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?”
“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,