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

them from killing her -- keep her alive until the police arrived.
He fingered the cell phone with his good hand. He had to make good
mental notes of this trip. Then he'd call and say what he found -- if he found
anything.
He stopped at the next corner. He had no idea how far he'd gone. All he
saw up ahead was dappled sunlight and more trees. Something rustled in the
grass near him -- a small sound. A bird, maybe, or a squirrel. Nothing
threatening.
Nothing that could toss him over an embankment again.
He frowned, realizing that something was different.
It took him a moment to figure out what it was. Stumps. Stumps, buried
in the underbrush, moss and ferns growing on top of the old, perfect cuts.
Stumps everywhere, and beside them, willowy trees at least twenty years old.
He had been right. This was an old logging road, unused since the early
eighties, gravel gone to storms and rain and trucks that once combed this
land. Forgotten by everyone except the handful of people who'd worked it.
He felt a thin excitement. The road would only go as far as the stumps.
The loggers had no reason to go deeper into the forest than that. Now he had a
destination. The end of the road. He'd go to the end of the road and turn
around.
 Sobel moved into the weeds at the roadside, noting without irony that a
big part of him wanted to find nothing on this road. Even though he was
searching for Sarah and the men who took her, part of him wanted the nobility
of the search without the messiness of finding them.
Jackson Ross wouldn't have felt this way.
Sweat trickled down Sobel's back even though the day was cool. His feet
crunched in the weeds, and near him a bird twittered, unconcerned that he was
nearby.
He rounded a corner and saw the cars.
Three cars -- the two that had boxed him in and one other -- a black
SUV, new, and parked to the side.
The getaway car.
Why hadn't they left yet? What were they waiting for? His stomach
churned. What if the third car wasn't a getaway car at all, but belonged to
someone else -- reinforcements, someone as tough as the others?
It didn't matter. He had back-up. The sheriff was coming. The state
police were on the way. It wouldn't take them long to find him.
If they knew where he was.
He didn't see anyone near the cars, but they had to be somewhere. He
took one more step forward and then saw the cabin. That word was too grand for
the dilapidated building, but he didn't know what else to call it. Shack
implied something smaller. This had once been someone's home, but it had
fallen into disrepair. The roof was half off, the porch was crooked, and the
stairs leading up to it were missing.
They had to be inside.
Sarah had to be inside.
He needed to get to her, but first he had to make sure their rescuers
could find them.
He backed down the road quietly, going around the corner, praying that
no one had seen him. His arm throbbed; he could feel his heartbeat echo in the