“Yes. No one else would know that.”
“My mom wore a ring just like yours. When she died–” She
couldn’t speak, the tears clogged her throat, burned her eyes. He
said nothing at all, just held her hand, squeezed it a bit more tightly.
She swallowed, looked away from him toward the window. It was
black out there, no sign of stars from her vantage point. “–I
wanted desperately to have something to connect me to her and I
almost took that ring, but then I remembered how much she loved
you, and I just couldn’t take it from her.
“Sometimes when she spoke to me of you, she would start
crying and I hated you for leaving us, for leaving her, for dying. I
remember when I was a teenager I told her she should get married
again, that I would be going off to college, and she needed to put
you in the past. She needed to find someone else. She was so
young and beautiful, I didn’t want her to be alone. I remember
she’d only smile at me and say she was just fine.” Then, suddenly,
Becca said, “Oh God, he came after me so he could get to you.”
“Yes,” Adam said. “That’s exactly right. But he didn’t know
where Thomas was, so he came up with a way to flush Thomas out.
He dumped you right in front of One Police Plaza.”
“What I don’t understand,” Thomas said, “is why he didn’t simply
announce all over the media that he had her, threaten to kill her
if I didn’t show myself in Times Square. He must have known that
I would be there. But he didn’t.”
Adam said, “Who knows? Maybe a cop saw him, saw an unconscious
woman in the backseat, and he was forced to dump Becca in
order to escape. However, it’s far more likely that he planned this
down to the exact spot he’d leave her. I think it’s gamesmanship.
He wants to prove he’s better than you, smarter than all of us, and
he wants you to suffer big-time in the process.”
“He’s succeeded admirably,” Thomas said. “He has flushed me
out. I guess maybe that’s why he didn’t let you see him, Becca. He
wants to keep playing this insane game. He wants to terrorize you
and now he can continue the terror, with me squarely in the game
with you.”
“And only he knows the rules,” Becca said.
“Yes,” Adam said. “I wonder if he’s been living on Crete all this
time.”
“Probably so,”Thomas said.
“Wait,” Becca said, chewing on her bottom lip. “Now I recognize
those curses–they were Greek.”
“That settles that,” Thomas said. “We’ve got all the proof we
need that the ashes in that urn in the Greek morgue aren’t Krimakov’s”
He leaned down and kissed Becca’s forehead. “I won’t leave you
again. Now we’ll find Krimakov, and then you and I have a lot of
catching up to do.”
“I’d like that,” she said. Then she smiled over at Adam, but she
didn’t say anything.
Chapter 21
Detective Letitia Gordon and Detective Hector Morales of the
NYPD looked over at the woman who lay in that skinny hospital
bed, looking pale and wrung-out, IV lines running obscenely into
her arms, her eyes shiny with tears.
Detective Gordon cleared her throat and said to the room at
large, “Excuse me,” and flashed her badge, as did Hector Morales,
“but we need to speak to Ms. Matlock. The doctor said it was all
right. Everyone out.”
Thomas straightened and looked at them, assessing them,
quickly, easily, and smiled even as he walked forward, blocking their
view of his daughter. “I’m her father, Thomas Matlock, detectives.
Now, what can I do for you?”
“We need to speak to her now, Mr. Matlock,” Letitia Gordon
said,”before the Feds get here and try to big-foot us.”
“I am the Feds, Detective Gordon,”Thomas said.
“Damn. Er, a pleasure to meet you, sir.” Detective Gordon
cleared her throat. “It’s important, sir. There was a murder committed
here in New York, on our turf. It’s our case, not yours, and
your daughter is involved.” Why had she said all that? Because he