Kill Me if You Can - James Patterson [45]
He nodded. “What else?”
“I learned how to survive,” I said. “And that means I had to learn how to kill. I did it for my country, but I doubt it’s a skill I can put on my résumé when I’m looking for something to help me pay for school in New York.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
We were sitting at a corner table in a little bar tucked away in the back room of the North Fork Diner in Hotchkiss, Colorado. My father took a long tug on his beer and set the bottle down.
“I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you this, Matt.”
I could feel my chest tighten. Tell me what? I didn’t like the look on his face.
“For as long as you can remember, you’ve seen me travel around the world from one corporate headquarters to another as a security consultant. Well, that’s not exactly true,” he said. “I do fly all over the world, but I’m not a consultant. I kill people, Matthew. Bad people. But I kill them all the same.”
I was in shock. Complete. There was a buzzing sound suddenly in both my ears. My chest felt hot on the inside.
“You murder people?” I said. “For money?”
“I eliminate scum—the dregs of our world. Most of them are killers themselves. Some just order the murders of others. It doesn’t make it any more righteous that I target only folks who deserve to die. But you know what? I sleep okay at night. I don’t have a problem with it. Do you, Matthew?”
I did, actually. “And you think, what? That that’s what I should be doing? Killing bad people?”
“Not should be doing,” he said. “Could be doing. It’s just an option you have. I saw your service record. I held your shooting medals. You’re one of the best-trained Marines to come out of Parris Island.”
“Dad, fighting for this country is a lot different from being an assassin for hire.”
“Is it?” he said. “Badasses are badasses, aren’t they? I think so. Seems perfectly logical to me.”
“I don’t know about your logic there, Dad.”
But I’m pretty sure the seed was planted inside that barroom in Colorado.
A few months after I talked to my father, I took my first job, and I’ve been following in his footsteps ever since. I think of myself as the ghost of my father. That’s how I got my name.
I remember the last question I asked my dad the night he told me about his secret life. “Does Mom know?”
He nodded. “I didn’t tell her at first, but I knew I had to sooner or later. You can’t live a lie with someone you love. She could have walked out on me. She could have told me to give it up. But your mother stuck with me and never brought it up again. Rarely brought it up again, I should say. Occasionally she does. When she wants something she considers worthwhile—like tuition if you decide to go to art school.”
And now it was my turn. It was time to share my secret with Katherine.
I went to the closet and opened the room safe. I got out the doctor bag filled with diamonds. I sat down on the bed next to her.
“Katherine,” I said, “I’ve got something to tell you.”
Chapter 55
KATHERINE LOOKED AT the bag. “Dr. Matthew’s magic medical bag,” she said. “Is there another surprise in there?”
“Kind of.”
“Well, you gave me brie and baguettes when we went to France. What’s in there now that we’re in Italy? Chianti and cannolis?”
“No. Remember I told you I found a bag full of diamonds at the train station?”
“How could I forget?” she said. “The first thing I thought when we set foot in this incredible room was, I hope you brought enough diamonds.”
“But you don’t think the diamonds really exist,” I said.
She rolled her eyes, put her hand to her chin, and shook her head slowly from side to side. I think it’s something she learned in professor school. It’s a way of letting a student know he is completely wrong without broadcasting it to the entire classroom.
I dipped my hand into the bag. The diamonds were loose now. I had taken them out of my socks so I could show them to Katherine in all their dramatic glory. I scooped