Peter James - Perfect People
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- Название:Perfect People
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The Disciple held his breath, stared up at anxiously at the master bedroom window, shaking even more now. To his relief, there was no sign of any movement. How could he have missed so badly? Yesterday, he’d driven to a lonely spot in the countryside and set the sight up for this distance. He had ripped out the bullseyes in the targets with ninety-seven out of one hundred slugs.
He took a second shot now, and again hit the cladding, this time directly below his target. And now the perspiration was starting to run down his body again, and his head felt too hot inside his hat and his fingers sticky inside his gloves. He watched the master bedroom window for a light to come on, or a twitch of the curtains. But again, to his relief, nothing. So many noises from the wind right now, one tiny. 22 pellet was probably insignificant; except it didn’t sound that way from down here.
He fired his third shot.
Even wider. ‘No!’ the cry came out before he could stop it.
Now his eyes were beginning to blur with tears, from the savage, icy wind, and even more from frustration. Seven pellets left. Seven. Just needed one.
He opened his eyes, blinked away the tears, wiped them with the back of his leather glove, took careful aim, felt confident now, had the target absolutely square on as he pulled the trigger. The pellet went well to the left and must have struck metal because it made a hard ping, so damned loud. He ducked right down and waited, staring up at the master bedroom window, and at the other windows, really afraid he must have woken someone this time.
Only fifty feet! How can I miss from fifty feet? How? It isn’t possible?
Please, God, don’t desert me now.
He let a couple of minutes pass, until he was satisfied all was quiet inside the house. Then he took aim again. Squeezed the trigger. And almost shouted out for joy as the glass exploded and the shards tumbled down onto the gravel with a few barely audible tinkles. The white plastic sensor, split in two, dangled limply from its wires. He raised his binoculars and focused on the sensor, just to double check that it wasn’t merely the outer casing that had gone. But the damage looked thorough. It was destroyed.
His mouth felt dry with anxiety. He laid down the rifle, then patted the handgun in his pocket. From his left pocket he pulled the leather pouch containing the tungsten lock-pick tools. His insides were jangling, the red mist of panic he’d experienced earlier was returning and he was having to make an effort to stay calm, to remember his plan.
He should make it look like an accident, like a fire, that was his brief. But that carried too many risks, the thought of being caught, of being incarcerated. No. Not an option. These scum sewer Infidels weren’t worthy of such a risk. He would gun them down like the vermin they were, them and their Spawn. Then he would burn the place. His Master might not be happy with him, but he would never be able to send him out into the field again. There were times in life where you had to make your own decisions.
He climbed over the fence and onto the narrow grass verge on the other side. Stared anxiously up at the house. Put one cautious foot forward on to the gravel as if he were testing water. Then another.
Scccrrunncccccchhhhh.
He froze. Took another step, then another, praying for silent footfalls and each time scrunching just as loudly as the last. They won’t hear it, not in this storm. Stop worrying.
He reached the porch. He already knew what kind of lock it was, from his previous visit, a sturdy, mortise deadlock, and he had the right pick selected for the task, a full diamond. He had practised a thousand times on an identical lock he had bought earlier in the week.
From his breast pocket he pulled out his tiny torch, twisted it on, and held it in his left hand, pointing the beam on the lock. With his right hand, he inserted the tip of the tungsten diamond pick into the keyway. Navigating the wards, he pushed it firmly through the plug, feeling for the first pin. Then it came to a halt. He tried again. And then he realized, to his dismay, what the problem was.
Someone had left the key in on the other side of the door.
Even as he was registering this, he heard a metallic sound right in front of him. The ratchety clank of brass pins lifting clear of a sheer line. The dull, leaden, unmistakable sound of a key turning in a lock.
Dropping the pick, his hand lunged for his Beretta. It was jammed in his pocket! As he tugged at the weapon in wild panic the door opened. It was so dark inside the house he could barely see the two small figures, in boots and in their winter coats.
The Devil’s Spawn.
Standing in front of him.
Their eyes glinting with such curiosity he felt for a moment they were staring right through him. He stepped back several paces. Much too late, he realized they were in fact looking at the people behind him.
He never heard the gun fire. He sensed just one brief rush of scorching, arid wind, accompanied by an eerie whoosh that made his ears pop. He never felt the bullet, either, which entered through the base of his skull, partially severing his spinal cord. It traversed through his left cerebral hemisphere into his right cerebral hemisphere, on through his frontal lobe, exited above his right eye, and ricocheted off the brick facing of the porch, gouging a small hole in the cement pointing.
For an instant, he saw Lara, standing in brilliant, milky light at the end of a long tunnel; then the faces of the Devil’s Spawn stood in front of her, blocking his view with their smirking faces, smirking Victory! at him, savage, graceless smiles stretched across their faces, while their eyes burned with hatred. They were moving towards him, or perhaps he was moving toward them. He called out, in desperation, ‘Lara!’
Her name echoed in the hollow darkness, and dissolved into the Spawns’ giggles, ringing, wracking, deafening, childish giggles. The only light now came from the four eyes, four pools of luminescent, colourless dry ice. They were receding. Soft gravel was cradling him.
There were faces above him now, two different faces, silhouettes in the darkness, something familiar about them. Slowly his ravaged neural pathways lightened their features for him, turning them a vivid night-vision green. And then through his addled thoughts and fading consciousness, as his blood drained out onto the gravel, memory began flooding in. Into his confusion entered a fleeting moment of understanding. He knew now why they seemed familiar.
In the fancy sports car in the parking lot behind the school-house. Those profiles through his night-vision glasses as they had turned to kiss. The man and the woman.
It was them.
97
Halley was in his little battery-powered police jeep. Baseball cap on back to front, huge grin on his face, driving around and around the lawn in the back yard of their house. Roaring around the inflatable rubber paddling pool, swerving to avoid stray toys, flashing his lights, hooting his klaxon. It was his third birthday; he was fine today, he was having a great day.
Naomi grinned, too, as she watched him. She gripped John’s hand with joy beneath a warm Californian sun. It was a day that was as perfect as it was possible for any day to be – when you knew your son had less than a year to live.
The dream was slipping away. She kept her eyes shut, tried to sink back into it. But a cold draught of air was blowing on her face. And she needed to pee. She opened her eyes. The room was pitch dark and her clock said 6.01.
The gale was still raging outside. There were all kinds of creaking noises from the beams above her, rattling noises from the windows; draughts.
John was still deep asleep. She lay for some moments trying to resist that need to pee, pulling the duvet up over her face to shut out the cold air, closing her eyes, trying to return to that Californian summer afternoon. But she was wide awake and all her troubles were pouring back into her mind.
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