Break Point: BookShots by James Patterson Read Free Book Online Page B

night. And you’re a perfect gentleman. And every time something goes wrong, you’re there. I could get used to having you around – you know what I mean?’
    He cupped her head in his hand, his fingers combing through the back of her blonde hair. He pulled her into his chest and kissed the top of her head gently, mostly so that he wouldn’t have to look into her eyes while he let her down.
    ‘The day I got these scars,’ he said, ‘I lost my wife.’
    Keller looked up at him, eyes wide and swimming with a hundred different emotions.
    ‘I saved my client,’ Foster said. ‘But I should have saved her.’
    ‘Oh God,’ Keller said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
    ‘Not your fault. But I’m not ready to, you know, move on.’
    Keller pulled his hand from her hair and brought it to her mouth. She kissed the top of his fingers delicately.
    ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I’ve lost people, too. I don’t want to sound cold, Chris. But at some point you have to let go and make the best of what you’ve still got. You have to enjoy the life that’s left.’
    Foster looked at her. She was so young.
    ‘You sound like a therapist,’ he said eventually.
    She put the hand she had been kissing gently back by his side and stepped into him, wrapping her arms around his middle and resting her head on his chest, so that she could hear his heart thumping away inside him.
    ‘I’ve met a few of those,’ she smiled, as a summer shower began to beat on the glass outside.

CHAPTER 13
    KIRSTEN KELLER PLAYED first on No. 1 Court the next day and won easily, somehow parking her grief and powering through in straight sets. Foster sat in the players’ box, watching the people who had access to the locker room and wondering if any of them had drawn the message on the mirror. None of them looked out of place, so he spent the second set in the cheap seats, high up in the stand.
    He was a perfect grey man, blending in until he was almost invisible. He waited and he watched, letting his eyes settle and trusting that his instinct would kick in if anything unusual happened. But it didn’t. Keller won, and the crowd began to shuffle towards the strawberry kiosks, and Foster headed down to the side of the court where Keller was making for the locker rooms.
    He reminded himself what a bad idea it had been to sleep with a client, but in all honesty, as he watched her, he couldn’t say he regretted it. She was glowing from the exertion of the match, pumped up and beautiful. She kept her game-face on until she was out of sight of the crowds and the cameras, but not much further.
    ‘Was he there?’ she asked Foster as they met in the corridors in the belly of No. 1 Court.
    ‘Who?’
    Keller stopped and looked Foster in the eye.
    ‘You know who. It’s your job to protect me from the freaks, not from the truth.’
    ‘Fair enough. But no, I didn’t see anyone in the crowd.’
    ‘He’s out there, though, isn’t he?’ she said. ‘He killed Maria and he’s somewhere out there.’
    ‘We don’t know that anyone killed Maria.’
    Keller paused and stared at him. ‘There’s no way she killed herself. No way.’
    By the time they reached the locker room, she was starting to unravel into the scared young woman Foster had first seen in Paris. She hovered by the door. Foster smiled reassuringly and said, ‘I’m not coming in with you.’
    She smiled back weakly.
    ‘Yeah, I guess that’s how rumours start.’
    She pushed backwards into the locker room, rolling her shoulder around the door and only breaking eye contact at the very last second.
    ‘Shout if you need me,’ Foster called after her. As he turned away from the door, his phone buzzed. It was Ruth Cullen.
    ‘We’ve just got the pathology reports back,’ she said. ‘Apparently they found rope burns.’
    ‘You’re going to find rope burns, Ruth. She hanged herself.’
    There was a long pause at the other end of the line. At the far end of the corridor a man and a young girl were