“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 that.
There was nothing to worry about. “I’m going in now.” She got out of the car and walked into the gym. There was a bright-faced young man at the counter, looking like he’d just worked out hard. His clothes were sweated through. “Hi,” he said, and looked at her.
She wasn’t wearing workout clothes.
She smiled. “I was here once before and I rented a locker in the women’s locker room. My clothes are there. I need to pick them up.”
“I know you. You’ve been on TV, on every channel.”
“Yes. May I please come in now?”
“That’ll be ten dollars. What are you doing here?”
She opened her wallet and pulled out a twenty. “I’m here to pick up my workout clothes.” He didn’t even look up. She watched him for what seemed like forever as he got her a ten in change. He pressed a buzzer and she went through the turnstile.
The room was large, filled with machines and free weights and mirrors. The lights were very bright, nearly blinding. A radio played loud rock, booming out from the overhead speakers. There were lots of young people here tonight, thus the raucous music. There were at least thirty people throughout the big room. Upstairs were all the aerobic machines. She heard talk, music, groans, the harsh movement of the machines, nothing else.
What was she to do?
She walked back to the women’s locker room. There were three women inside, in various stages of undress. No one paid her any attention. Nothing there.
She walked out of the dressing room, and this time she walked slowly, roaming through the big room, looking at all the men. Many of them were young, but there were some older ones as well, all of them different one from the other-fat, thin, in shape, paunchy. So many different sorts of men, all there on this night, working away. Not one of them approached her.
What to do?
A couple of young guys were horsing around, doing fake hits, laughing, insulting each other. One of them accidentally backed into the arm of an old chest machine. The big weighted arms weren’t clicked in to a setting. When the young guy hit it, it swung out and hit her squarely on her upper right arm. She stumbled into a big Nautilus machine and lost her balance. She went down.
“Oh shit. I’m sorry. You all right?”
He was helping her up, rubbing her shoulder, her arm, looking at her now with a young male’s natural sexual interest. “Hey, talk to me. You okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine, don’t worry.”
“I haven’t seen you here before. You new in town?”
“Yes, sort of.”
He was lightly touching her arm now, as if assuring himself that she was okay, and she tried to smile at him, assure him that she was just fine. The other young man came up on the other side, vying with the first for her attention.
“Hey, I’m Steve. Would you like to go have a drink with me? I figure I owe you since I knocked you on your butt.”
“Or maybe you’d like to go with both of us? I’m Troy.”
“No, thank you, guys. I absolve you of all guilt. I have to leave now.”
She finally managed to get away from them. She turned once and saw them looking after her, smiling, waving, looking really pleased with themselves now that she’d looked back at them.
Neither of them was more than twenty-five, she thought. Well-built boys. She was twenty-seven. She felt ancient.
Finally, because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she went through the turnstile at the front of the gym. The young guy who’d let her in wasn’t there. No one was there. She felt a ripple of alarm. Where had the kid gone? Maybe a shower. Yeah, that was it. He’d really been sweating.
She thought she saw a shadow just outside the front door. It was one of the good guys, she thought, it had to be.
Where was Krimakov? He’d said she’d know what to do. He was wrong.