"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Incident at Lonely Rocks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

face with the back of one hand. The dirt flaked off her cheek, and that was when he
realized that she wasn’t covered in dirt; she was covered in dried blood.
“What happened to you?” he asked, thinking he could mask his growing
panic, but something of it must have shown in his face or in his voice because her
eyes widened.
 “I fell,” she said in that flat tone. Emotionless, almost cold. Was she talking
like that because she was in shock?
“I can see that,” he said. “Were you in the car? Is anyone else in the car?”
She wiped at her face again, then licked her chapped lips. Her hands were the
worst. They were covered in real dirt and dried blood. On her right hand, her
fingernails were gone.
“I don’t remember,” she said, but this time her voice warbled.
“You don’t remember if anyone else is in the car?”
She shook her head. “What happened?”
He frowned. She was wearing black leather shoes with some kind of heel.
Scuffed and ruined now, they had the look of shoes that cost money.
They weren’t Birkenstocks.
“Was that your car?” he asked, sure it had to be. Two accidents and a murder
couldn’t have taken place at the same site, could they? Not in the same week.
She swallowed, then glanced at the portable toilet. The look sent a chill
through him. He was about to reach for her when she took off.
She ran for the truck. He lumbered to his feet and hurried after her, but she
would reach the door long before he’d get close. She dragged the bungee cords
behind her, and he stomped on the nearest one.
It held and she kept running. He bent over and grabbed the end, then yanking
on it so hard that he had to take three steps backward.
She flew backward, and landed, hitting her head on the asphalt. She didn’t
move.
He prayed she was all right—he didn’t need another body here, not one
wrapped in his bungee cords—and he hurried to her side. Her eyes were rolling, but
she was conscious, and when she saw him, she started to scramble up.
“If you tell me what happened,” he said, “I can help you.”
She kicked him, hitting his left knee. He gasped at the shuddery sensation that
went through him; he knew, suddenly, that she had shattered something.
She was reaching for the metal edge of one of the bungee cords. He growled
like the linebacker he used to be and lunged for her, ignoring the pain, dragging his
malfunctioning leg. He slammed her into the back end of the truck and held her in
place as he wrapped the bungee cords around her until she looked like a tied-up
character in a Warner Brothers cartoon.
 He hoisted her into the back of the truck but knew he couldn’t keep her there.
She’d free herself. He was shaking. He limped to the driver’s side, got in, and drove
to the two portable toilets. Then he got out again, went to the back of the truck, and
picked her up as if she weighed no more than a child.
It was hard to carry her when he couldn’t brace his leg, but he did anyway. He
used a fireman’s hold, making sure her feet were on his backside. She wriggled and
kicked and called him names; he wasn’t sure if she was in her right mind. He’d been
trying to help her, for heaven’s sake, and now she was trying to hurt him.
She must have figured he’d seen the cuts on her hands. The missing
fingernails—those came from trying to climb free. But the cuts were the kind that
could only come from a knife blade. He’d seen a few knife fights in his day; he knew