Тесс Герритсен – Never Say Die / Presumed Guilty: Never Say Die / Presumed Guilty (страница 22)

With a desperate burst of speed, she sprinted forward. Then, through a fog of panic, she saw that her escape route was cut off.

Another man had appeared. He stood in the shadows at the far end of the walkway. She couldn’t see his expression; all she saw was the faint gleam of his face.

She halted, spun around. As she did, something whistled past her cheek and clattered onto the walkway. A knife. Automatically, she snatched it up and wielded it in front of her.

Her gaze shifted first to one man, then the other. They were closing in.

She screamed. Her cry mingled with the dance music, echoed off the buildings and funneled up into the night. A wave of startled bats fluttered up through the darkness. Can’t anyone hear me? she thought in desperation.

She cast another frantic look around, searching for a way out. In front of her, beyond the railing, lay a four-story drop to the courtyard. Just behind her, sunk into a square expanse of graveled roof, was the enormous air-conditioning vent. Through the rusted grating she saw its giant fan blades spinning like a plane’s propeller. The blast of warm air was so powerful it made her skirt billow.

The men moved in for the kill.

Chapter Six

SHE HAD NO CHOICE. She scrambled over the railing and dropped onto the grating. It sagged under her weight, lowering her heart-stoppingly close to the deadly blades. A rusted fragment crumbled off into the fan; the clatter of metal was deafening.

She inched her way over the grate, heading for a safe island of rooftop. It was only a few steps across, but it felt like miles of tightrope suspended over oblivion. Her legs were trembling as she finally stepped off the grate. It was a dead end; beyond lay a sheer drop. And a crumbling expanse of grating was all that separated her from the killers.

The two men glanced around in frustration, searching for a safe way to reach her. There was no other route; they would have to cross the vent. But the grating had barely supported her weight; these men were far heavier. She looked at the deadly whirl of the blades. They wouldn’t risk it, she thought.

But to her disbelief, one of the men climbed over the railing and eased himself onto the vent. The mesh sagged but held. He stared at her over the spinning blades, and she saw in his eyes the impassive gaze of a man who’d simply come to do his job.

Trapped, she thought. Dear God, I’m trapped!

She screamed again, but her cry of terror was lost in the fan’s roar.

He was halfway across, his knife poised. She clutched her knife and backed away to the very edge of the roof. She had two choices: a four-story drop to the pavement below, or hand-to-hand combat with an experienced assassin. Both prospects seemed equally hopeless.

She crouched, knife in trembling hand, to slash, to claw—anything to stay alive. The man took another step. The blade moved closer.

Then gunfire ripped the night.

Willy stared in bewilderment as the killer clutched his belly and looked down at his bloody hand, his face a mask of astonishment. Then, like a puppet whose strings have been cut, he crumpled. As dead weight hit the weakened grating, Willy closed her eyes and cringed.

She never saw his body fall through. But she heard the squeal of metal, felt the wild shuddering of the fan blades. She collapsed to her knees, retching into the darkness below.

When the heaving finally stopped, she forced her head up.

Her other attacker had vanished.

Across the courtyard, on the opposite walkway, something gleamed. The barrel of a gun being lowered. A small face peering at her over the railing. She struggled to make sense of why the boy was there, why he had just saved her life. Stumbling to her feet, she whispered, “Oliver?”

The boy merely put a finger to his lips. Then, like a ghost, he slipped away into the darkness.

Dazed, she heard shouts and the thud of approaching footsteps.

“Willy! Are you all right?”

She turned and saw Guy. And she heard the panic in his voice.

“Don’t move! I’ll come get you.”

“No!” she cried. “The grate—it’s broken—”

For a moment, he studied the spinning blades. Then, glancing around, he spotted a workman’s ladder propped beneath a broken window. He dragged it to the railing, hoisted it over and slid it horizontally across the broken grate. Then he eased himself over the railing, carefully stepped onto a rung and extended his arm to Willy. “I’m right here,” he said. “Put your left foot on the ladder and grab my hand. I won’t let you fall, I swear it. Come on, sweetheart. Just reach for my hand.”

