Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [44]
Now after all this time, all these bloody years, he’d finally found him? Only he was dead. It was hard to accept. His implacable enemy, finally dead. Gone, only it was too late, because Allison was dead, too. Far too late.
Was it really an accident?
Thomas knew that Krimakov had to have enemies. He’d had years to make them, just as Thomas had. He’d gotten messages from Krimakov back in the early years, telling him he would never forget, never. Telling him he would find his wife and daughter—yes, he knew all about them and he would find them, no matter how well Thomas had hidden them. And then it would be judgment day.
Thomas had been terrified. And he’d done something unconscionable. He escorted a very pretty young woman, one of the assistants in his office, to an Italian embassy function, then to a Smithsonian exhibit. The third time he was with her, he was simply walking her to her car from the office because the skies had suddenly opened up and rain was pouring down and he had a big umbrella.
A man had jumped out of an alley and shot her between the eyes, not more than six feet away. Thomas hadn’t caught him. He knew it was Krimakov even before he’d received that letter written in Vasili’s stark, elegant hand: “Your mistress is dead. Enjoy yourself. When I discover your wife and child, they will be next.”
That had been seventeen years before.
Thomas had considered seeing Allison that weekend. He had canceled, and she’d known why, of course. He sat back in his chair, pillowing his head on his arms. He read the e-mail from Adam. Consider Krimakov.
But Krimakov was finally dead. The irony of it didn’t escape him. Krimakov was gone, out of his life, forever. It was all over. He could have finally been with Allison. But it was too late, too late. But now someone was terrorizing Becca. He didn’t understand what was going on. He wished he could learn about Dick McCallum, but as of yet, no one had seen anything out of the ordinary. No big deposits, no new accounts, no big expenditures on his credit cards, no strangers reported near him, nothing suspicious or unexpected in his apartment. Simply nothing.
Thomas remembered telling Adam how there were only two other people—besides Adam—who knew the real story. His wife and Buck Savich, both dead now. Buck had died of a heart attack some six years before. But there was Buck’s son, and he was very much alive, and Thomas realized now that he needed him, needed him very much.
The man knew all about monsters. He knew how to find them.
Georgetown
Washington, D.C.
Dillon Savich, head of the Criminal Apprehension Unit of the FBI, booted up his laptop MAX and saw there was an e-mail from someone he didn’t know. He shifted his six-month-old son, Sean, to his other shoulder and punched up the message.
Sean burped. “Good one,” Savich said, and rubbed his son’s back in slow circles. He heard him begin to suck his fingers, felt his small body relax into his shoulder. He read:
Your father was an excellent friend and a fine man. I trusted him implicitly. He believed you would change the course of criminal investigations. He was very proud of you. I desperately need your help. Thomas Matlock.
Sean reared back suddenly and patted his father’s whiskered cheek with his wet fingers. Savich stroked his son’s small fingers and dried them on his cotton shirt. “We’ve got a neat mystery here, Sean. Who is Thomas Matlock? How did he know my father? He was an excellent friend? I don’t remember ever hearing my father mention his name.
“MAX, let me get you started on this. Find out about this man for me.” He punched in a series of keys, then sat back, Sean bouncing from foot to foot on his stomach, watching MAX do his thing.
Savich reached up and flicked the drool off Sean’s chin. “You’re teething, champ. It’s not going to be a pretty sight for the next several months, so that book says. You don