"Barbara Hambly - Night's Edge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

Swallowing hard, she lowered her gaze, focusing on her car in the driveway beside the house. Leaping
Lana was an '87 Buick Regal—a four-door sedan in rust-brown that ate gas like M&Ms and sounded
like a tank.

Kiley squared her shoulders and forced herself to march over there—even though it meant moving
towardher house when every cell in her body was itching to moveawayfrom it instead. She opened
Lana's door and climbed in. She couldn't quite keep herself from checking the back seat first, the second
the interior light came on. It was clear. The keys were in the switch, because if someone was brave
enough to steal Kiley Brigham's car, she'd always thought she would enjoy the vengeance she'd be
forced to wreak on their pathetic asses, and besides, who would steal an '87 Buick, anyway?

She turned the key. Lana growled in protest at being bothered at such an ungodly hour, but finally came
around and cooperatively backed her boat-size backside out into the street. As Kiley shifted into Drive,
she glanced up at her house again.

There was someone standing in her bedroom window looking back at her.

And then there wasn't. She squinted, rubbed her eyes. The image hadn't moved, hadn't turned away.
The dark silhouette she knew she had seen simply vanished. Faded. Like mist.

"Fuck this," she muttered, and she stomped on Lana's pedal and didn't let off until they'd reached the
offices of theBurnt Hills Gazette, and her own office there, which held three things Kiley dearly needed
just then: a change of clothes, a telephone and a spare pack of smokes.

She was so together by the time the police arrived that they actually seemed skeptical. At least until they
headed back to her recently acquired house and saw the message on the mirror for themselves. Kiley
preferred to stay out in the bedroom—and even that gave her the creeps—while the cops clustered
around her bathroom sink debating whether the substance on her mirror was blood. One opined that it
looked like barbecue sauce, and another said it was cherry syrup. At that point the conversation turned
to previous cases where what was thought to be blood turned out to be something else entirely, like corn
syrup with red food coloring added—a tale that the officers found laugh-worthy.

She interrupted their fun by standing as close to her bathroom door as she wanted to get, and clearing
her throat. The laughter stopped, the cops looked up.

"Excuse me, but shouldn't one of you be taking a sample of that? And maybe checking my house for
signs of forced entry?"

"Did that, ma' am," one cop said, sending a long-suffering look toward another. "No signs of a break-in.
You sure the place was locked?"
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"Of course I'm sure the place was… " She stopped, pursed her lips, thought it over with brutal honesty.
"Actually, I forget to lock up as often as I remember."

"Mmm-hmm. Well, at least you're aware this was the work of an intruder."