Free Love You Dead by Peter James Page A

wasn’t his birthday, he decided what the hell. Birthdays were just numbers. He pressed the barrel of the revolver to the side of his head. To the exact part of his temple he
knew would have maximum destructive effect.
    Then his phone rang.
    He hesitated. Answer or ignore it? Could be business. And he couldn’t pull the trigger with his fucking phone ringing. He answered it.
    And heard the harsh accent.
    In recent years his paymasters had changed from American mobsters, who all sounded like they had chewing gum jammed up their nostrils, to these Eastern Europeans who were humourless but
precise.
    ‘Call you back,’ he said, and instantly hung up.
    He went over to a locked closet, selected a fresh pay-as-you-go phone from the ten that he had bought on his last trip to mainland USA, and returned the call to his contact. He listened to the
instructions carefully, committing them to memory, reminded his client of his terms – one hundred per cent of the cash now to his Swiss bank account – then hung up. He didn’t do
negotiation.
    Then he picked up his gun again and pressed it to his temple.
    Yossarian looked at his master and barked, balefully.
    ‘You want the bullet?’ Tooth asked. ‘That what you’re telling me? You don’t need to worry about me dying, you’ll be all right when I’ve gone. Got you
taken care of. Mama Missick likes you. Dunno why, but she said she’d take care of you if anything happened to me. My lawyers have my will. I’ve left everything to you. You’ll be
taken care of.’
    Yossarian looked at him with his one grey and one red eye, staring him out.
    ‘Playing mind games with me?’
    He put the gun back to his temple and, still staring at the dog, pulled the trigger.
    Click
.
    As he lowered the gun, he could swear the goddam creature was grinning at him.
    ‘Think that’s funny, do you?’ He aimed the gun at the dog’s head and tightened his grip on the trigger. The dog continued to grin.
    Then he raised the gun in the air and pulled the trigger all the way back.
    There was a loud bang. Plaster from the ceiling showered down on him. Yossarian continued grinning. Like his master, the dog didn’t do fear.

15
Thursday 19 February
    Jodie had plenty of time to think on her journey back to England. She’d caught a late flight at LaGuardia to Washington and checked into an airport hotel before returning
to the airport first thing and buying a ticket on another internal flight, to Atlanta, using another alias, Jemma Smith.
    From there she bought a ticket on a Virgin flight to London. She figured people would be less likely to be looking out for her here in Atlanta, although due to the US immigration system, she
would have to leave under the same name that she came in on, Jodie Bentley.
    She had bought a thriller by a British writer called Simon Toyne, because she had liked the cover. It helped to distract her, but with all the thoughts going through her mind it was hard to
concentrate for any length of time.
    She had made use of her enforced stay in Washington, having her hair dyed blonde at a salon she found in the airport. And she bought some new clothes. Several times she’d thought about
phoning Romeo Munteanu through the hotel, to see how much he’d pay to have the memory stick returned, but held back. She needed to know what was on it before making a move – if she made
one at all.
    One thing she knew for sure was that it had a value to someone, otherwise he would not have gone to such trouble to conceal it in his suitcase. And she knew for sure, too, he would be trying to
track her down, although she was pretty certain, with what she had done, that she’d bought a time advantage.
    On the plane to London whilst waiting for boarding to be completed, she flicked through the airline magazine. There was a travel article on Venezuela. It brought back a memory.
    Emira.
    Emira del Carmen Socorro!
Her Venezuelan-born best friend at the posh school Jodie’s parents had sent her