James Patterson: 10th Anniversary

Joe turned onto his side and kissed me. I melted against him.

“I love you so much,” I said. “I think I loved you even before I met you.”

He laughed, but I saw that there were tears in his eyes.

LOOKING INTO JOE’S EYES, I remembered the first time his baby blues locked on mine. We were working a case together. I was the lowest-ranking person there, and he was a top-of-the-heap Federal guy: Deputy Director of Homeland Security.

I liked his looks — his thick brown hair and solid build — and not only was he smart but he had an easy, confident manner, too.

He passed me his business card and touched my fingers, and we did a double take as electricity arced between us. It didn’t take long for us to get involved, but our sizzling new connection had been disrupted repeatedly and for months by missed planes and crossed schedules.

Joe lived in Washington, DC and I lived in the City by the Bay, and both of us had taken recent blows to the heart.

He’d been recovering from a savage divorce, and I was still suffering from the loss of someone close who had been shot and killed on the job.

Neither of us was prepared for the frustrating up-and-down year of long-distance dating that was later complicated even more by an insane — and unconsummated — crush between Conklin and me.

Through all of it, Joe had been a rock, and I’d hung in like I was clinging to a cliff by my fingernails. I knew what was good for me. And I loved Joe. But I couldn’t give myself over to the permanence of the relationship.

Finally Joe got tired of it. He called me out on my ambivalence. Then he quit his job and moved to San Francisco. Somehow, while negotiating the zigs and zags, we’d found ourselves in each other.

“I just love you so much,” I said to Joe. I kissed the corners of his eyes. He put his hand on my cheek, and I kissed his palm.

He said, “I love you almost too much, Linds. I can’t stand it when you’re not here and I’m lying in the dark, thinking about bullets coming at you. It’s terrible to have thoughts like that.”

“I’m very careful,” I said. “So don’t think about bullets.”

I bent to kiss him, my hair making a curtain around our faces. That kiss went deep and it stirred me up. Stirred Joe up, too.

We smiled as we looked into each other’s eyes. There were no walls between us anymore.

I said, “I sure would like to make a baby with you, Joe.”

I’d said it before. In fact, I’d said it every month for a while now. But right this minute, it was more than a good idea. It was an overwhelming desire to express my love for my husband in a complete and permanent way.

“You think I can make a baby on demand, Blondie?” Joe said, unbuttoning my pajama top. “You think a guy in his late forties can ‘just do it’? Hmmm?” He unknotted the tie on my drawstring pants and pulled the string as I unsnapped his drawers.

“Because, I think you could be taking me for granted. Maybe even taking advantage of me.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess I am.”

Joe’s hands on my breasts made my skin hot and my blood burn. I shrugged out of my flannels and lowered myself onto him.

“Go ahead,” I sighed. “Try and stop me.”

IT WAS EARLY DECEMBER, about 10 p.m. on a damned cold night in Pacific Heights. Conklin and I were in an SFPD SUV, miked up, wearing our Kevlar and ready to go.

Six unmarked cars were parked here and there along the intersecting roadways of Broadway and Buchanan. Civilian vehicles provided cover for those of us on the ground.

Above and around us, snipers hid on the rooftops surrounding the eight-story Art Deco apartment building with its white-granite facade.

I’d been staring at that building for so long that I had memorized the brass-etched door, the ornate motifs and appointments, and the topiary boxwood and hedges between the side of the building and the street. I knew every line in the face of the liveried doorman, who was, in fact, Major Case lieutenant Michael Hampton.

There was a NO PARKING ANYTIME, NO LOADING zone in front of the building, and we could see every pedestrian walking past the door or going into the building.

If Major Case’s confidential informant was telling the truth, all of our planning and manpower would culminate in the takedown of a legendary bad guy.

If the CI was wrong, if someone blew the whistle and called the game, there was no telling when, or if, we’d ever get this opportunity again.

I stretched out one leg, then the other, to get the kinks out. Conklin popped his knuckles. My breath fogged out in front of my face. I would have given up half my pension for a cup of coffee, the other half for a chocolate bar.

At half past eleven, just when I thought I’d never be able to walk again, a long Cadillac limo pulled up in front of the apartment building. Adrenaline fired through my bloodstream, chasing out the cramps and the lethargy.

The “doorman” left his post and opened the door for the passengers. They had come from the opera and were dressed accordingly.

Nunzio Rinaldi, the third-generation capo of an infamous mob family, stepped out of the limo, wearing a smart black suit and a silver tie. He offered a hand to his wife, Rita, who had platinum-white hair you could have seen in a blackout. There was a high shine on the limo, and Rita Rinaldi’s jewels sparkled in the night.

As the Rinaldis stepped away from the car and moved toward the lavish vestibule of their apartment building, a slight man in a dun-colored hooded raincoat, carrying a shopping bag and walking a small Jack Russell terrier, rounded the corner.

I saw him only out of the corner of my eye — he was one pedestrian out of many, and there were also cars speeding across my sight line to the doorman. But suddenly the little dog was running free and the man had dropped the shopping bag and pulled a gun from inside his coat.

It happened so fast, I doubted my eyes. Then I saw streetlight glint on the gun barrel.

The gun was pointed at the Rinaldis.

I inhaled and yelled, “GUN!” into my mic, blowing out eardrums all along Broadway.

AS I YELLED, Lieutenant Hampton lunged for the gunman. Bringing down his arm, he yanked and twisted the would-be shooter around and fell on top of him.

Three bullets were discharged. Pedestrians screamed, but almost before the echoes died, it was all over. The shooter was disarmed and down.

Conklin and I charged across the street and were there before the bracelets snapped shut. I was panting, standing over the hooded gunman as Hampton leaned down and said, “Gotcha, you bastard. Thanks for making my day.”

A few feet away, Rita Rinaldi pressed her bejeweled hands to her cheeks and wailed. She had to be thinking that the men in black had come for her husband.

Nunzio Rinaldi put his arms around his wife and said to Conklin, “What the hell is this? Who is that man?”

Conklin said, “Sorry for the commotion, Mr. Rinaldi, but we had to save your life. We had no choice.”

But I had questions, and maybe I’d get some answers, too.

I ripped off the gunman’s hood, grabbed a thin tuft of silver-brown hair, and lifted his head clear off the pavement.

He looked at me, his gray eyes glinting with amusement, a smile on his lips.

“What’s your name?” I said, although I was sure I already knew. The face matched the fuzzy picture of the man sitting in an SUV with a Candace Martin look-alike.

He had to be Gregor Guzman. Had to be.

I’d read up on Guzman and learned that he was born in Cuba in 1950 to a Russian father and Cuban mother. He’d left home in a stolen fishing boat in the late ’60s, and after landing in Miami, he’d made himself useful to organized guys in the drug trade. Later on, he carved out a career for himself as an independent assassin for hire on three continents.