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.”