James Patterson - Kill Me If You Can

I set the bag of diamonds on the table.

De Smet took it, then passed his much larger duffel to me.

I opened it and looked inside. It was filled with purple five-hundred-euro banknotes.

“Would you like to count it?” de Smet asked.

“Yes,” I said, and stood up. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. That should give you time to inspect the stones. I won’t be far.”

The men’s lavatory was at the opposite end of the dining room but still easy to see from where de Smet was sitting. He didn’t plan on letting me out of his sight. I took the bag into the lav and locked myself in a stall.

I had no plans to count the money. Now that de Smet had the diamonds in his hands, I wouldn’t have time. I set the duffel bag on the floor and climbed over the divider into the empty stall next to it. I stepped onto the toilet lid and crouched down.

Twenty seconds later, through the crack between the stall door and the wall, I saw de Smet’s two heavies walk in.

They looked at the two stalls, ignored the one that appeared empty, and leveled their guns at the one with the locked door and the duffel bag on the floor.

They pumped half a dozen suppressed rounds right where they expected me to be sitting counting the money.

One of them kicked open the stall door. I bet he was real surprised to find it empty. But I never got to see his face.

I stood up on the toilet lid in the adjacent stall and fired a bullet straight down into his skull. Then I shot his partner.

I jumped down and retrieved the duffel bag, which was sticky with blood. I stepped over the bodies and walked to the bathroom door. I opened it a crack. I could see de Smet sitting at his table, waiting for his men to bring back his seven million.

I pulled out my cell and quickly sent a text. I had a partner — and we had a plan.

Then I bolted through the bathroom door and ran for the deck.

De Smet saw me. He jumped up and followed in a big hurry.

Most people were in the dining room, but there were a few couples strolling along the deck, oohing and aahing at the illuminated bridges and the brightly lit houses along the canal.

I crashed into them, knocking down one poor guy. De Smet was right behind me, the bag of diamonds in one hand, a gun in the other.

He began firing on the run, not even bothering to aim.

Glass shattered and wood splintered. My fellow passengers screamed and ducked for cover.

I raced down the deck like a broken-field runner dodging tacklers, only I was avoiding bullets.

De Smet was right behind me. “You’re way out of your league, old man,” he yelled. “Give me the bag.”

“And then what? Are you going to throw me over the side?” I said as I climbed onto the rail on the port side of the boat. “Why don’t I save you the trouble?”

And I jumped overboard.

I landed on a pile of rafts that a friend of mine named Kino had tied together to break my fall. I had just texted him from the bathroom. He was my partner for this getaway.

“Well, look who dropped in,” he said as he gunned the engine and a sleek Stingray Cuddy/Cruiser barreled down the canal.

Within seconds, the lights of the cruise ship and the outraged screams and wild gunshots coming from de Smet faded into the distance.

“How’d it go?” Kino yelled over the roar of the three-hundred-horsepower dual prop.

“I got paid; he got what he paid for,” I said. “Seems incredibly fair to me.”

“Sounds like a perfect evening,” Kino said

“It was, but then it got wet. Very wet,” I said.

Kino shrugged. “Shit happens.”

“Yeah, it does,” I said.

I reminded myself not to explain it quite that way to Katherine when — that was, if —I ever saw her again.

WHAT CAN I say about Kino? My buddy is an ex-Marine who left the service with a chest full of medals, got engaged to the daughter of a millionaire real-estate developer in Hong Kong, and could have spent the rest of his life in Fat City. But he missed getting shot at.

So Kino went back into combat, and over the next eight years got wounded five times, each one for a different foreign government.

I’ve never met anyone happier about his work.

He’s five foot four and a hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle — though he swears that at least five pounds of it is shrapnel.

“You won’t have to bury me when I die,” he always says. “Just take me to a salvage yard.”

He’s worked in dozens of hot spots around the world but decided to live in Holland because “it’s the most tolerant damn country on the whole damn planet.”

As soon as the cruise ship was out of sight, he slowed the Stingray down to a safe, respectable canal speed.

There was a compact little sleeping cabin below the deck, where I shucked my clothes, peeled off my old-man face, and washed up. My Red Oxx Sky Train bag with my clothes was waiting for me, and I put on jeans, a clean shirt, sneakers, and a Windbreaker.

I went back up on deck. Kino had pulled into a dock and was tying the boat down.

“Abandon ship,” he said.

I grabbed my Red Oxx and the duffel bag, and we walked to his car.

“Where to?” he asked.

“There’s a bank on Vijzelstraat. I have a deposit to make.”

“It’s almost nine p.m. Good time to avoid the crowd,” he said, laughing, as we headed out. “So how’s your old man?”

“I spoke to him the other day,” I said. “He said something about wanting grandkids.”

“Did you explain that’s not something you can do on your own?”

He made small talk as we drove, never asking me what went down on the cruise boat or what was in my duffel bag. It’s something you learn in the corps. Respect the other guy’s personal boundaries.

The bank was next door to an Indonesian restaurant on a wide, busy street. Kino parked directly in front. “I’ll wait here till you’re inside,” he said.

“You don’t need to do that,” I said. I thanked him for his help, unzipped the duffel, and pulled out a stack of bills.

He waved me off. “What do I look like, a mercenary?”

“I came into some serious money,” I said. “I want to spread it around.”

“Put it in a college fund for those grandkids,” he said.

“Thanks.” I opened the car door and got out.

“Semper fi, bro,” he said.

“Right back at ya,” I said.

The lobby of the bank was well lit, and I walked up to the double glass doors and rang the after-hours bell.

A young man in khakis and an open-collar shirt unlocked the door.

“I’m Matthew Bannon,” I said.

“We’ve been expecting you, Mr. Bannon,” he said. “I’m Jan Schoningh. Come on in.”

The bank was twenty-first-century techno architecture — mostly steel and glass — and completely devoid of old-world charm. But they still adhered to that old-world banking tradition that states, “We’re always open late for a guy who shows up with a shitload of cash.”

I expected Schoningh to escort me to a private office where I’d meet some venerable old guy in an expensive suit, but I guess these days it’s the young bankers who get to stay late and service the late-night clientele.

There was a cashier waiting to count the money.

“This is Katje,” Schoningh said.

Katje was blond with a knockout smile and a no-nonsense approach to handling seven million bucks.

She dumped the money on a table, unbanded the packets, and ran the bills through a machine.

Then she ran them through a second time.

The total came to $7,024,362.18. The exchange rate had shifted a few tenths of a point in my favor.

I guess you’d say I was rich. Mr. Schoningh did not seem overly impressed, though. “Do you want to deposit the entire amount?” he asked.