Riptide

by Catherine Coulter

  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 murderi
ng 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?

  “But you’re different, Rebecca. I have you now and I will have your father, also. I will kill that bloody murderer.” She heard the rage now in his voice, low and bubbling, and it would build and build. She heard his breathing, harsh but more controlled now, and he said finally, “I want you to get in your car and drive to the gym on Night Shade Alley. Do it now, Rebecca. That little boy is depending on you.”

  “Wait! What do I do when I get there?”

  “You’ll know what to do. I’ve missed you. You have a lovely body. I touched you with my hands, ran my tongue all over you. Did you know I left that toilet bolt on that woman’s bed at NYU Hospital? It was for you, Rebecca, so that you would know that I was all over you, looking at you, feeling you, rubbing you. You hoped when you unscrewed that bolt that you could smash it in my eye, didn’t you?”

  She was shaking with fear and rage, each so powerful alone, but mixed together they quaked through her, making her light-headed.

  “You’re an old man,” she said. “You’re a filthy old man. The thought of you even near me makes me want to vomit.”

  He laughed, a deep laugh that was terrifying. “I’ll see you very soon now, Rebecca. And then I’ll have a surprise for you. Never forget, this is my game and you will always play by my rules.”

  He hung up. She knew in her gut that wherever he was hiding this time, there wouldn’t have been any way to trace the call, no matter how sophisticated the equipment. All the others knew it, too.

  She depressed the button. They’d heard everything. They knew exactly what she knew now.

  She didn’t take anything with her, except her Coonan. When she got into the Toyota, she again pressed the small button, then started the car. “I’m leaving for the gym now.”

  Her precious mother, she thought. She’d escaped him by falling into the coma. He’d been in the hospital, asking about her. It was too much, just too much.

  She drove to Klondike’s Gym in just over eight minutes. It sat right at the very end of Night Shade Alley, a big concrete parking lot in front, trees crowding in all around the rest of the two-story building. There were windows all across the front, lights filling all of them. There were at least two dozen cars in the big concrete lot. She’d been here once with Tyler. That had been in the middle of the day. Not nearly the number of cars there then. Perhaps since it was so hot during the day, the Mainers waited until the evening cool to work out. She drove in, picked a place that had no cars near it, turned off the engine, and sat there. Five minutes passed. Nothing. No sign of Krimakov, no sign of anyone at all.

  She depressed the button on the wristband. “I don’t see him. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. There are lots of people here.”

  Everyone should be here by now. They were ready. They all wanted Krimakov. They would do absolutely nothing until they had Krimakov. Everyone had agreed on that.

  There was nothing to worry about. “I’m going in now.” She got out of the car and walked into the gym. There was a bright-faced young man at the counter, looking like he’d just worked out hard. His clothes were sweated through. “Hi,” he said, and looked at her.

  She wasn’t wearing workout clothes.

  She smiled. “I was here once before and I rented a locker in the women’s locker room. My clothes are there. I need to pick them up.”

  “I know you. You’ve been on TV, on every channel.”

  “Yes. May I please come in now?”

  “That’ll be ten dollars. What are you doing here?”

  She opened her wallet and pulled out a twenty. “I’m here to pick up my workout clothes.” He didn’t even look up. She watched him for what seemed like forever as he got her a ten in change. He pressed a buzzer and she went through the turnstile.

  The room was large, filled with machines and free weights and mirrors. The lights were very bright, nearly blinding. A radio played loud rock, booming out from the overhead speakers. There were lots of young people here tonight, thus the raucous music. There were at least thirty people throughout the big room. Upstairs were all the aerobic machines. She heard talk, music, groans, the harsh movement of the machines, nothing else.

  What was she to do?

  She walked back to the women’s locker room. There were three women inside, in various stages of undress. No one paid her any attention. Nothing there.

  She walked out of the dressing room, and this time she walked slowly, roaming through the big room, looking at all the men. Many of them were young, but there were some older ones as well, all of them different one from the other—fat, thin, in shape, paunchy. So many different sorts of men, all there on this night, working away. Not one of them approached her.

  What to do?

  A couple of young guys were horsing around, doing fake hits, laughing, insulting each other. One of them accidentally backed into the arm of an old chest machine. The big weighted arms weren’t clicked in to
a setting. When the young guy hit it, it swung out and hit her squarely on her upper right arm. She stumbled into a big Nautilus machine and lost her balance. She went down.

  “Oh shit. I’m sorry. You all right?”

  He was helping her up, rubbing her shoulder, her arm, looking at her now with a young male’s natural sexual interest. “Hey, talk to me. You okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, don’t worry.”

  “I haven’t seen you here before. You new in town?”

  “Yes, sort of.”

  He was lightly touching her arm now, as if assuring himself that she was okay, and she tried to smile at him, assure him that she was just fine. The other young man came up on the other side, vying with the first for her attention.

  “Hey, I’m Steve. Would you like to go have a drink with me? I figure I owe you since I knocked you on your butt.”

  “Or maybe you’d like to go with both of us? I’m Troy.”

  “No, thank you, guys. I absolve you of all guilt. I have to leave now.”

  She finally managed to get away from them. She turned once and saw them looking after her, smiling, waving, looking really pleased with themselves now that she’d looked back at them.

  Neither of them was more than twenty-five, she thought. Well-built boys. She was twenty-seven. She felt ancient.

  Finally, because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she went through the turnstile at the front of the gym. The young guy who’d let her in wasn’t there. No one was there. She felt a ripple of alarm. Where had the kid gone? Maybe a shower. Yeah, that was it. He’d really been sweating.

  She thought she saw a shadow just outside the front door. It was one of the good guys, she thought, it had to be.

  Where was Krimakov? He’d said she’d know what to do. He was wrong.

  She walked slowly back to the Toyota. The lights weren’t bright in this part of the lot and that was why she’d elected to park here. She hadn’t wanted to park close by other cars, hadn’t wanted to take the risk of Krimakov hurting anyone else. Now she wished she hadn’t because no one seemed to be about.