Kill Me if You Can - James Patterson [46]
“Matthew, you know I love you,” she said. “But love is not blind or stupid, and that whole cock-and-bull story about finding diamonds in a train station is ridiculous. I don’t care how you can afford to pay for this vacation, but I’d feel a whole lot better if you finally decided to tell me the truth.”
What the hell? I thought. I dropped the whole fistful of diamonds on the bed.
“Behold the sparkling truth,” I said.
Katherine shrieked. “Oh, my God!”
Then I opened the medical bag wide and held it so she could get a good look at the other thirty or forty fistfuls.
This time she jumped off the bed and the oh, my Gods came in a flurry. Then she sat back down. “Are they real?”
“Very.”
“My God, Matthew, they must be worth—I don’t know—millions.”
“So I’m told.”
“Are they yours?” she asked.
“They are now. In fact, they’re ours. This is the key to a whole new life.”
I gave her the watered-down version of how I found them in Grand Central. Bomb goes off. I stumble on Zelvas. He dies. I take the diamonds.
“What are you going to do with them?” she asked.
“Sell them. Depending on what I can negotiate, I figure I can get seven to ten million.”
She let loose another string of about half a dozen Oh, my Gods.
“But what about that man who got killed at Grand Central?” she said. “Maybe he’s got a wife, kids. I don’t even know what I’m saying, Matthew…”
“Trust me,” I said, “Walter Zelvas had nobody. No wife, no kids, nobody.”
I inhaled. It was time to tell Katherine the whole truth about myself and hope she didn’t walk out when she heard it.
“Katherine,” I said, “there’s one more little fact about me you really should know. That man Walter Zelvas who had the bag of diamonds.…I’m the one who —”
Bam! A loud cracking sound and the door to our hotel room flew open. And there she was—Marta Krall standing in our doorway with a large-bore gun in her hand.
Pointed at me, then at Katherine, then back at me.
“Where do I start?” she said.
Chapter 56
“Mr. Bannon, I presume,” she continued.
Katherine had gasped at the sight of the gun—who wouldn’t?—but now she bombarded me with questions. “Who is this woman? How does she know your name? What does she want? Matthew?”
Krall answered the important question for me.
“Some of what I want is right there,” she said, pointing the gun at the handful of diamonds on the bed. “And I’ll bet the rest is in that black bag—isn’t it, Ms. Sanborne?”
A shiver ran through Katherine’s body at the sound of her name. She whispered in my ear. “Give her the diamonds. Okay, Matthew?”
Krall heard every word. “Spoken like a woman who doesn’t want to die young. I can respect that.”
If Marta Krall had known I was the Ghost, she’d have shot me the second she entered the room. She already had what she came for—Chukov’s diamonds. But Krall wasn’t just a killer, she was a sadistic killer. Thinking I was Matthew Bannon, art student, she figured she could take her time. She wasn’t satisfied just to recover the diamonds. I had made her work hard to find them. She wanted to play with me now.
“So, tell me, Mr. Bannon,” Krall said, “are you sleeping with all your professors or just the pretty ones?” Then she went after Katherine. “I hope he was good in bed, because your affair is going to cost you your life.”
The talking was a big mistake. Those extra few seconds were what I needed. I pushed Katherine to the floor and flung the medical bag at Marta.
She got off a shot, but the bullet went inches wide and suddenly diamonds were raining all over the room. The distraction gave me a second and I barreled into Krall. Her gun fired again, the bullet smashing into the LCD TV, glass shattering in a spectacular fashion. I threw my body at Marta Krall, and her gun went flying.
I rolled, but she dived on top of me and began punching my face. She could really punch, too. I head-butted my way past a hail of fists and sharp elbows and rammed my skull into her perfect nose. She grunted like a man, toppled backward, and, still