Dead Heat by James Patterson Page B

hand, connecting close to his eye and feeling him lurch backwards. He lets go of my wrist and falls back to the floor, his mangled legspumping arterial blood across the dusty boards. In the half light it looks black, as if I’ve struck oil. But the slow inevitability of his death is not enough for me. My anger betrays my good sense, and I fall to the floor and grab him by the neck. I have a primal urge to squeeze the life out of him, to crush the wicked, unrepentant malice from his body until it is entirely extinguished from the world. Outside, the sirens are getting closer, but I don’t want the reinforcements to arrive. I want a long moment between us, so that I see him suffer the same fate as those young, bright athletes he chose to snuff out on a whim.
    It’s a mistake, of course. Even as I do it, Jaffari reaches forward, gets a grip on my neck and crushes me just as hard as I am crushing him. We grapple and twist like eels in the black blood, each of us clawing our nails into the other man’s neck to counteract the slickness of Jaffari’s bleeding. My head feels light as he grips like steel across my windpipe. Jaffari is a dying man and it’s his last spiteful hope that he can take me with him. Suddenly, as the room begins to spin, it all stops. There are two fearsome bangs and I know at once what has happened. Paz has regained consciousness and found her gun. Both shots have hit Jaffari in the forehead, just inches from my fingers, and suddenly it is only my grip around his neck that is keeping him upright. I let go and he falls back on himself, his body twisted and his head lolling unnaturally to one side.
    Paz ignores her own handiwork, stepping over Jaffari to reach Felipe. She scoops up his tiny body from the floor and pulls him into an embrace. As the room settles and my hearing begins toreturn, it’s apparent that she’s sobbing. I want to reach her, but before I make it back onto my feet, I hear the tactical team thundering up the stairs and spilling out into the room all around us. And, just like that, the whole thing is over.

CHAPTER 23
    A YOUNG GIRL is staring at me from across the street as I sit outside Casas Pedro. The girl’s mother follows her gaze and sees that she’s staring at the fearsome black bruising around my neck – the parting gift of a dying man. The woman takes her daughter’s hand and pulls her along the street, although the child glances back over her shoulder a couple of times as she goes. I don’t care about the bruising. The sun is shining and I am happy. I’m eating fried cheese rolls and a fatty pork feijoada stew, and opposite me Paz is eating the same.
    ‘Felipe is out of hospital.’
    ‘That’s good. No lasting problems?’
    ‘He’s fine. He doesn’t remember any of it.’
    ‘Well, that’s good, too. Where is he?’
    ‘With Grandma. She won’t let him out of her sight.’
    The TV screen in the corner of the bar is showing reruns of the Brazilian volleyball team taking the Copacabana beach by storm. Paz seems more interested in the feijoada than the sport.
    ‘It’s good,’ she says. ‘But how the hell have you made it to retirement, eating this every day?’
    ‘I haven’t made it yet,’ I say. ‘A few days left.’
    Paz laughs and takes a mouthful of the stew, the juice of it coating her lips and the rich flavour adding a sparkle to her eyes. She’s still chewing when her phone rings, so I pick it up for her.
    ‘Hello?’
    I can feel the colour draining from my face as I listen. Paz studies my greying features with a look of concern.
    ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘We’re on our way.’
    Two minutes later, the pork feijoada is a distant memory and we’re weaving through the traffic to make it to the Maracanã for the closing ceremony.
    ‘I don’t understand,’ Paz says as she drives hard towards the stadium. She’s absently patting her pockets down as she drives, and eventually I find a battered packet of cigarettes in the glove box and hand them to her.