A collection of three gripping, female led stories from the world's bestselling thriller writer. In the first, 3 Days to Live, a CIA-agent bride is on her European honeymoon when she and her husband are poisoned – leaving her seventy-two hours to take revenge.
CHAPTER 1
MY LIFE FELT like a dream. I guess that happens when you elope, hop on a plane, drift off to sleep, and wake up in a foreign country.
Adding to the dreamlike effect: my watch had decided to stop working somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, and not knowing the exact time was driving me a little crazy. My body was telling me it was the middle of the night, but the midday winter sun blazed bright over the historic center of Berlin.
“Do you see a clock anywhere?”
Kevin Drexel, my loving husband of eighteen hours, smiled and squeezed my hand. “You may have forgotten, but we’re on our honeymoon. No schedules, no cell phones, no plans, just us — remember?”
“True. But if I knew it was … say, four o’clock, then we could check into the room. And I could take my shoes off already.”
“The Adlon said the suite would be ready in a couple of hours. Let’s get the lay of land.”
“Interesting choice of words,” I replied, raising my eyebrows. I slipped my arms around Kevin from behind and squeezed him tight. He turned to face me. As a woman who has always been on the freakishly tall side, it felt pretty amazing to have found a partner who a) was just as freakishly tall, and b) didn’t mind seeing eye-to-eye. Literally.
“You know there’s something seriously wrong with you,” he said, bringing me in for a kiss.
“Yet, you married me anyway.”
“I sure did.”
We’d left everything — our bags, jackets, my useless watch — to take a stroll down the Unter den Linden while we waited for our room to be ready. Interesting, the things you learn about your spouse on the first day of your marriage. I knew Kevin was a very chill guy, and I was sure by now he’d picked up on my obsessive need to plan everything down to the microsecond. But had I known Kevin Allan Drexel would be this chill ... okay, don’t get me wrong. I still would have married him. But I would have also packed an extra watch battery.
“Isn’t this amazing? I never get tired of this city,” Kevin exclaimed. “Where we’re walking right now used to be nothing but a field of rubble, just after the war. Now look at it!”
“It’s not exactly Paris,” I teased.
“That’s exactly the point!” Kevin said. “Paris is always the same old Paris. But Berlin is never the same city twice.”
I’d never been to Germany, let alone Berlin. But Kevin had spent a lot of time here because his best friend and former business partner, Bill Devander, lived here. The whole flight over, he’d been gushing about how excited he was to show me the city.
“Looks like that church over there has been here quite a while.”
I gestured at a huge and elaborate Gothic pile situated next to the city’s iconic TV tower.
“That’s the Berliner Dom,” Kevin said, “and it’s kind of a miracle the old cathedral is still standing. During World War II, a wave of Allied bombs blew out the windows, and another explosion destroyed the roof. We’re now in what used to be East Berlin, by the way, so the communist government wasn’t all that worried about restoring it. They’re still trying to raise funds to restore it to some of its prewar glory.”
“You think maybe there’s a clock somewhere inside that cathedral? One the Allies didn’t destroy?”
“I don’t know. But ooh ... you have to see the organ!”
“Now that’s what a bride wants to hear on her wedding night.”
Kevin laughed — one of his trademark, unrestrained boyish giggles that made me fall for him. “You’re impossibly naughty.”
“Is it our wedding night?” I continued. “Or is it the day after? See, without my watch or a phone, I have no idea ...”
Kevin touched my hand. “You know what this is, Samantha? It’s the beginning of the rest of our lives.”
If I could go back in time and live in a particular moment, it would be this one. Kevin holding my hand. The sound of his laugh still hanging in the air. The endless possibilities.
“‘That’s Ms. Bell-Drexel, if you please. And if we’re going to do that, I’d rather not be surrounded by dead Germans.’”
CHAPTER 2
THERE WERE NO clocks inside the cathedral, but otherwise the hulking place of worship was kind of fascinating. (Not that I’d ever admit it out loud to Kevin.) We gawked at the grand organ, with its intricately carved wood encasing the metal pipes reaching up to the heavens. Which I suppose is the idea with church organs.
“Wilhelm Sauer’s masterpiece,” Kevin was saying. “He designed over a thousand organs during the so-called Romantic period, but this one was considered his best.”
Kevin’s business was engineering, so anything well-built and ridiculously complex seized his attention. (I like to think these qualities are what attracted him to me, too.)
“I hope you never grow bored of me,” I said.
“Impossible.”
“I can be pretty boring.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
We had given up our lives for each other, in one way or the other. After eight years of my high-pressure job, I was ready to try something ... normal (if that was even the right word). Kevin, too, was looking for a change. He’d just dissolved a fifteen-year business partnership developing aerosol technology that had had him chained to a desk, in favor of a new venture that would allow him to see the world. We’d first met on vacation, both on the same Mexican beach while considering what to do with the next chapter of our lives.
The solution we came up with, after a series of salt-rimmed margaritas? We’d stay on vacation. What started as a boozy, flirty joke turned into something real when we planned to meet up again a week later, this time in Key West. And then again two weeks later, on Ibiza, and so on, for the next six months until we finally decided to elope. After which Kevin Drexel whisked away the former Samantha Bell to honeymoon here in Berlin, his favorite city.
