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Автор Стив Гамильтон

ALSO BY STEVE HAMILTON

NICK MASON

The Second Life of Nick Mason

ALEX MCKNIGHT

Let It Burn

Die a Stranger

Misery Bay

A Stolen Season

Ice Run

Blood is the Sky

North of Nowhere

The Hunting Wind

Winter of the Wolf Moon

A Cold Day in Paradise

STAND-ALONES

The Lock Artist

Night Work

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hamilton, Steve, author.

Title: Exit strategy : a Nick Mason novel / Steve Hamilton.

Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2017.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017003034 (print) | LCCN 2017007932 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399574382 (hardback) | ISBN 9780399574399 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Ex-convicts—Fiction. | Organized crime—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Crime. | FICTION / Suspense. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3558. A44363 E95 2017 (print) | LCC PS3558. A44363 (ebook) | DDC 813/. 54—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

Also by Steve Hamilton

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Acknowledgments

About the Author

TO JULIA

AGAIN AND ALWAYS

You kill one person, it changes you.

You kill five . . . it’s not about changing anymore.

It’s who you are.

Quintero knew this. He’d seen it in other men. Had seen it in himself. He saw it now as he watched Nick Mason prepare, remembering the day he picked him up at the gates of the federal prison in Terre Haute.

Remembering Mason’s first job, in the motel room. The look on his face afterward—blank, bloodless—when he brought the Mustang to the chop shop.

When he said he’d never do it again.

Until the next phone call.

That was the unwritten contract Nick Mason had signed. Twenty years of his life back in exchange for his service to Darius Cole. On call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. To do whatever was asked of him.

No matter what it was.

• • •

MASON STRIPPED OFF HIS SHIRT to reveal the lean, hard muscles of a middleweight and pale white skin with no tattoos.

Even after five and a half years inside, he had come out without one drop of jailhouse ink on his body. Cole had made sure of it. Mason strapped on the soft-armor tactical vest, thick enough to stop anything up to a . 44 Magnum, then he pulled on the black turtleneck over that. With the black pants, the black rubber-soled shoes, it was the uniform of a professional. He took the black balaclava, formed it into a skullcap, and put it on over his close-cut hair. He pulled down the mask, adjusted it across his eyes, took one look in the mirror. Satisfied, he rolled it back up.

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