Riptide

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,
    all of it. In the room when I saw neither of you were there, I just
    killed them, too, but with the woman, it was very close, too close.
    But I escaped. I was out of there before anyone realized what had
    happened."
    Thomas said, "Why, Mikhail? What did your father tell you to
    make you want to do this? What?"
    "He didn't make me do anything. He simply told me how you
    butchered my poor mother, went through her to get to him. You
    shot her in the head and laughed as my father held her until she
    died. Then you tried to kill him but he managed to get away. He
    told me that, and he began teaching me to prepare myself to avenge
    her. And I'm here now. I'll kill you just as you killed my mother."
    "You killed your stepmother, didn't you, and her children?"
    Becca said.
    He laughed, actually laughed. "Yes, I hated her as much as she
    hated me. She didn't want me ever to come back during my vacations.
    And her spawn--they weren't all that surprised when I killed
    them because they had guessed that I hated them. As for her, she
    pleaded just like her pathetic daughter."
    Becca said, "And your own little brother? Your father's other
    son?"
    I tried to kill him, burn him out of existence, just to leave ashes,
    but he survived. My father sent him to Switzerland, to this clinic
    that specializes in burns. He knew then what I'd done. I called him
    a coward, told him he'd let that wretched woman, those children,
    distract him from killing the man who butchered my mother. You
    know what he said? He said it over and over, tears in his eyes,
    wringing his goddamned hands--it had been an accident, he'd lied

to me all those years. I didn't believe him. He wanted it soft and
    easy--a woman in his bed, children around him--but I wasn't going
    to let him forget my mother, just erase her memory, and turn
    away like you would turn away.
    "Now I've got you both and I'm going to kill you, just as you
    killed my mother. It's justice. It's retribution." He smiled as he
    raised his gun, aiming right at Thomas.
    "No!" Becca yelled. "I won't let you!" She hurled herself in front
    of her father.
    Mikhail Krimakov gave a scream of rage when Thomas shoved
    Becca to the floor. But he didn't have time to cover her with his
    own body. Mikhail shot him in