"[...] At the entrance to the alleyway Ozols glanced over his shoulder, an amateurish move, too obvious to trip up a shadow, too quick to register one if he did. In Victor's experience people often paid more attention to what could be behind them, instead of what lay ahead. Ozols didn't see the man standing in the shadows just a few yards away. The man who was there to kill him. Victor waited until Ozols had passed out of the light before squeezing the trigger with smooth, even pressure. Suppressed gunshots interrupted the early morning stillness. Ozols was hit in the sternum, twice in rapid succession. The bullets were low powered, subsonic 5.7 mm, but larger rounds could have been no more fatal. Copper-encased lead tore through skin, bone, and heart before lodging side by side between vertebrae. Ozols collapsed backward, hitting the ground with a dull thud, arms outstretched, head rolling to one side. Victor melted out of the darkness and took a measured step forward. He angled the FN Five-seveN and put a bullet through Ozols's temple. He was already dead, but in Victor's opinion there was no such thing as overkill. The expended cartridge clinked on the paving stones and came to rest in a puddle shimmering with sodium-orange light. A quiet whistling from the twin bullet holes in Ozols's chest was the only other sound. Air was escaping from the still-inflated lungs—the last breath he never had a chance to release."