She couldn’t look down at the fan blades. She looked across them at Guy’s face, tense and gleaming with sweat. At his hand, reaching for her. And in that instant she knew, without a shred of doubt, that he would catch her. That she could trust him with her life.

She took a breath for courage, then took the step forward, over the whirling blades.

Instantly his hand locked over hers. For a split second she teetered. Guy’s rigid grasp steadied her. Slowly, jerkily, she lunged forward onto the rung where he balanced.

“I’ve got you!” he yelled as he swept her into his arms, away from the yawning vent. He swung her easily over the railing onto the walkway, then dropped down beside her. He pulled her into the safety of his arms.

“It’s all right,” he murmured over and over into her hair. “Everything’s all right…”

Only then, as she felt his heart pounding against hers, did she realize how terrified he’d been for her.

She was shaking so hard she could barely stand on her own two legs. It didn’t matter. She knew the arms now wrapped around her would never let her fall.

They both stiffened as a harsh command was issued in Vietnamese. The people gathered about them quickly stepped aside to let a policeman through. Willy squinted as a blinding light shone in her eyes. The flashlight’s beam shifted and froze on the air-conditioning vent. From the spectators came a collective gasp of horror.

“Dear God,” she heard Dodge Hamilton whisper. “What a bloody mess.”

MR. AINH WAS SWEATING. He was also hungry and tired, and he needed badly to use the toilet. But all these concerns would have to wait. He had learned that much from the war: patience. Victory comes to those who endure. This was what he kept saying to himself as he sat in his hard chair and stared down at the wooden table.

“We have been careless, Comrade.” The minister’s voice was soft, no more than a whisper; but then, the voice of power had no need to shout.

Slowly Ainh raised his head. The man sitting across from him had eyes like smooth, sparkling river stones. Though the face was wrinkled and the hair hung in silver wisps as delicate as cobwebs, the eyes were those of a young man—bold and black and brilliant. Ainh felt their gaze slice through him.

“The death of an American tourist would be most embarrassing,” said the minister.

Ainh could only nod in meek agreement.

“You are certain Miss Maitland is uninjured?”

Ainh cleared his throat. Nodded again.

The minister’s voice, so soft just a moment before, took on a razor’s edge. “This Barnard fellow—he prevented an international incident, something our own people seem incapable of.”

“But we had no warning, no reason to think this would happen.”

“The attack in Bangkok—was that not a warning?”

“A robbery attempt! That’s what the report—”

“And reports are never wrong, are they?” The minister’s smile was disconcertingly bland. “First Bangkok. Then tonight. I wonder what our little American tourist has gotten herself into.”

“The two attacks may not be connected.”

“Everything, Comrade, is connected.” The minister sat very still, thinking. “And what about Mr. Barnard? Are he and Miss Maitland—” the minister paused delicately “—involved?”

“I think not. She called him a…what is that American expression? A jerk.”

The minister laughed. “Ah. Mr. Barnard has trouble with the ladies!”

There was a knock on the door. An official entered, handed a report to the minister and respectfully withdrew.

“There is progress in the case?” inquired Ainh.

The minister looked up. “Of a sort. They were able to piece together fragments of the dead man’s identity card. It seems he was already well-known to the police.”

“Then that explains it!” said Ainh. “Some of these thugs will do anything for a few thousand dong.”

“This was no robbery.” The minister handed the report to Ainh. “He has connections to the old regime.”

Ainh scanned the page. “I see mention only of a woman cousin—a factory worker.” He paused, then looked up in surprise. “A mixed blood.”

The minister nodded. “She is being questioned now. Shall we look in on her?”

CHANTAL WAS SLOUCHED ON A wooden bench, aiming lethal glares at the policeman in charge of questioning.

“I have done nothing!” she spat out. “Why should I want anyone dead? An American bitch, you say? What, do you think I am crazy? I have been home all night! Talk to the old man who lives above me! Ask him who’s been playing my radio all night! Ask him why he’s been beating on my ceiling, the old crank! Oh, but I could tell you stories about him.”