“I’ve got to talk to Tyler,” Becca said, rising, throwing off the afghan. “Reassure him. Tell him what’s going on here.”
Sherlock said, “At the very least, if there’s still time, the analysis and comparison will let us know what we’re up against. Trust me on this. Get that note from Tyler, Becca.”
“Yes, she will,” Thomas said. “Go make your call, Becca.”
Becca nodded and walked to the phone, pulling the small address book out of her purse as she walked. She looked up Tyler McBride’s number. She dialed.
After three rings, Tyler answered, his voice frantic. “Becca? Is that you?”
“Yes, Tyler.”
“Thank God. Where are you? What are you doing? What’s happening?”
“Okay, Tyler, just listen to me. Here’s the plan. It’s the only way to handle this, so don’t yell at me. We’re all coming up to Riptide, but not together. No, just be quiet and listen. We’re all going to trickle in. He’ll never know there’s anyone else but me in Riptide. I’ll come directly to your house, we’ll speak, he’ll see me, then I’ll go to Jacob Marley’s house. He’ll come for me there. You know it. I know it.” She drew a deep breath. “He has no reason to kill Sam. He’ll have me, so he can keep his word and release him.”
“The others will be hiding in Jacob Marley’s house?”
“No, but they’ll be close by. It will work, Tyler.”
She was aware that all of them were staring at her, but she just shook her head at them. It was the only way to go, and all of them knew it. There’d been no reason to flail about and discuss any number of options into the ground. She had to go and she knew no one would let her go alone. Fine. They had a chance now. “Oh yes, Tyler, I need you to give me Krimakov’s note. Sherlock wants it. Now, just go about your business. Don’t say a word to anyone. We’ll be there in under four hours.”
Slowly, she lowered the phone into its cradle. She looked up. “Sam’s not going to die.”
“No,” Adam said, walking to her, “no, he won’t.” Then he just couldn’t stand it. He pulled her against him and held her there, his hand tight across her back, his other hand fisted in her hair. He felt her heart beating against his chest, hard, fast strokes. He brought her closer. He looked up to see Thomas staring at him, and slowly, he loosened his fingers in her hair, smoothing it down, but he didn’t want to let her go.
Thomas said, “Agent Hawley and Agent Cobb, this kidnapping will stay amongst us. It doesn’t go to anyone else in the FBI. All right?”
“No problem,” said Tellie Hawley. “Hell, we’re in this thing to the end. That bastard butchered four of my people. I want him as much as you do. If Savich and Sherlock aren’t saying anything to the higher-ups, why should we?”
“Let’s get rolling,” Sherlock said once Thomas had given her several papers with Krimakov’s handwriting. “We’ll meet at Reagan in an hour?”
“No,” Thomas said. “We’ll go over to Andrews Air Force Base. I’ll have a plane ready for us.”
They were nearly out the door when Thomas’s private phone rang. He looked undecided, then said, “Hold on. It’s got to be important if it’s on that phone.”
Slowly, because she didn’t really want to, Becca forced herself to pull away from Adam. “I’m all right,” she said.
“I’m not,” he said, and smiled at her. “We’ll get through this.”
They all followed Thomas back to his study, watched him pick up the phone on the edge of the mahogany desk.
“Yes?… Hello, Gaylan.”
It was Gaylan Woodhouse, the CIA director. They all watched Thomas’s face stiffen, then slowly turn pale and set. “Oh no,” he said, his voice bleak. “You’re absolutely certain of all this?”
They watched him lower the phone and stare over at them. He looked shaken, dazed. “This is just too much,” he said. “Just too much.”
“What the hell is it?” Adam was at Thomas’s side in but a moment.
Thomas shook his head, his eyes dazed. There was a fine tremor in his hands. “You’re not going to believe this. CIA Agent Elizabeth Pirounakis was blown up when she went into Vasili Krimakov’s apartment in Iráklion. Krimakov must have worked there, left notes there, evidence of his plans.
“The whole building blew up. It’s now rubble. Agent Pirounakis is dead, the two other Greek agents with her dead as well. Gaylan isn’t certain yet, but given the time of the explosion, thankfully very few people were in the apartment building.”
“He did this before he left Crete,” Agent Hawley said. “It’s not something he’s just done.”
Adam said, “At least now there has to be an inquiry about the guy they buried. Surely now they can’t hang on to the fiction that the man in the car accident was Vasili Krimakov?”
Thomas looked at Adam. “It doesn’t much matter now. There’s hell to pay over there, but that doesn’t help us.”
“Time,” Adam said. “It’s what he hasn’t given us.”
Thomas nodded, then paused another moment and looked over at his daughter. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
She gave him a smile filled with rage and said, “Yes. Lock and load.”
26
It was hot that day in Maine, even by the water. Lobster boats bobbed up and down in the inlets, fishermen, their hats pushed back on their heads, lay in the shade of the awnings on their boats, if they were lucky enough to have awnings.
The white spires of the Riptide churches shone beneath the bright afternoon sun. There wasn’t much movement anywhere. It was just too hot. The tourists weren’t wandering around taking photos of the quaint Maine town, they were holed up in air-conditioned pubs.
The hot weather didn’t bother the birds. Osprey dove for fish off the spruce-covered points. Gulls squawked and whirled over the lobster boats. The smell of dead fish left too long in the heat sent out odors that meant you had to take shallow breaths to survive. Cumulus clouds in fantastic shapes dotted the steel-blue sky. There was no breeze at all. Still, hot air blanketed the land.
Becca was so scared that all the beauty of the land and ocean, the sound of the birds, the incredible blue of the sky-none of it penetrated her brain. She felt frozen in the near hundred-degree heat.
She’d driven herself in a rented white Toyota from a private airfield near Camden. It had taken her nearly an hour to negotiate the tourist traffic on Highway 1 south to Riptide, just below Rockland. Her hands were clammy, her heart slowly thudding in her chest. She tried to think of all that could go wrong, but her mind just wouldn’t slip into gear.
When a mosquito bit her as she was pumping gas, she was pleased that she felt it. She wasn’t even aware of being pissed off that the rental agency hadn’t filled her car before renting it to her.
When she arrived in Riptide at three o’clock in the afternoon, she drove directly to Tyler’s house on Gum Shoe Lane. He was standing in the yard, waiting for her. He was quite alone.
Tyler held her very close, as if she were a lifeline, and so she stood there, his arms locked tightly around her. Finally, she eased back and looked up at him. “Any word at all?”
“Another note from Krimakov.”
“Let me see it.”
“This is all a huge mess, Becca.”
“Yes, I know, and I’m so sorry for it, Tyler. It’s all my fault. If I could go back into the past, make the decision not to come here, I swear I would. I’m so sorry. I swear that Sam will be all right. I swear it to you.”
He looked at her for a very long time, but he didn’t say anything, to either agree or disagree.
“Show me the new note. Then I’ll take both of them with me, okay?”
The note was handwritten, big strokes, black ballpoint: The boy will be all right for another eight hours. If Rebecca isn’t here, he’s dead.
She folded both notes, put them in the pocket of her sundress, and left for Jacob Marley’s house twenty minutes later. Undoubtedly Krimakov was watching Tyler’s house, at least he should be. She would call in another half hour just in case Krimakov hadn’t been watching. For sure he’d have a trace on Tyler’s phone.