Adam was clearing his throat. “We’ll get him, Becca. You’ve got to believe that. Now, there’s someone here for you to meet.”
Her head came up, fast. “Please, no doctors, Adam. I hate doctors. Oh, God, so did my mother.” And she started crying. She didn’t know where all the tears came from, but they were there, swamping her, and she was sobbing, tears streaming down her face, and she wanted her mother desperately. “My mom died in a hospital, Adam. She hated it, then she just didn’t care because she was in a coma. No one could do anything. She died in a hospital just like this one.” The tears kept coming, she couldn’t stop them.
Then suddenly someone was holding her, drawing her close, and a man’s dark, smooth voice said next to her ear, “It’s all right, my darling girl. It’s all right.”
And she stilled. Strong arms were around her. She felt his heart pounding rhythmically, powerful and steady against her cheek. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to carry on like this. I miss my mother. I loved her so much and she died. There isn’t anyone else for me.”
“I miss your mother, too, Becca. It’s going to be all right. I swear it to you.”
She pulled back just a bit and looked up at an older man who looked oddly familiar to her, but that was impossible, wasn’t it? She was sure she’d never seen him before in her life. The drugs were still affecting her, holding her brain back, scrambling things, making her cry. “I’m nobody’s darling girl,” she whispered, and raised her hand to lightly touch her fingers to the man’s cheek. He was so handsome, his face lean, his nose thin, straight, his eyes a soft light blue, dreamy eyes. Now that was strange. Her mother had told her that she had dreamy eyes, summer dreamy eyes. “I don’t understand,” she said, frowning up at the man’s face. “Who are you?”
The man looked as if he would cry with her, but he swallowed, several times, and cleared his throat. “I’m your father, Becca. I’m Thomas Matlock. I can’t bring your mother back, but I’m here now, and I’ll stay.”
“You’re Thomas? You’re the man Adam and Savich are working for?”
“Well, let’s say they’re helping me out.”
She didn’t say anything then, just frowned a bit, trying to assemble things in her mind, in her memory, to make some sense of them, realizing suddenly that she recognized his eyes because he’d given them to her, realizing-“When he slipped the needle into my arm that second time,” she whispered, looking directly into his eyes, “just before I went under, he said right against my ear, ‘Tell your daddy hello for me.’ ”
His face paled and he grew vague, indistinct, his arms loosening. She grabbed his shirt with her fist, trying to pull him closer. “No, don’t leave me, please.”
“Oh, God, I won’t.” Thomas looked up at Adam. “I guess that says it all.”
“Yes,” Adam said. “At least now we know for bloody sure.”
“Amen to that,” Sherlock said. Then she added, “Why don’t we all go out to get a cup of coffee while Thomas gets to know Becca a bit better?”
When she was alone with the man who’d said he was her father, she looked up at him and said, “Why did you leave us? I don’t even remember what you looked like I was so young when you left. There is this old photograph of you and Mom, and you looked so young and so handsome. Carefree. It’s a wonderful picture.”
He held her very close for a long time, then slowly he said, “You were all of three years old when it happened. I was a CIA operative, Becca, and I was very good. There was this other KGB spy-”
“Krimakov.”
“Yes. I was sent over to what is now Belarus, to stop him from killing a visiting German industrialist. Krimakov had brought his wife, as if they were there on some sort of vacation. It was in the mountains. There was a gunfight and she tried to save him. I hadn’t seen her, hadn’t even known she was there.” He paused a moment, memory stark and alive in his eyes. He said simply, “I shot her in the head and killed her. Krimakov promised me he would kill not only me but my family. He vowed it. I believed him.
“He managed to escape me. I decided that I would have to kill him to protect you. When I tried, I found out that he’d simply disappeared. There was no trace of him. The KGB helped him, obviously, and he stayed buried until very recently, when I was told he was killed in an auto accident in Crete. You know the rest.”
“You left us to protect us?”
“Yes. Your mother and I discussed it. Matlock is a common name. She took you and moved to New York. I saw her four, maybe five times a year. We were always very, very careful. We couldn’t tell you. We couldn’t put you in danger. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, Becca. Believe me.”
All of a sudden she had a father. She stared at his face, seeing herself in him, seeing also a stranger. It was too much. She heard him say something, heard Adam arguing with someone just inside the door, sharp and loud, then she didn’t hear anything at all. That was a good thing, she thought as she slipped away, back where there were no dreams, just seamless darkness, without him, no worries or voices to tear her apart. Her father was dead, dead since she was very young. It was impossible that he was here, there was just no way. Maybe she was dead, too, and had seen what she wanted to see. Dead. It wasn’t bad, truly it wasn’t. She heard a sound, like a wounded animal. It had come from her, she realized, but then there was nothing at all.
When she awoke, it was dark in her room except for a small bedside lamp that was turned to its lowest setting. The small hospital room was filled with shadows and quiet voices. There were needles in both of her arms connected to bags of liquid beside both sides of her bed. There were two men sitting in chairs next to the window, in low conversation. One was Adam. The other was her father-oh yes, she believed him now, perhaps even understood a bit-and he’d called her his darling girl. She blinked several times. He didn’t fade back into her mind. He remained exactly where he was. She saw him very clearly now, and she could do nothing but stare, breathe him in, settle his face, his features, his expressions, into her mind. He used his hands while he spoke to Adam, just like she did when she was trying to make a point, to convince someone to come around to her way of thinking. He was her father.
She cleared her throat and said, “I know I’m not dead because I would kill for some water. And I don’t believe that if someone is dead, she’s particularly thirsty. May I please have some water?”
Adam was on his feet in an instant. When he bent the straw into her mouth, she closed her eyes in bliss. She drank nearly the entire glass. She was panting when she finished. “Oh goodness, that was delicious.”
He didn’t straighten, just placed one large hand on either side of her face on that hard hospital pillow. He was studying her face, her eyes. “You okay?”
“Yes. I realize I’m not dead, so you must be real. I remember you told me that he threw me out of the car. Is there anything bad wrong with me?”
“No, nothing bad. When he shoved you out of the car yesterday right there at Police Plaza, you were still wearing your nightgown. You got a lot of scrapes, a bruised elbow, but that’s it. Now it’s just a matter of getting the drug out of your system. They pumped your stomach. Nobody seems to know what the drug was, but it was potent. You should be just about clear of it now.” He had to close his eyes a moment. He’d never been so afraid in his life, never. But she would live. She would be fine. He said, “Do the scrapes hurt? Would you like a couple of aspirin?”
“No, I’m all right.” She licked her lips, looked over into the shadows, clutched his hand, and whispered, “Adam, he really is my father, isn’t he? That story he told me, it’s the truth? It happened that way?”