Kill Me if You Can - James Patterson [62]
“Only that I’m happy to be back in the good old U.S. of A.,” I said.
He nodded like he’d heard it before. “Welcome home,” he mumbled.
And that was it. Maybe in these times of young rock stars and baby-faced Hollywood celebrities, nobody wonders why a thirty-year-old in jeans and sneakers flies in from Europe on his own charter jet. Or maybe it was the end of a long day and nobody gave a shit.
Captain Fennessy had ordered a town car for me, and the driver took the Jersey Turnpike to the Lincoln Tunnel, then went down Ninth Avenue to Bleecker.
I got out three blocks from my apartment and walked south toward Perry. I checked the cars and the windows along Bleecker. Nobody was staked out waiting for me to come home.
I unlocked the front door and climbed the stairs to my apartment.
It was exactly as I’d left it.
I dropped my bag and stashed what was left of the eighty thousand euros I had taken from the bank in Amsterdam. Then I dug Marta Krall’s Glock out of my bag. I had been ready to ditch it, but there had been no security at Amsterdam and even less at Teterboro. It was a nifty gun. A definite keeper.
And then I heard the scratching at the door. It was followed by a long-drawn-out meow. My cat was home. I opened the door a crack and Hopper strolled in, looking well fed.
“What’s new, pussycat?” I said.
I pushed the door shut, but it wouldn’t close. I swung it open wide to see what was holding it back.
And there they were. Three men, armed to the teeth.
“Welcome back,” one of them said.
Then they shoved their way into my apartment and shut the door.
Chapter 74
“BOY, AM I glad to see you guys,” I said.
Zach Stevens, Ty Warren, and Adam Benjamin are Marines Corps—to the core. We met in boot camp, trained together, and fought side by side against ruthless fanatics in the mountains of Afghanistan and the streets of Iraq. Once I decided to become the Ghost, I knew I couldn’t do it on my own. And there was nobody I trusted more than these three. They were my best friends in the world.
So I had hired them to be my backup and my bodyguards, and they’ve been living in apartment 1 ever since. They are loyal, lethal, and, while you’d never know it to look at them, kind of lovable.
We exchanged bro hugs all around.
“You’re lucky you didn’t get shot sneaking in here,” Adam said. “Why didn’t you tell us you were coming back?”
“I was going to knock on your door at a more civilized hour. How did you guys know I was home?”
“You tripped the silent alarm,” Zach said.
“No I didn’t,” I said. “I totally bypassed—”
“Sorry, boss,” Zach said. “I’m talking about the new silent alarm. I installed it on the third step below the fifth-floor landing.”
“You had a nasty-ass visitor the other day,” Ty said. “We figured she’d be coming back.”
“What did she look like?” I said.
Zach took a picture out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was a black-and-white screen grab from the closed-circuit camera at the front door.
“Her name is Marta Krall,” I said.
“She tried to pass herself off as one of your art teachers,” Zach said.
“Well, I guess I taught her a few things,” I said. “And we don’t have to worry about her ever coming back. She flunked the final.”
None of them even blinked; kill-or-be-killed was in our DNA.
“We’ve been at threat-level red since she showed up,” Ty said. “You think we should ease it back to orange?”
“If Marta Krall was the only one who wanted me dead, I wouldn’t even bother locking the front door,” I said. “But I’ve made a lot of new enemies recently.”
“Don’t worry about it, Captain,” Adam said. “Nobody is getting in here.”
“What are we looking for?” Zach asked.
I told them the whole story. Zelvas, Chukov, the diamonds, Paris, Venice, Amsterdam, Marta, and of course, Katherine.
“Where’s Katherine now?” Adam asked.
“New York,” I said. “At least I think she flew back to New York after she left me in Venice. I phoned her, texted her, but no response. She probably thinks I just want her back, so she’s avoiding me.”
“Knowing the Russian mob,” Ty said, “if they can