Free Love You Dead by Peter James

talked to any of them. He didn’t like drunks. He was content to be with his loyal, sober associate.
    There was a roar of laughter from inside the bar. It was wild some nights. A few years ago two Haitians who had tried to rob the bar had been shot dead by a customer. It was that kind of a
place.
    This island that he had called home for the past decade was a paradise for tourists, and one of the assholes of the Caribbean to the US border authorities. Around seventeen miles long and five
wide, Providenciales – or Provo, as it was known to the locals – sat midway between Haiti, Jamaica and the southern tip of the Florida Keys.
    The British made a pretence of policing it, and had put in a puppet governor, but mostly they left it to the US Coastguard, who had a base there, to deal with – or ride roughshod over
– the corrupt and inept local police.
    It was why Tooth chose to live here. No one asked questions and no one gave a damn. They left Tooth and his associate alone and he left them alone. He lived in a ground-floor apartment in a
complex on the far side of the creek, and his cleaning lady, Mama Missick, looked after the dog when he was away on business.
    The mosquitoes were particularly bad tonight. He didn’t do mosquitoes. Hated the critters. He’d long ago decided that if he ever met God – unlikely, as he didn’t believe
in Him – the first question he would ask was why He had created mosquitoes.
    To piss everyone off?
    He was pissed off right now. His right ankle, where he had been bitten a short while ago, was itching like hell. Given the chance, he would nuke every mosquito on the planet. But right now he
had another more important issue. Business. Or rather the lack of it.
    Tooth had left school early and eventually ended up in the army, where he had served two tours in Iraq. It had changed his life forever, because it was there he discovered his real expertise as
a killer – and in particular as a sniper. It had served him well.
    He drank two more bourbons and smoked four more cigarettes, then headed home along the dark, deserted road with Yossarian, to grill some bonefish he had caught earlier on his boat,
Long
Shot
.
    He could do with another good contract. Two of his primary sources, both American, had gone – one doing life without parole, the other shot dead – he had executed the man himself.
Now he had two new sources of business, but he hadn’t heard from either in several months. His stash, in his Swiss bank account, was running low. Fuelling his thirty-five-foot launch, with
its thirsty twin Mercedes engines, which took him out hunting for his food most days, was expensive.
    And one day he might need the boat to make a fast exit from this place. With a top speed of fifty-four knots, not much at sea could catch it. Besides, his days out on
Long Shot
were his
life.
    And he never knew how they were numbered. He just lived each year to see if he would get past his next birthday, which was not for several weeks. He had developed a kind of ritual on each
birthday. He would leave the Shark Bite and drive to Kew Town, to visit his regular hooker. There were no drink-driving laws on the island. Afterwards he would drive home and play Russian
Roulette.
    The same .38 bullet had been in the chamber for the past ten years. He had dum-dummed it himself. Two deep cuts in the nose. These would cause the bullet to rip open on impact, punching a hole
the size of a tennis ball in whatever it hit. He would have no possible chance of survival.
    Tooth inserted the bullet back into the barrel, and spun the chamber. The gamble was where the bullet ended up. Would it be an empty chamber behind the firing pin or the loaded one?
    Physics worked for plays of this game. The bullet weighed the chamber down. So it wasn’t a six-to-one chance. Most likely the bullet would end up at the bottom of the chamber. But one day,
and that could be today, it would be different.
    Bang
.
    Oblivion.
    Although it