Riptide

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.

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 was a big federal cheese, and that’s why she’d tried to excuse herself, tried to justify herself. What was he going to do?

Detective Morales smiled and shook Thomas’s outstretched hand. “Hector Morales, Mr. Matlock. And this is Detective Gordon. We didn’t realize she had any relatives other than her mother.”

“Yes, she does, detectives,” Thomas said. “There’s still some drug in her system, so she’s not really completely back yet, but if you would like to speak to her for a couple of minutes, that probably wouldn’t hurt. But you need to keep it low-key. I don’t want her upset.”

“Look, sir,” Detective Gordon said, pumping herself up, knowing that she should be the one giving the orders here, not this man, this stranger who was with the government. “Ms. Matlock ran away. Everyone was looking for her. She is wanted as a material witness in the shooting of Governor Bledsoe of New York.”

Thomas Matlock merely arched a very patrician brow at her and looked intimidatingly forbearing. “Fancy that,” he said mildly. “I can’t imagine why she would ever want to leave New York what with all the protection you offered her.”

“Now see here, sir,” Detective Gordon said, and tried to shake off Hector Morales’s hand on her arm, but he didn’t let go, and she looked yet again into that man’s face, and she shut up. There were words bubbling inside her, but she wasn’t about to say them. He was a Big Feeb, and she saw the power in his eyes, something that flashed red warning lights to her brain, an ineffable something that shouted power, more power than she could imagine, and so she kept her mouth shut.

“There is a lot we do not understand, Mr. Matlock,” Detective Morales said, his voice stiff, with a slight accent. “May we please speak to your daughter? Ask her a few questions? She does look very ill. We won’t take long.”

The thing of it was, Letitia Gordon thought as she walked to the bed where the young woman lay staring at her with dread, her dyed hair tangled and dirty about her face, she wanted to stand very straight in front of that man, perhaps salute and then do exactly what he told her to do. And here was Hector, acting so deferential, like this guy was the president or, more important, the police commissioner. Whatever he was, this man wore power like a second skin.