“You want to see the crypt?” Kevin asked. “They have caskets down there dating back to the sixteenth century.”
“Why, Mr. Drexel, are you trying to get me alone in a dark, confined space?”
“That was sort of the idea, Mrs. Drexel.”
“That’s Ms. Bell-Drexel, if you please. And if we’re going to do that, I’d rather not be surrounded by dead Germans.”
“In that case, shall we make our way back to the Adlon and see if our room is ready, Ms. Bell-Drexel?”
I threaded my arm through his, and leaned in close. “You know what I like best about you, Mr. Drexel?”
“My rakish good looks? My devil-may-care attitude?”
“No. You’re a quick study.”
We left the cathedral and made our way west down the Unter den Linden with a little more urgency this time. Kevin made a big deal of pointing out the former communist parade grounds, now a proper garden called — wait for it — the Lustgarten. I told my husband he was making this far, far too easy.
Finally, we checked into the hotel. The Hotel Adlon was every bit as gorgeous as Kevin had promised. Kevin told me that the Adlon, like the Berliner Dom, had been pretty much destroyed by the Allies during World War II; and since it was on the East German side, a stone’s throw from the Berlin Wall and directly across from the Brandenburg Gate, almost nothing had been left of the hotel except a grassy field until after the Wall fell. They eventually rebuilt in the 1990s, with a similar design to the original.
So, in short, we were apparently honeymooning in what used to be Enemy Territory. But Kevin was right; Berlin was in a forever state of birth, death, and rebirth.
“Okay, so we’re in Berlin for seven days,” I said. “Let’s stay in this room the entire time.”
Kevin smiled. “Well, at some point I’m going to have to meet up for a quick drink with Bill. He lives nearby in Simon-Dach-Kiez, just a neighborhood or two away.”
I pulled him close, whispering in his ear, “You’re not going anywhere,” then giving him a long, searching kiss.
“Her face is her billboard, and she’s hoping to attract the attention of a wealthy tourist staying in the nearby five-star hotel.”
CHAPTER 3
FIRST ORDER OF business: washing the air travel and Unter den Linden off my body. The tastefully ornate bathroom was bigger than most studio apartments; Kevin and I could practically take up residence here. And as the warm water cascaded over my body from multiple directions, I was beginning to seriously entertain the idea. So I barely heard him when Kevin stuck his head in to say something.
“What was that?”
“I said I’ll be right back,” Kevin replied. I couldn’t quite see him through the steam, but I could imagine him grinning.
“Where are you going?”
“Just a quick errand. Something I forgot.”
“Please, Mr. Bell-Drexel. You don’t forget anything.”
“Okay, guilty as charged. I want to pick up some flowers and an outrageously expensive bottle of wine. What’s a honeymoon suite without them?”
“Flowers and wine are nothing compared to this shower. You should take off your clothes and join me.”
“I will. Just as soon as I return.”
“Promise?”
Either he didn’t answer, or the water muffled his reply, but the next thing I knew he was gone. I thought about washing my hair a second time, just for the excuse of lingering in this shower another twenty minutes, but I didn’t want my groom to return to a shriveled-up prune.
I toweled off and pulled on a robe, then glanced out the window at the street below. We were on the third floor, kinda lousy for city views, but fairly excellent for people-watching. Directly beneath our windows was the red awning of the hotel entrance. From habit, I found myself picking out random passersby and trying to ascertain everything I could about them from physical details: their clothes, how they walked, their body tics. Examples: The middle-aged guy hate-chewing a piece of gum and wearing an ill-advised “trendy” jacket? Recent divorcée trying to kick a nicotine habit because younger women in the dating pool tended to avoid smokers. Oh, and the attractive slender woman wearing the designer dress and zip-up stiletto boots, keeping her face visible to the passing crowd? Most likely a prostitute. Her face is her billboard, and she’s hoping to attract the attention of a wealthy tourist staying in the nearby five-star hotel (the boots are sexier than flats and less work than strappy high heels).
After a while, I shook myself out of it — if I was going to settle down to a “normal” life, I was going to have to learn how to unplug this part of my brain.
To distract myself, I unpacked our luggage. We both travelled light; I’m sure we’d both read the same articles on how to live for a month out of a suitcase that fits in the overhead bin. At one point, I’d reached the master level of packing for a week in the Middle East in a single oversized purse.
So unpacking took me all of three minutes.
A half hour passed. At least I think it did — my watch was still DOA. I turned on the flat-screen TV, then flicked it off again. Kevin was surely taking his time with those wine and flowers. Unless ... he was surprising me with something else, which would very much be a Kevin Drexel thing to do. Months ago, I’d made myself turn off my internal lie detector around Kevin, so the poor guy could actually surprise me from time to time.
While I waited for Kevin to return, I figured I’d go do something practical. Like find a new battery for my watch or a charger for my phone, so I could finally feel grounded in this city. I quickly dressed, pulled my hair back, slipped on flats, and headed out the door.
Kevin’s body was sprawled out in the hallway.
Extracted from 3 Days to Live by James Patterson, out now.
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