Chapters (46)
- COVER PAGE
- PRAISE
- DEDICATION
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- SNEAK PEEK: EXIT .45
Sly had more meat on him, but he’d been out of breath from the start, so Andre felt he had the better odds. Above him the surface of the water was shifting and distorted, and beyond it the house was in vague focus—a mirage dissolving—and he thought for a second that whether he lived through this or not, it was still a good foretaste of dying.
Sly’s arms and legs were paddling madly, like they all had their own idea of how to stay alive. Somehow, he’d kept hold of the cigar. Andre cinched his arms in tighter, tucking his head into the nape of Sly’s neck as the big man reached and grabbed at him, clawing. Maybe less time on the bench press would have served him well: his shoulders were so big he couldn’t reach behind him. He could scratch, but he couldn’t grab.
Andre clung on, eyes squeezed shut. He sensed them rotating—vertical now, but inverted—their head-heavy mass seeking the pool floor. Sly was shouting, garbled bubble-talk that sounded like ‘sushi’.
Andre didn’t know how long he could hold his breath—thirty seconds? A minute? His lungs were on fire, and his head was pounding: the pressure of blood and water, and life pressure too, knowing he had to win this.
But holding him down here wouldn’t be enough. He didn’t have the air for a drowning, and he couldn’t go up for breath without letting Sly do the same. So with his face still tucked behind Sly’s head, he hauled sideways, one hand cupped on Sly’s jaw to pull it around. At first there was resistance—the great bollard of a neck locked solid—but then the head moved, swivelling with Andre’s arms to a terrible angle, all the way to the limit of rotation. Sly’s limbs were flailing—a man in slow-motion free-fall—and he made one last shout for sushi before Andre summoned that last reserve of strength and jerked, and with a dull click Sly’s head jolted through a final increment, and all resistance vanished.
Andre released him and pushed up off the tiles. His head broke the water first, and he came up into a world that seemed hushed and placid by comparison. He held a hand to his mouth to mute the first few gasps, and then breathed quietly through his nose—chlorine-tainted air, but still delicious. Droplets running down his face and dimpling the water.