"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Sweet Young Things" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

homeowners who tended these places for fifty years getting the profit, they got little
more than they originally paid for the houses, not even what the bare land was worth.
They were old; they were tired; they were ill. They didn’t have the time to research,
probably didn’t even know enough to look up the tax-appraised value.
Instead, they got what sounded like a small fortune to them in exchange for
signing some documents, moving into the assisted-living development the kids had
been begging them to join, and maybe never discovering that they could have gotten
ten, twenty, thirty times more if they’d just sold their house through a reputable
agent.
Fala had until Friday. Friday was a tough deadline, but she knew the Club
could make it work.
****
Fala had only one more task, and she had to wait until after five before she
could even start.
She had to get the list of people who had considered selling their homes to
Herbert, Steinman, and Wilkes.
She knew it wouldn’t be tough. The network looked standard, the computers
were standard, and that meant the firewalls were standard, too. She figured it would
take her two hours maximum to hack into the system, find the information she
needed, and e-mail it directly to the money group, holed up in Portland’s Hilton
downtown.
It took her a lot less time than she had figured. More than one little wage slave
had left a computer on, with the Internet connection running. Fala hacked in, tapped
a few buttons, looked through the files, and found all the information she needed.
She paused long enough to delete every mention of her fake name, and the
name of her pretend grandmother. She even went into the receptionist’s log and took
out the record of her phone call.
And then, because she could, she went through all the personal and
confidential office files, searching for a mention, any mention, of Preston’s name.
She found a Preston L. Steinman, President and CEO of Herbert, Steinman,
and Wilkes. The picture on the company’s only ad brochure sure looked a lot like an
ageing Preston Lidner.
 “We’re going to get you where it hurts, buddy,” she whispered.
****
That fantasy of getting Preston Lidner first surfaced in Las Vegas at three
A.M. Fala had just turned down a pickup from one of the best-looking men she’d
seen in a long time. It had been years since she’d trusted a man enough to spend
more than a night with him and, as Tess had reminded her, Fala didn’t have a night.
She had a rigorous exam in three days. She wasn’t at a conference; she was at
an advance training course in real-estate law, and she needed the certification.
The last person she expected to see was Preston. He sat down at a craps table
not fifty feet from her. He didn’t look any different. His hair was slicked back in a
more modern style, but his jaw was still square, his smile crooked. He had several
stacks of one-hundred-dollar chips in front of him, and he was playing with the
single-mindedness of a man who had money to burn.
“Look,” Fala whispered.
Tess did, and got noticeably pale. Even then, Tess had a solidity that made
her seem more powerful than she was. Her legacy from Preston, besides the legal
fees and jail time, was an additional 100 pounds on her five-foot-two-inch frame.
Tess made it work, though. She dressed as if she were worth a fortune, designer