Ann Rule Possession

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promise to Marcella. He had kept no other promises.
He carried Max, as light as a woman, all muscle slackened by shock, down into
the flat. She looked at them without interest or compassion. She sat next to
the corpse and held its good hand. Clothed, she resembled Joanne more�but she
no longer smelled of flowers and soap; she smelled warm and musky�unhealthy,
like the hookers on Pike Street who bathed less than they perfumed.
He could not take his hand from Max's axillary; if he kept it there, he could
form a barrier of his own flesh, sealing the air out, forbidding the wound to
suck and flatten the lung. She watched him listlessly.
"Sam?"
He turned to stare at her, surprised that she had remembered his name. "What?"
"He's dead." So is Danny. You're not very concerned over Danny, are
Danny's dead." It was not a question, and it was not a ement. "Is Danny dead?"
That was not really a question ier, because her voice dropped, and her eyes
slid out of
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"Does it matter?"
"Don't tell Danny."
"Don't tell him what? How could I tell him anything?"
"Just don't tell him."
She's crazy, he thought.
"Are you mad at me?"
There was no way to give an answer with dignity. He stopped his ears to her
and watched Ling's face, gray green under the dark first layer of skin. Sam
thought he heard the rotors buppering a long way off, and he watched the
clouds, willing the helicopter to find them.
Sam was not sure how long they waited. He watched to see if Max still
breathed, and he concentrated on willing the brown chest to rise and fall. She
moved somewhere behind him. He heard her pacing the grass shelf. She wasn't a
threat; her gun rested where he'd flung it, lost in the weeds. The dead man's
weapon was beneath his leg; she could not lift her red-haired lover and roll
him off it. She talked to herself, nonsense words, from which Sam could draw
nothing. He preferred not to look at her.
Her movement stopped and he heard her whisper so faintly that he barely heard
her. He held his palm tighter over Max's wound.
Something touched his shoulder, a light touch he easily shrugged off. And then
it touched again.
"Go away, Joanne. Just go away."
He heard her say something, sounding far back in the meadow, the sound all out
of sync because of the altitude. He spoke again without turning to look at
her. "Please stay away. Just be quiet and leave me alone."
The rifle butt caught him just at the base of his skull and threw him
sideways, tearing his hand from Ling's wound. Sam looked up, prepared to knock
her away from them again, not yet connected to the pain in his head. And saw.
. .
The green eyes were wide open and the dead man towered over him, his face a
twisted mask of rage and blood.
Sam rolled away from Max, felt thundering noise in his
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own head, and focused on the man above him. One arm hung dead, and he realized
his attacker could not shoot; there was a fogging, a blindness in the eyes.
The rifle butt swung down at him again, and he ducked and rolled away, closer
to the edge of the precipice. Too close. He detected a lack of balance in the
giant, but the rifle swung again and thudded against his shoulder. He grabbed
it with both hands before it could be pulled back, and put his weight behind
it.
The red-headed man seemed about to fall heavily on top of him and he braced
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for the impact, and then saw that the big man was going over him. The bloody
face was above his for a second and then gone. His attacker made no cry as his
face and useful arm slid into the rocks above the ravine, as the purple arm
was crushed under him, no last roar of protest or fear as he slid slowly and
then faster down the meadow's lip and disappeared into the air beyond it. It
seemed an inordinately long time before Sam heard the sharp clatter of the .22
on the rocks below, and then a heavier, hollow thud.
He did not look down. His head still jangled with pain and dizziness as he
fought to find a handhold to stop himself from going over too. He caught
something and held on. He pulled up a little, found another safe thickness of
weeds, and used them like rope to crawl farther from the edge. He remembered
now that if he could not get back to Max, Max would have no air.
Sam's head began to clear, and he saw that Max still �reathed very lightly,
and that his eyelids still fluttered. The 01g man had not been dead, only an
ox felled with a
nning blow�but he was sure as hell dead now. Sam sealed Ling's wound again, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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