Greg Rucka - Critical Space
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- Название:Critical Space
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Critical Space: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация
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And there had been the people I still knew, the ones I loved. Bridgett saying that unless I could stop her she'd go back on the junk, and then making me watch as she cooked up her heroin, injected it, all the while begging me to stop her. Scott Fowler with a folder of photographs, the Backroom Boys, Gracey and Bowles, standing behind him, and each photo was of Antonia, and each picture was worse than the first, her body bent, stripped, broken, torn. One snapshot had Her Ladyship facedown on a concrete floor, her face obviously missing, like Michael Ortez in a warehouse in Dallas.
"That's what really happened," Fowler had said. "And why didn't you tell me?"
Those weren't the worst, and thankfully, all were already sinking into lost memory. But in one I'd lost my left leg, the tiny puncture in my thigh growing alive with gangrene, until rotting flesh had invaded my lower body. Then Drama had come and told me not to worry, that it was to be expected, and when I'd looked again, the leg was gone and she was walking away, taking it with her.
It had seemed real.
Birds were singing, and I turned my head to the left and saw sky and the tops of trees, and the color of the sky was a solid, vivid blue, and there didn't look to be a cloud in it. I listened longer, and there were a lot of birds, and then, behind their calls, the constant white noise of surf meeting shore.
There was a stand beside the bed on the left side, and on it were my glasses, a glass of water, and two tablets of Advil. I sat up and let the sheet fall and put the glasses on. Just that much movement left me breathless. My head felt swollen, and my mouth parched. My back was sore, the muscles along my neck and shoulder full of dull pressure, as if I'd held them in the same position for too long.
I took the Advil dry, then contemplated the water before draining the glass. It was tepid, but tasted pure. I got to my feet, standing naked by the bed. The floor was cool, red and brown tile in an ornate star pattern that repeated over and over to the walls. The air was warm and a little moist. My legs felt steady.
There was a square of gauze on the inside of my right arm at the elbow, held in place with a strip of cloth tape. I pulled it free, saw dried blood on the gauze, the bruising on my skin.
A pair of pants, the color of wet sand, was draped over the end of the bed. They were baggy and a little long, and secured around the waist with a drawstring. As I pulled them on, the Doberman came back, stopping in the doorway to look at me.
"Hi, dog," I said.
The Doberman's nostrils flared. But for the scar, he probably would have been show-worthy, and as it was he was clearly healthy, clearly strong. Without blinking he watched me tie the drawstring, then followed me as I went to the veranda.
I was on the second story of the house, and the house was atop a hill. It was constructed of concrete, painted a pale orange, and the veranda itself was open, twelve feet wide and long, closed to my right but open to the left where it stretched along the length of the house and turned a corner, out of sight. The ocean was perhaps half a mile away. The strip of beach was white, and the water was green near the shore, and then it turned the same blue of the sky as it stretched to meet the horizon. In the distance I could see a yacht with a white sail. The sun was behind me, blocked by the house, and it felt early in the morning. I knew the afternoon would be hot.
The hillside down to the beach was covered with trees and plants, flowers in bloom, and the growth was so thick I couldn't make out a path. The trees were palm and cedar and bamboo and mahogany, and there were others I didn't recognize, including several that seemed to be bearing fruit. The foliage confirmed it as much as the bird that was perched nearby on the rail, eyeing me suspiciously. The bird was small, yellow-bellied, with an almost hummingbird-like narrow beak, marking it as a nectar feeder. I'd never seen a bird like it before.
Not only was I no longer in New York, I wasn't certain if I was still in the same hemisphere.
The Doberman was looking from me to the bird on the railing.
"Wouldn't happen to know where I can find a phone, would you?" I asked him.
He didn't answer, looking back at the bird, and then his ears pricked, and he turned and loped out of the room, his steps clicking on the tile. I looked for the little bird, discovered it had flown away, and then started along the veranda, around the side of the house. I knew I wasn't going to find a phone, and even if I did, I wasn't quite sure what good it would do me. Placing a call to New York would probably take time, and the first thing Natalie or Dale or Bridgett or Corry would demand to know would be a question I couldn't answer. "Maybe the Caribbean" wasn't going to get any of us far.
The veranda ended around the corner, past another set of French doors, open, and another bedroom. The bed was a queen, unmade, and identical to the one I'd just left. In an open closet hung a small selection of clothes, most of them women's and some of them expensive. There were two more doors, and through one was a master bathroom with double sink, toilet, tub, and shower, that exited back into the room where I'd started. The other door led to a hall and a flight of stairs. The Doberman was nowhere to be seen, and was apparently staying quiet.
The stairs ended in a square, central room with a high gabled ceiling. The roof beams were exposed, dark varnished wood that was maybe teak. Two more sets of French doors were open to the left, leading out to a covered patio and another view of the water. Since I was now looking in the opposite direction I had been above, it struck me that if we were on an island, it was a small one. I headed out the door.
Drama was sitting in a white wicker chair at a glass-topped table. The Doberman lay at her feet. On the table was a pitcher, and a French press of coffee, two mugs, and two glasses. A plate of fruit was by her arm, mangoes, green oranges, grapefruit, and papaya, and on another plate were four muffins. By her left hand was a Walther P88 semiautomatic pistol. She was wearing shorts over a black one-piece bathing suit, a no-nonsense Speedo. In the sunlight, the hair I had once thought was brown or black was now almost copper. Her arms and legs were tanned, and along her left bicep, curling just inside of the elbow and then around and up to her shoulder, disappearing beneath the bathing suit, was a hard white scar. Other scars crisscrossed her forearms, signs of cuts and tears, and on her leg was a starburst discoloration, where a bullet once had found its way inside.
She lowered a book to watch me approach, marking her place with a finger. Her eyes were almost drowsy.
The book she was reading was Drama: A Window into the World of Protection and Assassination.
She let me finish looking over the table, then said, "The coffee was just brewed," and turned her attention back to the book.
Feeling hungry, I took a seat. The juice was fresh, pineapple mixed with orange, and I drained one glass and finished half of another before I reached for the coffee. When I went for the plate of fruit, my hand was less than five inches from the Walther. She didn't seem to mind, or care; she just turned a page.
There was a slight breeze rustling leaves, and the scent of salt water was in it. A flight of six steps ran from the patio to a driveway, and the driveway curved into a gravel road. There was no sign of a car, but a blue bicycle leaned against the railing at the bottom of the stairs, and a large Honda dirt bike was parked beneath an overhang a little farther down.
The coffee was hot and strong, and I drank it looking at the pistol on the table and tried to figure out what it meant. She had gone to a lot of trouble to get me here alone, and I didn't think she'd have made the effort just to shoot me over breakfast. If she needed the gun for self-defense, I was flattered, but she was overrating me, and that wasn't something she'd ever done before. If she was expecting someone besides me who might need shooting, she wasn't acting like it.
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