Riptide

strategy,
    pizza first. Adam doubted there would be much helpful strategy,
    but it was good to have everyone together. Who knew what ideas
    might pop out after hot, cheese-dripping pizza?
    Savich was carrying a baby draped over his right shoulder. The
    kid was wearing only diapers and a little white T-shirt. Adam

looked at Savich, checked out the baby's feet, and said, "You're this
    little guy's father?"
    "Don't act so surprised, Adam." He lightly rubbed his hand over
    his son's back. "Hey, Sean, you still awake enough to punch this guy
    in his pretty face?"
    The baby sucked his fingers furiously and poked out his butt,
    making Savich grin.
    "He's nearly down for the count," Sherlock said, lightly touching
    the baby's head, covered with his father's black hair. "He sucks
    his fingers when he doesn't want to be disturbed and he knows
    you're talking about him."
    "What do you think, Adam? Six-ounce free weights for my
    boy?"
    Adam stared at the big man holding his kid who was madly
    sucking his fingers, then threw his head back and laughed. "This is
    not good. Jesus, I can nearly see him lifting three envelopes in each
    hand." And he laughed and laughed. "Maybe he can even handle a
    stamp on each envelope."
    There were ten pizzas spread around Thomas Matlock's living
    room an hour later. Hatch was hovering over the large pepperoni pizza., his shaved head glittering beneath a halogen floor lamp, talking
    even as he stuffed a big bite into his mouth. "Yipes, this sucker's
    really hot. Oh boy, delicious. But hot, real hot."
    "I hope you burned your tongue," Adam said as he pulled the
    hot cheese free of a slice of pizza from another box that was closer
    to him than to anyone else, and reverently lifted it up. "Serves you
    right for being a pig. God, I love artichokes and olives."
    "Nah, my tongue isn't burned. It's just a bit of a sting," Hatch said,
    and pulled up another piece. After he took another big bite, he said,
    Now, just to make sure everyone's on the same page. All federal

agencies are up to date on Krimakov. The New York Bureau guys are
    going over the car the guy dumped you out of, Becca, with every
    high-tech scan, every piece of sophisticated equipment they have.
    Haven't found anything yet. I was really hoping they would find
    something, but this guy Krimakov is careful, real anal, one of the
    techs said. He didn't leave anything helpful. Rollo and Dave, who
    just left Riptide yesterday, sent the FBI all the fingerprints we got in
    Linda Cartwright's house, all the fibers we bagged. No word yet.
    The woman he killed in Ithaca, and stole her car--they've combed
    the hills for witnesses but came up empty. All that boils down to
    nada, nothing, zippo." And then he cursed in some language Becca
    didn't recognize. She lifted her eyebrow at him. Hatch said, flushing
    a bit,"That was just a bit of Latvian. A nice set of words, full-bodied
    and pungent, covers a lot of the hind end of a horse and what one
    could do with it."
    There was laughter, lots of it, and it felt so good that Becca just
    looked around at all the people she hadn't even known existed until
    very recently. People who were friends now. People who would
    probably remain friends for the rest of her life. She looked over at the
    baby lying in his carryall, sound asleep, a light-blue blanket tucked
    over him. He was the image of his father except for his mother's
    blue, blue eyes.
    She looked at Thomas Matlock, who was also looking at the
    baby and smiling. Her father, who hadn't eaten much pizza because,
    she knew, he was so worried. About her.
    My father.
    It still felt so very strange. He was real, he was her father, and her
    brain recognized and accepted it, but it was still too new to accept
    all the way to the deepest part of her that had no memories, no
    knowledge of him, nothing tangible, just a couple of photos taken

when he and her mother were young, some when they were even
    younger than she was now, and stories her mother had told her,
    many, many stories. The stories were secondhand memories, she
    realized now. Her mother had given them to her, again and again,
    hoping that she would remember them and, through them, love
    the father she'd believed was dead.
    Her father, alive, always alive, and her mother hadn't told her.
    Just stories, stupid stories. Her mother had memories, scores of
    them, and she had stories. But she kept quiet to protect me, Becca
    thought, but the sense of betrayal, the fury of it, roiled deep inside
    her.