"Linda Evans - Far Edge of Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Linda)

saw Tony Bartlett again . . .
She'd do a whole lot more than wish for a gun.
Sibyl banged a fist against the steering wheel. How could I have been so . . . so . . .
Stupid?
Blind?
Naïve?
Any number of scathing put-downs would be appropriate.
Another lightning strike jerked Sibyl back into the present reality of creaking VW Beetle and
steaming Florida heat. She tightened sweaty hands around the cracked plastic of the steering
wheel. Another searing flash momentarily erased everything beyond her car: the rutted dirt road,
the dust-white trees clinging to the hillside like forlorn mushrooms, the looming storm that had
boiled up out of a clear sky the way storms always did on summer afternoons.
An aftershock of thunder, shaking the very frame of her battered car, was louder than the
assorted groans, screeches, and bangs issuing from the rear of the decaying vehicle. "C'mon,
Nuggie, you can do it," she encouraged the faltering car.
Nuggie didn't want to climb the long, shallow grade. She was glad the old car was running at
all, given the repairs it needed. If she'd lived in mountainous country, like West Virginia or
Colorado, Nuggie would've gone to slag-heap heaven years ago—although things might have
turned out very differently, if she had lived somewhere else. Tony Bartlett would've picked a
different victim, for one thing.
Sibyl punched the gas pedal savagely. Lightning flared again, even closer. Thunder rattled
side windows in their loose frames. Sibyl winced and glanced through the driver's window, the
one that would roll neither up nor down all the way. The air trickling through was cooler than the
inside of her car, but not much. Sweat dripped down the back of her neck and prickled under her
bra strap. Hot as it was, it was little wonder the inevitable afternoon storm promised to be a dilly.
The hotter the day, the crazier the storm, that's what Granny Johnson had always said.
Industrial Light & Magic, Inc., would have been proud to claim this storm. Greasy black
clouds boiled across the sky, just clear of the treetops. Nonstop lightning—not bolts, but
fantastic, sky-arching pink columns—jabbed the blackness to strike beyond the hill crest.
Nuggie's headlights barely dented the gloom. Although it wasn't yet four in the afternoon, cattle
egrets had already started to roost. Their wings flashed white against the backdrop of black
clouds and dusty, cringing trees.
Sibyl Johnson had lived through a lot of Florida thunderstorms. But she'd never seen one like
this and she still hadn't hit the worst of it. She hadn't even hit the leading edge of rain yet.
Her car wheezed and lost acceleration. "C'mon, Nuggie," she muttered again as she
downshifted. Gears clashed and groaned somewhere in the VW's battered innards. The dying car
wouldn't survive the summer. She wasn't even certain it would survive the trip to campus. She
growled under her breath. Campus . . . Sibyl knew confronting those smug, lily-white fat cats
wouldn't do any good. It was just something she had to do, to retain what was left of her battered
self-respect. She would do it, get it over with, and leave the rest to fate.
Another sky-cracking column of lightning set roadside trees aflame, backlit with mad, pink
light. She gripped the steering wheel harder and tried to ignore a frosty prickle of fear, left over
from childhood tornadoes and the death of her parents. I am not afraid of thunderstorms. I am
not. Really, I'm not . . .
She tried to focus on practicalities to distract herself from unreasoning fear. Driving straight
into the storm like this, she didn't have much hope of avoiding the rain. Once it cut in . . .
Nuggie's tires were balder than her department chairman. Eight-year-old tires just wouldn't cope
with blinding rain on a washboarded dirt road. And there wasn't money—not now—to buy new
ones or fix the roof on the house, either. She savaged her lower lip and blinked rapidly.
Car . . . house . . . career . . . Sibyl wanted to bawl like a baby. But with a gullywasher in the