I’m not wanted by the police after all. Vasquez intercepted the message. That explains why Dr Norman acted so normal on the phone. It takes me a second to work out which FBI agent she’s talking about, and another second to realise what ‘contain’ might mean.

‘Where’s Thistle?’ I ask Vasquez.

‘That was a shame,’ Vasquez says. ‘I always liked her, too.’

It’s like a punch to the guts.

I look at Vasquez’s face. There’s no comfort in it.

‘She’s dead?’ I ask.

‘Not my fault,’ he says.

The shadows get darker even as the headlights go blinding. The blood roars in my ears like a hurricane. It feels as though the ground is sinking under my shoes. Like I’m in a slow-moving elevator.

Thistle is dead. Thistle is dead. Thistle is dead.

I want to kill someone. Maybe myself, maybe everyone else, maybe God himself. Thistle was the only person in this wretched city worth saving, and now she’s gone. My heart is ripping itself in two. If I had a button that could end the world right now, I would push it.

But I don’t. So I’m going to have to kill everybody one at a time, and Vasquez is closest.

‘You motherfucking son of a bitch!’ I scream, charging towards him.

He steps back, startled. I lunge at him, teeth first. I’m almost at his throat when he pistol-whips me in the side of the head. The world tilt-a-whirls and I go down like a bag of rocks. I try to grab his legs, but my vision is swimming. I’m going to throw up. Thistle is dead.

‘Oh.’ Warner’s voice seems to come from a long way away. ‘He had a thing for her?’

‘Yeah, from day one,’ Vasquez says. ‘She liked him, too. They both thought they were hiding it well, but they weren’t.’

‘What did she see in him, I wonder?’

‘Beats me. He sure isn’t my type.’

I manage to roll over, looking up. Vasquez is pointing his gun at me.

He looks at Warner. She nods.

‘Goodbye, Blake,’ Vasquez says.

‘Hey, asshole,’ I rasp, ‘you know what a dead man’s switch is?’

He hesitates.

I could have figured out that he worked for Warner. I could have written a letter detailing that, and all the other dangerous things I knew about her organisation. I could have mailed it to myself over and over, so if I ever died, someone would eventually find it in my mailbox. I could have hidden something in my house or my car or a storage unit, so it might take years to surface.

I didn’t do any of that. And I don’t really think the possibility will stop him from killing me. But it might make him uneasy for the rest of his life.

‘Nice try, Blake,’ he says, and pulls the trigger.

The gunshot splits the darkness.