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“Yes, but we’ll figure it out.”

Thomas was standing beside her bed, opposite Adam. He was wearing a dark suit, the dark-red tie loosened. He looked tired and worried and, oddly enough, happy. Because of her? Evidently so, and that pleased her very much. He picked up her left hand and held it. His hand was strong, lightly tanned. He was wearing a wedding ring. She stared at that ring, just stared and stared, touched her fingers to it, then said finally, “My mother gave you that ring?”

“Yes, when we got married. I wore it all our married lives. I plan to wear it until it finally dissolves off my finger sometime in the distant future. I loved your mother very much, Becca. Like I said, I had to leave both of you so you wouldn’t be killed. I know it’s all still very confusing. There are lots of facts and details, but the bottom line is exactly what I already told you. I accidentally killed a man’s wife and he swore he would kill my family, and then he would kill me, but only after I saw, firsthand, how he had killed everyone I loved. I had no choice. I had to leave my family in order to protect them.”

Adam said, “We believe this man who is stalking you, who murdered that old bag lady, who shot the governor, we believe it’s Krimakov and somehow he found you and began terrorizing you.” He paused for a moment, nodding to Thomas.

Thomas was looking down at this lovely young woman who was his only child. It took him a moment before he said, “Vasili Krimakov was one of the KGB’s top agents back in the seventies, as I was for the CIA. Again, there’s a whole lot more, but it can wait for a while. Right now, what’s important is that we find him, that we neutralize him once and for all.”

“You’re sure it’s Krimakov.”

He smiled then. “Oh yes, I’m very sure, particularly after what he told you.”

“‘Say hello to your daddy.’”

“Yes. No one else would know that.”

“My mom wore a ring just like yours. When she died—” She couldn’t speak, the tears clogged her throat, burned her eyes. He said nothing at all, just held her hand, squeezed it a bit more tightly. She swallowed, looked away from him toward the window. It was black out there, no sign of stars from her vantage point. “—I wanted desperately to have something to connect me to her and I almost took that ring, but then I remembered how much she loved you, and I just couldn’t take it from her.

“Sometimes when she spoke to me of you, she would start crying and I hated you for leaving us, for leaving her, for dying. I remember when I was a teenager I told her she should get married again, that I would be going off to college, and she needed to put you in the past. She needed to find someone else. She was so young and beautiful, I didn’t want her to be alone. I remember she’d only smile at me and say she was just fine.” Then, suddenly, Becca said, “Oh God, he came after me so he could get to you.”

“Yes,” Adam said. “That’s exactly right. But he didn’t know where Thomas was, so he came up with a way to flush Thomas out. He dumped you right in front of One Police Plaza.”

“What I don’t understand,” Thomas said, “is why he didn’t simply announce all over the media that he had her, threaten to kill her if I didn’t show myself in Times Square. He must have known that I would be there. But he didn’t.”

Adam said, “Who knows? Maybe a cop saw him, saw an unconscious woman in the backseat, and he was forced to dump Becca in order to escape. However, it’s far more likely that he planned this down to the exact spot he’d leave her. I think it’s gamesmanship. He wants to prove he’s better than you, smarter than all of us, and he wants you to suffer big-time in the process.”

“He’s succeeded admirably,” Thomas said. “He has flushed me out. I guess maybe that’s why he didn’t let you see him, Becca. He wants to keep playing this insane game. He wants to terrorize you and now he can continue the terror, with me squarely in the game with you.”

“And only he knows the rules,” Becca said.

“Yes,” Adam said. “I wonder if he’s been living on Crete all this time.”

“Probably so,” Thomas said.