"Mary Janice Davidson - Thief Of Hearts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Mary Janice)

It was her. Crouched on the ledge, perfectly balanced on the balls of her feet, she had one small fist
raised, doubtless ready to knock again. When she saw him, she gestured patiently to the lock. He dimly
noticed she was dressed like a normal person instead of a burglar—navy leggings and a matching
turtleneck—and wondered why she wasn’t shivering with cold.

He groped for the latch, dry-mouthed with fear for her. They were three stories up! If she should lose
her balance…if a gust of wind should come up…the latch finally yielded to his fumbling fingers and he
wrenched the window open, grabbing for her. She leaned back, out of the reach of his arms and his heart
stopped—actually stopped, ka-THUD!—in his chest. He backpedaled away from the window. “Okay,
okay, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you now would you pleaseget your ass in here ?”

She raised her eyebrows at him and complied, swinging one leg over the ledge and stepping down into
the room. He collapsed on the cot, clutching his chest. “Could you please not everever do that again?”
he gasped. “Christ! My heart! What’s going on? How’d you get up there? Did the nurses lock all the
entrances again? They do that when they’re overworked…”

“Quoth the raven, nevermore,” she said and helped herself to a cup of coffee from the pot set up next to
the window. At his surprised gape, she smiled a little and tapped her ear. “Thin glass. I heard you through
the window. ‘While I pondered, nearly napping, suddenly there came a rapping, rapping at my chamber
door.’ I think that’s how it goes. Also, the man you saw me bludgeon into unconsciousness dropped a
dime on you today.”

“He what?”

“Dropped a dime. Rolled you over. Put you out. Phoned you in. Wants to clock you. Wants to drop
you. Made arrangements to have you killed, pronto. Sugar?”

“No thanks,” he said numbly.

“I mean,” she said patiently, “is there sugar?”

He pointed to the last locker on the left and thought to warn her too late. When she opened it (first
wrapping her sleeve around her hand, he noticed), several hundred tea bags, salt packets and sugar
cubes tumbled out, free of their overstuffed, poorly stacked boxes. She quickly stepped back; avoiding
the rain of sweetener, then bent, picked a cube off the floor, blew on it and dropped it into her cup. She
shoved the locker door with her knee until it grudgingly shut, trapping a dozen or so tea bags and sugar
packets in the bottom with a grinding sound that set his teeth on edge.

She went to the door, thumbed the lock with her sleeve, then came back and sat down at the table
opposite the cot. She took a tentative sip of her coffee and then another, not so tentative. He was
impressed—the hospital coffee tasted like primeval mud. “So that’s the scoop,” she said casually.

“You’re here to kill me?” he asked, trying to keep up with the twists and turns of the last forty seconds.
“You’re the hitman? Hitperson?”Who knocked for entry? he added silently.

“Me? Do wet work?” She threw her head back and pealed laughter at the ceiling. She had, he noticed
admiringly, a great laugh. Her hair was plaited in a long blonde braid, halfway down her back. He
wondered what it would look like unbound and spread across his pillow. “Oh, that’s very funny, Dr.
Dean.”