The FBI Thrillers Collection Books 1-5 - Catherine Coulter [659]
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