"Christopher Pike - The Last Vampire 01 - The Last Vampire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Christopher)

a rumpled brown sport coat, and in a glance I see the weighty bulge of a revolver beneath his left breast.
Mr. Riley thinks I am dangerous, I note, and my curiosity goes up a notch. But I'm not afraid he knows
what I really am, or he would not have chosen to meet with me at all, even in broad daylight.

"Alisa Perne?" he says. His tone is uneasy.

"Yes."

He gestures from twenty feet away. "Please come in and have a seat."

I enter his office but do not take the offered chair in front of his desk, but rather, one against the right
wall. I want a straight line to him if he tries to pull a gun on me. If he does try, he will die, and maybe
painfully.

He looks at me, trying to size me up, and it is difficult for him because I just sit here. He, however, is a
montage of many impressions. His coat is not only wrinkled but stained--greasy burgers eaten hastily. I
note it all. His eyes are red rimmed, from a drug as much as fatigue. I hypothesize his poison to be
speed--medicine to nourish long hours beating the pavement. After me? Surely. There is also a glint of
satisfaction in his eyes, a prey finally caught. I smile, privately at the thought, yet a thread of uneasiness
enters me as well. The office is stuffy, slightly chilly. I have never liked the cold, although I could survive
an Arctic winter night naked to the bone.

"I guess you wonder why I wanted to talk to you so urgently," he says,

I nod. My legs are uncrossed, my white slacks hanging loose. One hand rests in my lap, the other plays
with my hair, Left-handed, right-handed--I am neither, and both.

"May I call you Alisa?" he asks.

"You may call me what you wish, Mr. Riley."

My voice startles him, just a little, and it is the effect I want. I could have pitched it like any modern
teenager, but I have allowed my past to enter, the power of it. I want to keep Mr. Riley nervous, for
nervous people say much that they later regret.

"Call me Mike," he says. "Did you have trouble finding the place?"

"No."

"Can I get you anything? Coffee? A soda?"

"No."

He glances at a folder on his desk, flips it open. He clears his throat, and again I hear his tiredness, as
well as his fear. But is he afraid of me? I am not sure. Besides the gun under his coat, he has another
be-neath some papers at the other side of his desk. I smell the gunpowder in the bullets, the cold steel. A
lot of firepower to meet a teenage girl. I hear a faint scratch of moving metal and plastic. He is taping the
conversation.
 "First off I should tell you who I am," he says. "As I said on the phone, I am a private detective. My
business is my own--I work entirely freelance. People come to me to find loved ones, to research risky