Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [116]
“You know nothing about it. Shut up.”
“Why won’t you tell me? Did you really believe that she wouldn’t be in any danger if you took her with you?”
“I told you to shut up, Rebecca. Hearing you talk about that wonderful woman dirties her memory. You’re from his seed, and that makes you as filthy as he is.”
“All right, fine. I’m filthy. Now, why didn’t you want my father to come here with me? Don’t you still want to kill him?”
“I will, never fear. How and when I do is up to me, isn’t it, Rebecca? Everything is always up to me.”
“What am I doing here alone? Why did you take Sam if you only 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 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, too. 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 agent’s bed at NYU Hospital? It was for you, Rebecca, so you would know 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