Lifeguard - James Patterson [93]
The second contained a deposit slip from the Royal Cayman Bank in my name for the sum of one million dollars.
A million dollars.
I sat down. I stared at the slip and checked the name one more time, just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Ned Kelly. A bank account made out to my name. All those beautiful zeros.
Jesus, I was rich.
I looked around, at the breathtaking view and the lavish room, at the basket of bananas and mangoes and grapes, at the expensive tiled floor, and it sort of hit me: I could afford this now. I wasn’t there to clean the pool. I wasn’t dreaming.
Why wasn’t I jumping for joy?
My mind drifted to being in my old Bonneville two years before, after triggering those alarms. I was about to make the biggest score of my life, right? I was dreaming of sipping orange martinis with Tess on some fancy yacht. A million dollars in the bank.
And now I had it. I had my million dollars. More. I had the palm trees and the cove. I could buy that yacht, or at least rent one. In a twisted, ironic way, everything had come true. I could do anything I wanted in life.
And I didn’t feel a thing.
I sat there at the desk, and that’s when my eye fixed on something else right in front of me.
Something I’d been staring at, more like staring through, next to the ripped-open envelopes. Hesitantly, I picked it up.
It was one of those old Matchbox toys, a replica of a car. Except this one wasn’t a car at all.
It was a little Dodge minivan.
Chapter 117
“YOU KNOW HOW HARD it is to find a real one of those down here?” Ellie’s voice came from behind me.
I spun around. She was standing there, nicely tanned, in a denim skirt and a pink tank top. She was sort of squinting into the sun that was setting behind me, her freckles almost bouncing off her cheeks. My heart flared, like an engine starting to rev.
“The last time I felt like this,” I said, “an hour later, my whole life fell apart.”
“Mine, too,” Ellie said.
“You didn’t come,” I said, pretending to be hurt.
“I said I was going to be out of the country,” Ellie said. “And here I am.” She took a step toward me.
“I had to ride two hours back to Palm Beach with Champ doing wheelies in a classic twenty-year-old Caddie. You know what torture that is? Worse than prison.”
She took another step. “Poor boy.”
I held out the little minivan in my palm. “Nice touch,” I said. “It, uh, just doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Oh, yes, it does, Ned,” Ellie said, her eyes liquid and wide. She cupped her hands over her heart. “It goes right here.”
“Jesus, Ellie.” I couldn’t hold back any longer. I reached out and put my arms around her. I hugged Ellie as tightly as I could. Her heart was beating like a little bird’s. I bent down and kissed her.
“This isn’t going to play very well with the Bureau,” I said when we came apart.
“Screw the Bureau,” Ellie said. “I quit.”
I kissed her again. I stroked her hair and pressed her head close to my chest. I wanted to tell her about Sol. What I’d seen at the house. His masterpieces. The missing Gachet. It was killing me. If there was anyone on this earth who deserved to know, it was Ellie.
But as Sol said, I was good at taking advice.
“So, what’re we going to do now?” I asked her. “Bank on my master’s degree?”
“Now? Now we’re going to take a walk on the beach, and I hope you’re gonna do something romantic, like ask me if I want to marry you.”
“Do you want to marry me, Ellie?”
“Not here. Out there. And then maybe we’ll talk a bit about how we’re gonna spend the rest of our lives. Straight talk, Ned. No games, not anymore.”
So we took a walk on the beach. And I asked her. And she said yes. And for the longest time we didn’t say another word. We just walked in the surf and watched the setting sun in paradise.
And the thought crept into my head that it might be pretty cool for a guy like me to be married to an ex-special agent of the FBI. . . .
Of course, I was thinking Ellie might be thinking the same thing, about Ned Kelly