what he was seeing. “I should never have let you stay here. Damn me, I should have drugged you, Becca, and hidden you away.”

But Becca didn’t hear him. Mikhail’s arm had tightened until she couldn’t breathe, until everything turned black and she heard voices in the distance, but they didn’t reach her, not really.

Mikhail eased up on Becca’s neck as he waved his gun at Adam. “Drop that gun and do it slowly and very carefully.”

Adam let the gun fall to the floor. It came to a stop, he saw, about thirteen inches beyond his left foot.

“I dropped the gun. You’ve killed Thomas. No one else is near. Let her go, damn you, you’ve already choked her unconscious.”

“Yeah, right, you asshole.”

Thomas felt as if his chest was frozen, a good thing, he knew, because soon enough he would be in such pain he probably wouldn’t be able to think, much less move. Krimakov’s son was pressing a gun against Becca’s throat. Adam stood not four feet away, helpless, frozen in place, shattered glass all around him. Thomas knew he was trying desperately to figure out what to do. Becca’s eyes were closed, Mikhail’s hold against her throat was too strong, far too strong. She’d passed out. He had to do something, anything. He couldn’t let her die, not like this, not after she’d hurled herself in front of him, to save him, to take the bullet herself. He felt the pain pulsing deep in his chest, but with it, he felt such an intense surge of love for her that gave him a burst of strength. He managed to ease his hand down to his pants pocket, to the small derringer. Just a bit more strength, that’s all he needed, strength.

Mikhail saw the slight movement from the corner of his eye. “Damn you, you’re supposed to be dead. Don’t move!” His hold against her throat lightened and almost immediately he saw that Becca was coming out of it. He clouted her hard on the side of the head, and shoved her away from him. He leaped to his feet, pulled a Zippo lighter from his pocket and set it to the bedding. In an instant, the blanket and sheets burst into flame.

Thomas fired the derringer. Mikhail yelled and grabbed his arm as the bullet punched him backward. He hit the wall but didn’t fall. Adam dove for his gun. Thomas fired again, but Mikhail had twisted low and the bullet just grazed the side of his head.

Thomas fell back, the derringer falling from his hand. Adam twisted about, his gun raised, but Mikhail was out of the bedroom, and when Adam fired, the bullet hit the door frame. Mikhail slammed the door behind him and the flames gushed higher with the sudden rush of air, igniting the pillows, the thick brocade drapes that were ripped from Adam’s run into the bedroom.