James Patterson - Kill Me If You Can

“Track him,” Benzetti said.

Rice followed the action from camera to camera as the kid made his way to the Lexington Avenue exit. The final camera caught the drama outside as three men haggled over a cab and the kid bummed a ride with the winner.

Rice froze the frame. “The hack number is six J four two,” he said, writing it down. “I’ll call the TLC and hunt down the driver.”

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up,” Benzetti said. “It’ll probably be some towelhead who won’t remember anything because he was too busy gouging people that night.”

Rice hit play, and the cab, the kid, and the leather bag with the diamonds were gone.

“He wasn’t carrying any luggage,” Rice said. “So he’s either a regular commuter or he works in one of the shops here at Grand Central. I’ll pull a screen shot of his face. We can find this guy.”

“And when we do, I will personally put a bullet through his head and bring the diamonds back to Chukov,” Benzetti said.

“Y’know,” Rice said, grinning, “there really ought to be a finder’s fee for something like that.”

“There will be,” Benzetti said. “A fistful of diamonds.”

“Two fistfuls,” Rice said.

A close-up of the young man filled the thirty-inch screen, and Rice froze the image. “And if the Russians notice that any stones are missing,” Rice said, “we can just blame it on Pretty Boy.”

Benzetti nodded. “LOL, baby. L.O. Fucking L.”

NATHANIEL PRINCE SAT on his bed, his eyes fixed on the cordless phone beside him.

“You can’t make it ring by staring at it,” Natalia said.

“Chukov should have called hours ago,” Prince said.

“Then call him.”

“It’s not my job to follow that incompetent prick around with a broom and a dustpan,” Prince said. “Chukov is the underling. He’s the one who should be calling me.”

Natalia looked at her watch. “It’s getting late. Pretty soon he’ll be too drunk to dial.”

Prince couldn’t argue with the logic. He picked up the phone and pushed a single button. Chukov didn’t answer until the fourth ring.

“Nathaniel, I was just going to call you,” Chukov said. “I have good news. We zeroed in on the guy who has our diamonds.”

“It’s about time,” Prince said.

“I e-mailed you his picture.”

“His picture? I want his head delivered to my front door with his balls stuffed in his mouth,” Prince screamed. “Who is he?”

“He’s just some asshole kid who was at the right place at the right time. Zelvas stashed the diamonds in a locker at Grand Central. This guy found them and took off.”

“You told me the diamonds were in Zelvas’s safe,” Prince said. “Why did he move them to a locker in a train station?”

Because Natalia knew the combination, and Zelvas didn’t trust a whore who would bed down with her own father, Chukov thought.

“I don’t know, Nathaniel,” he said.

“What do we know about the guy who has the diamonds? What’s his name?”

“We don’t know his name yet,” Chukov said, “but he probably either works at Grand Central or is a regular commuter. Somebody has to know who he is. We definitely will find him.”

“Who’s we?  ”

“Me, Rice, Benzetti, and the Ghost,” Chukov said.

“Not enough,” Prince said. “I want more people on it.”

“I have a dozen of my men…”

Prince cut Chukov off before he could finish. “I don’t want foot soldiers. I want a professional. A hunter. A killer.”

“The Ghost is a professional…”

“He’s one man,” Prince said. “The Syndicate is going to blame me for the missing diamonds. I don’t care how good this Ghost guy is. He can’t be everywhere. I need insurance, backup. Somebody smart. Somebody we’ve worked with before. What about the German?”

“Krall?”

“That’s the one.”

“I don’t know,” Chukov said. “These killers for hire are like prima donnas. They don’t like to be in competition with someone else. They want an exclusive contract.”

“I don’t care what they want,” Prince said. “They’re mercenaries. I pay, I make the rules. I want you to find the bastard who took my diamonds, and I want his fingers chopped off, one by one. And if Krall doesn’t want to do it, find somebody who will.”

Prince hung up the phone and went to his computer. He printed out the picture of the man who had stolen his millions. He showed it to Natalia. “You know this muzhik?  ” he asked.

She studied the picture. “I’d definitely remember him if I saw him. He’s cute,” she said, toying with Prince.

“He won’t be so cute when I’m finished with him.”

“Don’t be jealous,” she said. “I think you’re cuter.” She dropped the picture to the floor and kissed him lightly on the mouth, letting her lips linger.

He kissed her in return. Not so lightly.

She unbuttoned his shirt, slowly, button by button.

He unbuttoned her black silk blouse the same way. Then he cupped her breasts.

It was a ritual they had performed many times before. Undressing one another slowly, tantalizing and teasing each other. But this time Nathaniel couldn’t wait.

He pulled down her slacks, then her panties and got behind Natalia as she leaned forward over his heavy oak desk. He dropped his trousers, planted his hands on her ass, angled her into position, and entered her.

It had been twenty years since the taxi mowed down his wife and son and left his little girl for dead. They had forged a bond since that tragedy. And as Natalia grew into a beautiful girl, the bond became a physical and emotional union, a fierce, unstoppable love that had erupted the summer she was seventeen. For the next decade their love had flourished without guilt, without regret, and without shame. If it was forbidden and wrong, then so be it. It was their lives, their choice to make.

It was a give-and-take relationship, but tonight Nathaniel Prince needed to take more than he could give. His body was racing to climax and he couldn’t wait for Natalia. He came violently, repeatedly, panting, exhaling her name like a prayer.

She called out to him in Russian — just as she had called out to him every day and every night as he sat by her in the hospital, watching her fight for her life.

“Papa, Papa.”

MARTA KRALL WAS as beautiful as she was intelligent, as intelligent as she was deadly. She was nearly six feet tall, with white-blond hair, a former model who could make a man’s heart beat faster just by walking into a room. But for the right amount of money she could make a man’s heart stop. Permanently.

Chukov had tracked Krall down in Los Angeles. Eight hours later, she entered his apartment, wearing Marc Jacobs pleated black leather jodhpurs and a Derek Lam dark gray cashmere cowl-neck sweater. Her hair was cropped close to her face, framing perfect features and flawless skin that most men and many women longed to touch.

She sat down and stared at Chukov.

An ice sculpture, he thought. Cold to the very core. The perfect killer.

“I read in the New York Times that Walter Zelvas was found dead in the Grand Central fiasco,” she said.

“Yes,” Chukov said. “He decided to take early retirement.”

“You should have called me,” she said. “Then his retirement party might not have been front-page news.”

“It was a rush job. He was planning to leave town.”

“More likely he was planning to leave the hemisphere,” Krall said. “Why was he running?”

“He was stealing from the Syndicate, and we found out about it.”