Till Murder Do Us Part

by James Patterson

  Kathi stares at him, still trying to determine if this is all some kind of practical joke.

  “I just want an ordinary life,” he says. “And I really like you. I want you to be a part of that ordinary life.”

  Life with you, Kathi thinks, doesn’t sound like anything close to ordinary.

  Kathi smiles at him and shifts her position in bed so that she’s sitting right next to him, her face inches from his.

  “I’m not going to break up with you,” she says, leaning in to give him a kiss. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”

  She wraps her arms around him in a tight embrace.

  “Now that I’ve shared,” Steve says, the corners of his mouth curving into his usual ornery grin, “can we make love now?”

  She answers with a kiss.

  Chapter 6

  It’s New Year’s Eve, and Mr. Greenjeans is packed as the clock ticks toward midnight and the start of 1981. AC/DC plays over the speaker system, and all the customers have to shout to be heard. Steve is busy at the bar, passing beers and mixed drinks to the patrons. Kathi is running all over the room, trying to keep up. They are understaffed for such a busy night because so many employees wanted the night off to celebrate. But Kathi and Steve are making money hand over fist from all the tips.

  They don’t mind being here. They get to see each other.

  As Kathi winds through the crowd toward the bar, one of the customers—a handsome guy who’s been flirting with her all night—stops her and says, “How much for a kiss at midnight?”

  “Sorry,” she says, nodding her head toward Steve at the bar. “I’m already booked.”

  “That guy?” the customer says. “Oh, baby, you can do better than him.”

  She ignores the comment and glances at the bottle of Coors in the guy’s hand. It’s only half empty but she asks if he wants another.

  “If it means I get to see you back here in a minute, then absolutely.”

  At the bar, she puts in her drink orders for Steve to fill.

  “Some guy just asked me for a kiss at midnight,” she tells him, “but I said I already had plans to kiss someone.”

  She tells him this because she thinks he’ll be flattered. And, maybe, she wants him to know that other men find her attractive—let him know how lucky he is to be with her.

  But his expression turns tense and he wants to know which guy.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says, not wanting any trouble.

  He puts the bottle of Coors on her tray along with other drinks for different customers. She heads back into the crowd.

  When she hands the guy his Coors, he says, “Thanks, doll,” and puts an arm around her waist. Her impulse is to pull away, but she doesn’t want to seem rude—men who flirt often give the biggest tips.

  “If you ever decide to leave your bartender and get with a real man,” he says, moving his hand down to squeeze her butt, “let me know.”

  She pushes his hand away forcefully, glancing at Steve. She’s horrified to see that he’s staring at them. He almost looks as though he’s going to come barreling through the crowd, ready to fight the guy, so she heads toward the bar to intercept him.

  But instead of storming out from behind the bar, fists raised, Steve turns away and heads into the back room. Now Kathi feels even more mortified. Does he think she wanted that jerk to grab her ass?

  She follows him into the back room, but there’s no sign of Steve among the kegs and boxes of liquor. She spots the exit door ajar and peeks outside.

  Steve is pacing in the falling snow, obviously angry.

  “Are you okay?” Kathi says.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, clearly flustered.

  “For what?” she says.

  “For not killing that motherfucker who touched you!” he barks, pointing at the side of the building as if he can see the guy inside.

  Kathi flinches. Steve goes back to pacing, his breath coming out in visible frosty bursts.

  “It’s okay,” she says, although secretly, she was a little hurt when Steve ran off instead of defending her honor.

  “You see, Kathi,” he says, approaching her and putting his hands on her shoulders. Snowflakes stick to his hair. “There’s something else I haven’t told you.”

  “Tell me later,” she says. “We need to get back. It’s freezing out here.”

  “No,” he says. “If I don’t tell you now, I’m not sure I’ll have the courage to go through with it later.”

  She feels antsy about getting back inside. Frank isn’t going to be happy if he discovers that the two of them are outside chatting on the busiest night of the year.

  Screw it, she tells herself. Steve needs me right now. I’m going to listen.

  “I killed someone,” Steve says.

  “I know,” Kathi says. “You were a hit man.”

  “No, I mean I killed someone else. I went to prison for it.”

  “Prison?” she says, as shocked as she was the day he first told her about the CIA.

  “It was in a bar,” he says, going back to pacing. “I was defending a woman who was being harassed by some jerk like that guy in there. He took a swing at me, and my training just took over. It was automatic. I broke the guy’s neck. Just snapped it.”

  Kathi puts a hand over her mouth. She knows Steve killed people, but he’d never described what it was like before.

  “I went to prison for manslaughter,” he says. “That’s another reason I’m on the run. The CIA was pissed at me. I think they were worried that I would say something. And killing a civilian is a big no-no. So when I got out, I decided to go into hiding.”

  He stares at her, his eyes watery from the cold. Kathi begins shivering, and she tells herself that it’s from the cold, not from fear of Steve.

  “When I saw that guy touch you,” he says, “I wanted to go out there and say something. But I had to stop myself. I’m afraid of what I might do to him.”

