"Yvonne Navarro - Elektra" - читать интересную книгу автора (Navarro Yvonne)

Glen of the Technology Nook in Sierra Vista, Arizona, who kept me going with borrowed parts when
my computer blew up.

Prologue

HELL’S KITCHEN, NEW YORK

EVENINNEWYORK,THERE ARE MOMENTS AND places of silence, not minutes but slivers of
time where nothing—man, animal, rodent, or machine—moves, where even the wind seems to hold its
breath.

Of course, these moments seldom last very long. After all, thisis New York.

Somewhere in the city—inmost of the city—neon and fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed, bathing the
streets, buildings, and a hundred thousand late night partygoers in false, multicolored daylight. Music
spilled from the doorways of clubs and shops in never-ending waves of sound, booming, whining,
sometimes floating along the layers of cigarette smoke and pollution like something that might have been
beautiful had it not been overwhelmed by its surroundings, swallowed up in the raw power of New York
City’s nightlife. In this ocean of light and sound and movement, the lives of people small and great were
lived, their deaths were planned and experienced and sometimes even avoided, and all the while the
common people remained utterly ignorant that only a few streets over, entire destinies were being
changed.



An ambulance, large, boxy, and top-heavy, careened around the corner onto a nameless residential
street where the incessant glare of neon had been replaced by lights spaced too far above to be of any
use. Its bright headlights cut across the darkness, painting a solid stream of brightness where the red and
white revolving bubbles across the top of its cab blinked and disappeared, blinked and disappeared. The
only thing that moved in its path was a crumpled piece of newspaper sucked across the road just ahead
of its bumper. Puddles of oily water fountained from beneath the vehicle’s tires, but there was no one
around to splash. Dim lights burned here and there in the windows of the apartments overlooking the
street, but the people inside, secure in the dubious safety of their homes, had long ago grown accustomed
to the sudden shrieking of ambulance sirens; they paid little attention as the driver of this one leaned
forward and flicked the switch back and forth.

Supplies rattled wildly in the side racks as the ambulance hit a pothole and bounced. The two
paramedics in the back noticed only enough to grab at the IV hooked on one inside wall and keep it from
jouncing off the wall hook. A heart monitor bleeped erratically, then went into alarm mode—

beeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppp!

“She’s crashing!” Ray, the younger of the two, bent over the lovely young woman on the cart and
yanked up first her left eyelid, then the right. There was a wide, shallow cut high on the left side of her
neck that looked like someone had tried for her carotid artery, but this bothered him not at all. But her
stomach was something else, and crimson blood oozed from beneath her back despite the heavy pack of
bandages they’d put under her to try to slow the bleeding. The bandages were pressed tightly against a
puncture wound made by some kind of wide and vicious blade that had gone all the way through her
body. Even so, there was no time to be gentle. He’d gotten a little bit of response from his earlier check
of her vitals, but now her pupils were fixed, dilated wide, and dark. There wasn’t much time.