Free Break Point: BookShots by James Patterson Page A

and red brake lights kaleidoscoped across the rain-drenched windscreen.
    ‘Is this normal?’ Keller asked irritably as they sat idling in the traffic.
    ‘Pretty much,’ Foster said. The black sky mirrored his mood. The strength was slowly coming back to his arm, but with it came a throbbing pain and an unwelcome sense of his own vulnerability. They were almost at Elephant and Castle when he said, ‘I can’t do this any more.’
    Keller looked at him, aghast.
    ‘The job?’
    ‘The traffic.’
    He gave her a reassuring smile, then pulled the Range Rover onto the kerb and cut the corner into a side street. It took them five minutes to find an old-fashioned London boozer and they wasted no time in getting out of the rain. The place was called the Boar’s Head, and it had an air of perpetual night-time about it. Oppressive black beams held up low-slung ceilings that were stained yellow from the smoke of a hundred thousand cigarettes, and the timber bar looked as if it had sailed rough seas for too long. The place was full of dark corners fit for pirates and smugglers and people who didn’t want to be found. People like Foster, Abbot and Keller.
    Keller sat back in the dark booth, nestled between the two men. She felt exposed, still wearing her tennis whites. Still salty from the exertion. Still knowing that her stalker was out there somewhere, lurking.
    ‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘there’s no way Basilia hired that guy to scare me, or to kill Maria. I saw his eyes in the crowd. Just for a second. He was staring at me like he hated every bone in my body. I couldn’t breathe when I saw that hatred burning. He’s the guy. It’s all about him and me. Nobody hired him. Not Basilia or anyone else. I just wish I knew why.’
    Abbot swilled his beer in his glass and took a sideways glance at Foster to see if he could get a steer on his thoughts. But Foster sat impassive and inscrutable.
    ‘He’s not a player, either,’ Abbot said. ‘You smashed through him yesterday like he was made of paper. He’s no kind of athlete at all.’
    ‘Okay,’ Foster said, nursing his pint. ‘So we know who he’s not. But who the hell
is
he? And what does he want?’
    ‘Some of those Chinese betting syndicates can get pretty nasty,’ Abbot said. ‘Any of them offered you money to throw a game?’
    Keller shook her head.
    ‘They wouldn’t approach Kirsten,’ Foster said.
    Abbot raised an eyebrow.
    ‘You sure?’
    Foster turned to Keller.
    ‘How much sponsorship did you earn last year?’
    Keller looked at him for a moment.
    ‘I didn’t earn any,’ Foster said, ‘if it makes you feel better about disclosing.’
    She smiled and said, ‘Eighteen million dollars, give or take.’
    Abbot gave a low whistle.
    ‘Next round’s on you,’ he said.
    ‘There’s five point eight million prize money on top of that,’ Foster said. ‘Any gambling syndicate would know there’s no point trying to bribe Kirsten. It would cost too much.’
    He rolled his pint glass between his fingers, feeling it scuff across a century of beer-soaked varnish on the table beneath.
    ‘Or they could murder my coach,’ Keller said, voicing Foster’s unspoken thought. ‘And send me half crazy in the meantime.’
    Foster nodded.
    ‘It’s possible. But there are much easier ways of getting the job done. Whatever is happening, we need to react. Today.’
    Suddenly Keller looked overwhelmed.
    ‘What are we supposed to do, if we don’t even know what this guy wants?’
    Foster sighed.
    ‘You want my professional opinion?’
    She said that she did.
    ‘Go home.’
    The intimacy of the past few days made the brevity of his answer sting. For a moment Keller sat in stunned silence.
    ‘Because?’
    ‘Because, like you say, we don’t know what this is,’ he said. ‘Tom’s right. The guy’s not a player, but somehow he’s got unusual access to you. He threatened you, but killed Maria. We don’t know why, but the trouble hasn’t stopped since she