  Kathi feels guilty for wishing Steve had come to her rescue. She doesn’t want to put him in that position. Besides, she’s a big girl—she can take care of herself.

  “If it happens again, I’ll go to prison till I’m a hundred,” he says. “Or the CIA might make sure I never see my next birthday.”

  Inside, the crowd starts to count down toward midnight—their voices loud and drunk.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come to your defense,” Steve says, his voice trembling.

  She wraps her arms around him. “You did the right thing,” she says. “I don’t want you to kill anyone. I don’t want you to go to prison. I want you here with me.”

  The crowd cheers as the clock strikes midnight. Out in the alley behind the bar, Steve holds Kathi in his arms and kisses her. They press their bodies together. As they kiss, Kathi realizes she’s never loved anyone the way she loves Steve Marcum.

  He’s her best friend.

  Her lover.

  Her soul mate.

  And in this moment, kissing him in the first seconds of 1981, she feels certain that it’s just a matter of time before he’s her husband.

  Chapter 7

  Spring 1981

  Kathi is riding the bus home from her afternoon shift. The bus is crowded and the air inside is hot, with a slight odor. It’s like being in a men’s locker room on wheels. She’s taking public transportation because her Impala finally crapped out. She didn’t really understand all the technical jargon that the mechanic was using, but Steve translated it for her: “The car is toast,” he said, smiling as he always did.

  She has enough money saved up to either repair it or buy another used car, but she can’t bring herself to dip into her savings for either. She and Steve plan to quit their jobs this summer and head somewhere new. They’ve been getting by on sharing his pickup, but he took the day off today and said he needed the truck. So she’s stuck on the cramped bus, trying not to get sick breathing in the clammy air.

  Lately, Steve has been paying for everything. Dinners. Dates. He even covered her
rent last month, saying that since he was at her place more than his, he might as well help out. She doesn’t know where the money’s coming from. He doesn’t make any more than she does. But whenever she asks him about it, he always tells her that he has a little money from his father’s estate.

  “How much?” she’ll ask.

  “Enough,” he’ll say.

  When she gets off the bus a few blocks from her apartment, the air outside feels refreshing. It’s been a warm day, but evening is approaching and the temperature is already dropping.

  She looks ahead to see if Steve’s pickup is parked in the street. It’s not there. In its usual place sits a red Porsche adorned with ribbons like a birthday gift.

  Wow, I wonder who that’s for, Kathi thinks.

  As she gets closer, Steve comes out of her apartment building and into the street, the biggest grin she’s ever seen on his face. He gestures toward the Porsche.

  “What do you think?” he says. “Do you like it?”

  Kathi’s mouth drops open. “Is that yours?” she asks.

  “No, silly. It’s yours.”

  Kathi gasps. She circles the car, her mouth still agape. It’s a beautiful machine. The sunlight glints off the perfectly polished paint.

  “Steve, is this some kind of joke?”

  “No,” he says, “and neither is this.”

  With that, he drops to one knee in the middle of the street and reaches into his back pocket. Kathi stares, stunned, as he opens a small box to reveal a diamond engagement ring. The diamond looks big enough to make her wonder which cost more: the car or the ring.

  “Kathi Spiars,” Steve says, “I’ve never met anyone like you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”

  Kathi can’t believe what’s happening. Not so much the proposal—she’d felt Steve would propose sooner or later. But the extravagance of the purchases has her taken aback. How can Steve afford this?

  She pushes those thoughts out of her mind. He was trying to surprise her, and he’s certainly done it.

  “Steven Marcum,” she says, “I’ve certainly never met anyone like you. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

  Steve lifts her into the air, and the two kiss.

  Kathi vows to talk to Steve about all this spending. In her mind, they’re saving toward a life together. She needs to get a sense of just how much money he has—and where it all came from—and she wants them to both be on the same page in terms of how it should be spent. They shouldn’t squander their money on high-price luxuries they don’t need.

  But for right now, she’s going to enjoy her moment with him—and enjoy the extravagance of it.

  “How should we celebrate?” Steve asks when they finally stop kissing.

  “I’ve got an idea,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Let’s take the car for a spin!”

  Chapter 8

  This place is dead tonight,” Steve says to Kathi over the telephone. “I’m bored to death.”

  “It’s only a couple more weeks,” she says into the receiver.

  She stands in the apartment kitchen, where the phone is mounted to the wall. The room is cool, and she’s ready to climb back under the covers. She was reading a book in bed when he called.

  They live together now, and most of their shifts are together, but tonight is a rare night when Steve is working without Kathi. The wedding date is set, and they’ve both given their notice to Frank that they’re leaving. But ever since they gave notice, Steve has been talking about ditching his final shifts. At first Kathi ignored it, but the more he complains, the more she realizes he’s serious. It surprises her a little—she’s never once considered cutting out early. She promised to finish her two weeks while Frank looked for a replacement, and she doesn’t want to break her word.

  “Just hang in there,” she tells him, twisting the phone cord out of habit. “It’s not as if you’re being tortured.”

  “Boredom is torture,” Steve moans dramatically. “Not being with you is torture.”

