Killer Instinct (Instinct #2)
James Patterson
PROLOGUE
BOTTOMS UP
ONE
PROFESSOR JAHAN Darvish nudged his thick black glasses along the bridge of his nose and stared into the minibar fridge of his swanky Manhattan hotel suite while doing his best to ignore the outrageous price list posted off to the side. Twenty-eight dollars for one of these tiny little bottles of vodka? Seriously?
But Darvish didn’t really care. The flight down from Boston, the expensive hotel, each and every lavish meal—it was all on MIT’s tab. Besides, it’s not like the minibar charges were going to be itemized on the bill. For all that the university bean counters would know back in Cambridge he drank a bunch of Diet Cokes and cracked open that fancy jar of pistachios. Better yet, the pistachios and the tin of macadamia nuts. Maybe even a Red Bull, too. How else was he supposed to work late into the night preparing for his major speech at the nuclear symposium?
“Is everything okay over there, Professor?” she asked from the large armchair behind him.
Darvish smiled. He loved that she was calling him that. Professor. Finally a woman who knew what really mattered in a man. Brains.
It was meant to be.
Normally he would’ve never introduced himself to her. Fear of rejection almost always got the better of his nerve. But there she was, sitting by herself at the bar earlier in the evening drinking a glass of pinot noir while reading a book—the same book he had just recently finished. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
If that didn’t make it fate, then the fact that they shared the same homeland, as they quickly discovered, surely did. It was incredible, thought Darvish. Only in America could he meet the Iranian girl of his dreams.
Her name was Sadira, and she was drop-dead gorgeous.
Better yet, she didn’t care that he wasn’t. Handsome, that is. As they talked about the plot of The Alchemist and moved on to discuss everything from politics and global warming to French cinema and Italian opera, she kept telling him how impressed she was by his mind. It apparently didn’t matter to her that he was twenty pounds overweight and losing his hair, or that his striped tie didn’t match his plaid shirt, which didn’t match his rumpled brown suit. She saw past all that. Sadira saw the person inside.
“Yes. Everything is more than okay,” said Darvish as he continued staring into the minibar fridge with its little bottles of liquor all lined up in a row. He tilted his head, pondering. “Just so many choices.”
“I don’t care, so long as it’s strong,” said Sadira. “If you can’t already tell, I’m a little nervous.”
Darvish turned around, raising a bushy eyebrow. Actually, no, he couldn’t tell at all that she was nervous. Nor could he help himself. He just blurted it out. “You’re nervous? I’m the one who should be nervous. I mean, you’re—”
“Please don’t say it,” she said, cutting him off.
“Don’t say what?”
“That I’m beautiful.”
“But you are. You truly are,” he said. “How could you not know that?”
“It’s not that I don’t know. It’s that everyone …”
Her voice trailed off, and in the words left unsaid, Darvish understood exactly what she was telling him. Sadira wanted to be appreciated for more than just her looks. Of all things, Darvish felt guilty. A tad shallow, even.
“I understand,” he said. He truly did. “And I’m sorry.”
Darvish turned back to the minibar, grabbing two bourbons. Jim Beam. It suddenly didn’t matter what he chose for them to drink. Quickly, he poured the little bottles into a couple of glasses next to the empty ice bucket. “Hope you like it neat.”
“Neat is perfect,” said Sadira, standing. “The way it should be.”
She met him halfway across the carpet, her fingers gently grazing his as she reached for one of the glasses from his outstretched hand.
Again, Darvish smiled. How could he not?
It was the way she was looking at him. The adulation in her eyes. She made him feel so alive. So powerful. Tonight, he was more than a professor at MIT. He was Superman. Invincible.
“What should we drink to?” asked Darvish.
Sadira didn’t hesitate. It was meant to be. “To seeing each other for who we really are,” she said.
TWO
DARVISH WATCHED as Sadira made quick work of her bourbon. Was she looking for liquid courage? Perhaps she truly was nervous, he thought.
“Shall we have another?” he asked.
“No, I’ve had enough,” she said before producing a smile of her own. “At least as far as the drinking goes.”
English wasn’t Darvish’s first language. Or even his second. After Persian and Arabic, English was actually a distant third. But he was still pretty sure that was a highly suggestive double entendre.
Sadira promptly handed Darvish her glass and cozied up to him, her head nestling against his shoulder. Her long, dark-brown hair smelled like lavender.
“Have you ever been tied up, Professor?” she asked.
Forget liquid courage. It was as if he’d slipped something into her drink. Only he hadn’t.
Tied up? Darvish shuffled his feet awkwardly. “Only in traffic, I’m afraid.”