"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Heroics" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

known he'd been holding. No one was around. He couldn't' even hear voices from
inside the building.
For the first time, he wondered what they were doing in there. Waiting
until the search had moved on -- to Grand Ronde or McMinnville or maybe even
Portland. If he hadn't seen that oil trail, he would have thought that they
had driven Sarah out of the Coastal Mountain Range.
But why stay here? How long would they wait? Wouldn't the police
continue searching for them?
Then he remembered how shorthanded the county was. Even if the state
police brought personnel to help, they wouldn't be enough to cover every
square inch. And even if they were on the ball, they wouldn't be stopping
SUVs. They'd be looking for the cars that Sobel had described, hoping to find
one with a little terrified girl inside.
If they waited, they would be less suspicious. Their getaway would be
much easier.
His grip tightened on the knife. So close to disaster. One oil trail
away from losing Sarah forever.
He made himself go slow. This much he'd learned from all his novel
research: the man who panicked -- the man who felt he had to do everything
quickly -- was the man who died.
He had no intention of dying, not on this old logging road, in front of
a dilapidated cabin. He was going to find Sarah, and he was going to make
certain that the police could rescue her.
Sobel crouched as he approached the cars. He moved back onto the road,
so that he could walk as silently as possible. His injured arm bounced against
his chest, but for the first time that day, the pain didn't matter.
He was focussed.
He moved to the SUV first. Its wheels were large and state-of-the-art.
It would take all the strength he had to damage them. To hedge his bet, he
hunkered down beside the wheel farthest from the cabin and opened the air
pressure valve. He threw the cap into the weeds. Then he gripped the knife in
his good hand and jammed it into the tire.
It felt good to slam the knife repeatedly into something -- a way of
working of the adrenaline, the pent-up anger and frustration, the fear buried
beneath all the bravado.
When that tire was sufficiently ruined, he did the same thing to the
front tire, amazed that no one had come out of the cabin to investigate the
chunk-chunk-chunking sounds he was making. Maybe they couldn't hear them. He
couldn't hear any conversation from the cabin. They probably couldn't hear
much outside.
 Bits of galvanized rubber hung off the blade of his knife. He glanced
at the other cars. He had to destroy their tires too, but he wasn't sure doing
the wheels would be enough. He had to make certain that no one got away from
this cabin. It was the only thing -- the best thing -- he could do.
Only he knew nothing about cars except the basics -- how to check his
own oil, where to put in the coolant, when to change a fan. He certainly had
no idea how to disable one, not from the inside anyway. And even if he managed
to pop the hood, someone would hear that. People's ears were always attuned to
the closing of a car door, the slamming of a hood.
Not to mention the fact that he'd probably be seen.