[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
on his forearm.
Hey! said Bear. The fuck you doing, man?
Cyrus had not wanted to use the gun. He had wanted this done as quietly as
possible, but the big and strangely familiar man now racing up the driveway
left him with no choice. He rose from the woman before he could finish his
cut, took the gun from his belt, and fired.
Two white vans took the Medway exit off I-95 and followed 11 through East
Millinocket toward Dolby Pond. In the first van were three men and one woman,
all armed. In the second sat another man and woman, also armed, and the
Reverend Aaron Faulkner, who was silently reading his Bible on a bench in the
back of the van. Had one of the state s medical experts been on hand to check
on the preacher, he would have found that the old man s temperature was
virtually normal and that all signs of his apparent ill health had already
begun to fade.
A cell phone disturbed the silence of the second van. One of the men answered,
spoke briefly, then turned back to Faulkner.
He s coming in to land now, he told the old man. He ll be waiting for us
when we get there. We re right on schedule.
Faulkner nodded, but did not respond. Instead, his eyes remained fixed on his
Bible and the account of the trials of Job.
Cyrus Nairn sat behind the wheel of the Nissan at the Black Point Market and
sipped a Coke. It was a warm evening and he desperately needed to cool down.
The car s a/c was busted. It didn t matter much to Cyrus anyway: once the
woman was dead he would ditch the car and head south, and that would be the
end of it. He could suffer a little discomfort; after all, it was nothing
compared to what the woman was about to endure.
Page 173
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
He finished the Coke, then drove toward the bridge and dumped the can from the
window into the waters below. Things had not gone according to plan over at
Pine Point. First, the woman was already leaving the house when he arrived,
and had gone for the spray in her bag, causing him to take her outside. Then
the big man had come along and Cyrus had no choice but to use his gun. He had
been afraid, for a moment, that people would hear but there had been no
immediate fuss, no clamor. Still, Cyrus had been forced to leave hurriedly,
and he did not like rushing his work.
He checked his watch and, his lips moving silently, counted down from ten.
When he reached one, he thought he heard the muffled explosion from Pine
Point. When he looked out of his window, smoke was already rising from Mary
Mason s burning car. The police would arrive soon, maybe the fire department,
and they would find the woman and the dead man. He had preferred to leave the
woman dying, not dead. He wanted the noise of the ambulance, the distraction
to the policeman MacArthur and his colleagues, even at the risk of her being
able to provide a description of him. He suspected that he might not have cut
her enough, that she might even survive her injuries. He wondered if he had
left her too close to the car, if she might not already be burning. He didn t
want there to be any doubt about her identity. They were minor issues, but
they troubled Cyrus. He wanted to be able to work on the redhead without
interruption. The prospect of capture, though, did not concern him: Cyrus
would die before he would go back to prison. Cyrus had been promised
salvation, and the saved fear nothing.
To his right, a road curved up into a copse of trees. Cyrus parked his car out
of sight then, his stomach tense with excitement, proceeded up the hill. He
cleared the trees and passed a ruined shed to his left, the white house now
glowing before him, the dying sunlight reflecting from its glass. Soon, the
marsh too would be aflame, the waters running orange and red.
Red, mostly.
Mary Mason lay on her back on the grass, staring at the sky. She had seen the
hunched man toss the device into her car, the slow fuse burning, and had
guessed what it was, but she felt paralyzed, unable to move her hands to stem
the bleeding let alone pull herself away from the car.
She was weakening.
She was dying.
She felt something brush her leg, and managed to move her head slightly. A
long trail of blood marked the big man s painful progress toward her. He was
almost beside her now, hauling himself along by his ragged and bloodied
fingernails. He reached out to her and grasped her hand, then pressed it
against the wound in her side. She gasped in pain, but he forced her to
maintain the pressure.
Then, slowly, he began to drag her by the collar of her shirt toward the
grass. She screamed aloud once, but still she tried to keep her hand pressed
to the wound until at last he could pull her no farther. He lay against the
old tree in her yard, her head resting on his legs and his hand upon her hand,
keeping the pressure on, the expanse of its trunk shielding them both from the
car when the device exploded moments later, shattering the glass in the
automobile and the windows in her house and sending a blast of heat rolling
over the lawn and the tips of her toes.
Hold on, said Bear. His breath rattled in his throat. Hold on now. They ll
be coming soon.
Roger Bowen sat in a corner of Tommy Condon s pub on Charleston s Church
Street, sipping on a beer. On the table before him lay his cell phone. He was
waiting for the call to confirm that the preacher was safe and on his way
north to Canada. Bowen checked his watch as two men in their late twenties
passed by, joshing and pushing each other. The one nearest stumbled against
Bowen s table, sending his cell phone tumbling onto the floor. Bowen rose up
in fury as the young man apologized and replaced the phone on the table.
Page 174
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
You fucking asshole, hissed Bowen.
Hey, take it easy, said the guy. I said I was sorry.
They left shaking their heads. Bowen watched them climb into a car outside and
drive away.
Two minutes later, the phone on his table rang.
In the seconds before he pressed Receive, it might have struck him that the
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]