James Patterson - Thriller - Stories to Keep You Up All Night

The officer glanced at Jeffrey again. "Do you have her birth certificate?"

She furrowed her brow with consternation. "I didn't think you'd need it."

He closed the passports and gestured toward the building. "I'm sorry, ma'am. Park over there and go inside where they'll verify your identification." Then he nodded at Jeffrey, who stood stock-still, feet braced shoulder width apart, hands still inside his big front pocket. "Do you know him?"

Now. Now was the time. "He's got a gun."

Before the officer could react, Jeffrey slowly extracted his hand from the sweatshirt and pointed the gun at her head.

"Get down! Get down!" the officer shouted, squatting beside the car's engine block, the only place safe from gunfire.

Jeffrey chose death. The deafening noise of shots rang out. Bullets entered the rear glass. One grazed her arm as she fell sideways. Another exited inches from where her head had been an instant before. The pain seared through her as blood soaked her blazer and ran down her arm. Deidre began to scream.

Border guards acted immediately. They shouted for Jeffrey to drop his gun. He didn't. A guard shot and hit Jeffrey in the leg. He went down, and kept shooting. Bullets tattooed the back of the sedan. Idiot! You'll hit Deidre!

After an excruciatingly long few seconds, the customs officer in the booth drew his weapon, and two additional officers ran out from the building. "Drop your gun! Drop your gun!"

Karen looked into Jeffrey's eyes. Either of them could have changed things at that moment. But they didn't. She jammed the accelerator to the floorboard. The sedan lurched forward, broke through the wooden gate and raced onto American soil.

Jeffrey shot at Karen's car again. As she'd known they would, the guards returned fire.

Karen mashed the brake, jerking the sedan to a stop behind the solid walls of the U.S. Customs station. Applying pressure to her throbbing, bleeding arm, she managed to open the back door and unsnap Deidre's seat belt. She slid the hysterical child onto the pavement. Determined, Karen held Deidre close until the deafening gunfire stopped.

In the brief silence, Deidre's screams became sobs. Karen struggled to rise while holding the girl, despite the searing pain in her arm, and stumbled back to the kiosk. Jeffrey lay on the ground, blood running from his mouth, lifeless eyes staring straight at her. Her first thought was, Thank God.

Karen's anger flared, leaving no room for remorse. He'd chosen to die rather than let Karen take Deidre. He'd intended to get all three of them killed.

A few weeks later, Karen joined Brenda, who sat watching Dei-dre on the Land of the Dragons playground. The family resemblance was unmistakable. Both were clearly from Beverly London's gene pool. In Deidre, Karen saw some hint of Jeffrey, too. How could a wonderful child have emerged from two such damaged parents?

"She looks happy, doesn't she?" Brenda asked with a wistful tone. Deidre was in counseling and taking medication that the psychologist hoped would help her to work through the traumas she'd endured at her parents' hands.

To reassure her, Karen said, "Don't worry so much. She's young. With luck and love, she won't remember most of it."

A tear rolled down Brenda's cheek. Her lips quivered. "She won't have much to remember about her mother."

Karen closed her eyes against tears of her own. She had risked her life so that Deidre might thrive. Now, all she could do was hope. "It's up to you to keep Beverly alive for her."

Together, they watched Deidre climb the rope ladders and slide down the dragon's tail, laughing when she landed on her butt in the sand.

"Beverly was so smitten. And he loved her, too." Brenda stopped, bewildered. "What went wrong?"

Karen rubbed her sore arm to stop its pulsing. Like Jeffrey's effect on his child, Karen's wound would hurt for a long time and leave a permanent scar. She rejected sweetening the truth. To defeat Jeffrey forever, Brenda must do her part. "She knew he was dangerous before she married him. She ignored her instincts and deceived herself. The best thing you can do for Beverly now is to make sure Deidre doesn't repeat that pattern." And I'll be watching.

Numbered Account was Christopher Reich's first book. And not just his first work to be published, but the first Reich ever tried to write. He never took an English class in college. The drawers of his work desk did not contain drafts of earlier novels, short stories or aborted screenplays. Numbered Account was it for him. One chance to make it as a writer or return to the salt mines of the financial world-more mergers and acquisitions-more back to work. "The struggling writer, the starving artist.-.that's the other guy," Reich liked to say.

Numbered Account came from Reich's own wanderings of the snowy, cobblestone alleyways of Geneva, on his way to and from work at the Union Bank of Switzerland. There, he learned the sophisticated art of handling money for the richest people in the world. For Reich, the seeds of Numbered Account were planted on his first day of work. But it was six years later before he realized that some people are cut out for fourteen-hour days and he wasn't one of them. So Reich decided to write a novel and always knew that it was going to be a thriller. To his credit, Numbered Account went on to become a New York Times bestseller.

Assassins, the story for this collection, finds the hero of Numbered Account, Nick Neumann, back on Swiss soil with a new mission. This is the first time Reich has written about Nick since 1997. All thriller writers know that it's never wise to fall in love with any particular character. Who knows when they might turn a corner and walk right into a knife, or a gun, or a poison-tipped umbrella?

So Nick Neumann should tread carefully.

Nick Neumann sat stiffly in the corner booth, back pressed against the leather banquette, shoulders pinned in the finest Swiss tradition. He was tired and hungry, and he wished the dinner would come so he could get on with the job. He placed his hands on the tablecloth, willing himself not to adjust the cutlery or examine the stemware. The heavy sterling knives and forks and spoons were, he noted, perfectly placed. The glasses were made of Austrian crystal, and absent the slightest smudge. Whenever he wondered how he had survived so long, the answer always came back the same. Details.

Turning his head, he let his eyes wander the restaurant. At a few minutes past seven, the Kronenhalle was nearly full. It was a Friday, and the weather had been unseasonably cool for early October. He had always thought of the Kronenhalle as a cold-weather restaurant. The tightly placed booths, the bold lighting, the crisp tablecloths, the bustle of waiters across the hardwood floor, the chef guiding his gleaming wagon down the narrow aisles, and of course, the hearty cuisine. All of it conspired to create a cozy formality, a warm and convivial antidote to rain and snow and biting wind.

Expertly, he scanned the dining room for a familiar face. The men were ruddy, well fed and prosperous. The women were elegantly dressed, and, if not as beautiful as their Parisian or Roman counterparts, as immaculately coiffed. He recognized no one and admitted to relief. Anonymity was a cornerstone of his profession.

Neumann checked his watch. He had ordered eleven minutes ago and his appetizer had not yet been served. Not long by any measure, but he was more nervous than the assignment demanded, and anxious to see it to its completion.

Zurich.

Years ago, he had lived in this city. He had worked at a prominent bank. He had fallen in love. He had killed a man and put another in prison. His stay had been short-a few months, no more-but his memories of it had proven long-lived. It was those memories that made him restless and antsy. Not for the first time, he wondered if he should have turned the job down.