Riptide

makes you as filthy as he is."
    "All right, fine. I'm filthy. Now, why didn't you want my father
    to come here with me? Don't you still want to kill him?"

"I will, never fear. How and when I do it is up to me, isn't it, Rebecca?
    Everything is always up to me."
    "What am I doing here alone? Why did you take Sam if you just wanted me to come here to Riptide?"
    "It got you here quickly, didn't it? You'll find out everything in
    time. Your father was smart. He hid you and your mother very
    well. It took me a very long time to find you two. Actually, it was
    you I found first, Rebecca. There was an article about you in the
    Albany newspaper that was picked up in syndication. It talked
    about you. I saw your name and got interested. I found out about
    your mother, your supposedly dead father, and then I learned about
    your mother's travels each year. It was then I knew. Most of her
    trips were to Washington, D.C."
    He laughed. Her skin crawled. "Hey, I'm real sorry about your
    mother, Rebecca. I had hoped to get to know her really well, but
    then she had to go so quickly into the hospital. I suppose I could
    have gotten into Lenox Hill easily enough and killed her, but why
    not let the cancer do it? More painful that way. At least I hoped it
    would be. But as it turned out, your mother didn't have a lick of
    pain, that's what a nice nurse told me. Then she patted my arm in
    sympathy. She just went away in her mind and stayed there. No
    pain at all. Even if I had come to her, she wouldn't have known it,
    so why bother?
    "But you're different, Rebecca. I have you now and I will have
    your father, also. I will kill that bloody murderer." She heard the
    rage now in his voice, low and bubbling, and it would build and
    build. She heard his breathing, harsh but more controlled now, and
    he said finally, "I want you to get in your car and drive to the gym
    on Night Shade Alley. Do it now, Rebecca. That little boy is depending
    on you."
    "Wait! What do I do when I get there?"

"You'll know what to do. I've missed you. You have a lovely
    body. I touched you with my hands, ran my tongue all over you.
    Did you know I left that toilet bolt on that woman's bed at NYU
    Hospital? It was for you, Rebecca, so that you would know that I
    was all over you, looking at you, feeling you, rubbing you. You
    hoped when you unscrewed that bolt that you could smash it in
    my eye, didn't you?"
    She was shaking with fear and rage, each so powerful alone, but
    mixed together they quaked through her, making her light headed.
    "You're an old man," she said. "You're a filthy old man. The
    thought of you even near me makes me want to vomit."
    He laughed, a deep laugh that was terrifying. "I'll see you very
    soon now, Rebecca. And then I'll have a surprise for you. Never
    forget, this is my game and you will always play by my rules."
    He hung up. She knew in her gut that wherever he was hiding
    this time, there wouldn't have been any way to trace the call, no
    matter how sophisticated the equipment. All the others knew it,
    too.
    She depressed the button. They'd heard everything. They knew
    exactly what she knew now.
    She didn't take anything with her, except her Coonan. When
    she got into the Toyota, she again pressed the small button, then
    started the car. "I'm leaving for the gym now."
    Her precious mother, she thought. She'd escaped him by falling
    into the coma. He'd been in the hospital, asking about her. It was
    too much, just too much.
    She drove to Klondike's Gym in just over eight minutes. It sat
    right at the very end of Night Shade Alley, a big concrete parking
    lot in front, trees crowding in all around the rest of the two-story
    building. There were windows all across the front, lights filling all
    of them. There were at least two dozen cars in the big concrete lot.

She'd been here once with Tyler. That had been in the middle of
    the day. Not nearly the number of cars there then. Perhaps since it
    was so hot during the day, the Mainers waited until the evening
    cool to work out. She drove in, picked a place that had no cars near
    it, turned off the engine, and sat there. Five minutes passed. Nothing.
    No sign of Krimakov, no sign of anyone at all.
    She depressed the button on the wristband. "I don't see him. I
    don't see anything out of the ordinary. There are lots of people
    here."
    Everyone should be here by now. They were ready. They all
    wanted Krimakov. They would do absolutely nothing until they
    had Krimakov. Everyone had agreed on