  Kathi laughs and tells him she loves him. After she returns the phone to its cradle, she climbs back into bed and picks up the Robert Ludlum novel she checked out of the library. Ever since Steve told her that he was in the CIA, she’s been interested in reading stories of espionage. She’s sure that Steve’s experiences were nothing like the fictional adventures of Jason Bourne. But Steve won’t—or can’t—talk about the things he did, so she’s been drawn to these types of fantasies instead.

  About an hour later, Kathi finds herself distracted by a noise down the hall. The toilet is running. She can hear water filling the tank. She gets out of bed, dropping the book on the bedspread, and heads to the bathroom. She jiggles the toilet’s handle and waits a few moments, hoping it will stop.

  It doesn’t.

  “Ugh,” she grunts, grabbing the lid to the toilet tank and hefting it off.

  She sets it on the floor as gently as she can and stands back up to peer into the tank. She gasps. Down in the bottom of the tank, submerged in water, are two stacks of what look like gold bars.

  “What on earth?” Kathi says aloud.

  She reaches into the cold water and lifts one of the metal bars. It’s not much bigger than a candy bar, but she can’t believe how heavy it is. She vaguely remembers reading somewhere that although gold is soft and malleable, it is also very dense.

  Very heavy.

  She examines the bar, finding no markings or engravings. But it must be gold—real gold; she’s sure of it. She can’t imagine it could be anything else. She looks into the tank and counts the bars. There are six in total, including the one in her hand.

  Wasn’t there something on the news the other night about how the value of gold is through the roof right now—an all-time high? Now that she’s thinking about it, Steve had paid close attention during that part of the program. Kathi hadn’t been particularly interested. Who cares about gold? She couldn’t afford any. But Steve had risen from his seat and turned up the volume.

  Heart racing, Kathi sets the gold bar back in the water and then lifts the lid and covers the tank. She dries off her arm and begins pacing through the house.

  What the hell is going on?

  Who the hell am I about to marry?

  Steve confessed about being in the CIA. He admitted to killing someone in a bar fight and spending time in prison. But he never said anything about a stash of gold bars.

  Somehow, this discovery has her rattled. Even though he told her about the CIA and prison, some part of her hasn’t fully believed him. This is the first tangible evidence of Steve’s secret life, something physical that he’s brought from that old life into this new one. At least she hopes it was from his past, not some new escapade he’s keeping a secret from her.

  As she paces through her bedroom, she stops and stares at the spy novel she’s been reading.

  Maybe Steve Marcum’s adventures were as exciting as Jason Bourne’s, she thinks.

  Just then, she hears keys at the front door.

  Steve strolls into the apartment with a big smile on his face. Kathi knows why: he’s closed early and ditched work. He has a pleased-with-himself, I-do-what-I-want look about him.

  But one glance at her face tells him that something is amiss. His grin vanishes.

  “What’s wrong, baby?” he says. “You’re not mad that I left early, are you?”

  Kathi doesn’t know what to say. Should she tell him she found his stash?

  She doesn’t want any secrets between them. If she doesn’t ask now, when will she ask? On the eve of their wedding?

  “When were you going to tell me?” she asks.

  “About what?”

  “What do you think?” Kathi says. “Are you keeping other secrets from me besides the gold bricks in the toilet?”

  Chapter 9

  Steve stares at her, and for just a moment—a time so brief that she’ll later tell herself her mind was playing tricks on her—he looks truly sinister. Ka
thi knows he’s a man who is (or at least was) capable of killing people.

  Then the corners of his mouth turn up and he bursts out laughing, a big boisterous chuckle that raises the tension in the room rather than dispelling it.

  “That’s some pretty good sleuthing,” he says. “You would have made a decent CIA operative yourself.” Then, under his breath but loud enough for her to hear, he mutters, “I knew I should have fixed that damn toilet.”

  “I’m serious, Steve. That is gold, isn’t it?”

  He nods and takes her hand. “Of course,” he says. “It’s the real thing. It’s from my parents’ estate. My inheritance.”

  “What the hell is it doing in the toilet?”

  “It’s the safest place in the apartment,” he says, shrugging as if the answer is obvious. “If the building burns down, the toilet will still be there, keeping the gold nice and cool. I’ll know right where it is.”

  Kathi stares at him, dumbfounded.

  “How do you think I bought your Porsche?” he says, and then gestures to the ring on her finger. “And that?”

  He has such a happy look on his face that she wants to burst out laughing. One of the things she loves most about being with Steve is how he acts as though the world is a big joke—and he wants her to be in on the joke with him.

  But she can’t laugh off the absurdity this time.

  She needs some goddamn answers.

  “I don’t know if I can do this, Steve.”

  “Do what?”

  “This,” she says, practically shouting. She holds her hands up to suggest that she’s talking about everything in the apartment—their whole life together. “I don’t know if I can live with all the secrets. I love you, Steve, but I’m not sure who you are.”

  Steve says he’s sorry he didn’t tell her about the gold. He wanted her to love him for who he is, not for his money. He doesn’t like to touch the money—the car and the ring were rare extravagances for him—and he’d rather use it every now and then, on an as-needed basis.