"Jumper:Griffin _s Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Steven)

"TAKE ME BACK!"

She jammed the cylinder into my side and the current and the burning came again. My back arched so much my heels and head were the only thing touching the ground. This time I passed out completely.

The sun was dropping below the horizon when I came to. E.V. was coming down the ridge, stumbling, tripping over rocks. She was crying, her eyes so filled with tears she could obviously hardly see.

I sat up. My muscles felt like I'd run a marathon, lactic acid soreness, and there was a burn on my side and another on my back, but I felt like I could jump if I had to.

She had the cell phone in one hand. I didn't see the black rod.

"I didn't know you had a cell phone," I said. I felt insane. Surely this is what a psychotic break is like?

She stopped, then threw the phone onto the sand between us. "It's not mine. It belongs to them."

Oh, fuck.

She pulled the black rod out of her back pocket and I tensed, but she threw that down, as well. "And that. And those pills." She gestured to where her purse still lay. "I dropped the drink. Why'd I drop the drink? It would be over if I hadn't dropped the drink!"

I looked back at the purse, at the pill bottle. "What kind of pill was it?"

She looked away. "They said it would knock you out. So they could catch you." She looked back at me and winced. "Yeah, I know. If you'd jumped it wouldn't do any good, even if you passed out after. It had to be poison."

"You knew that?" It felt like my face was going to break. "You knew that and… maybe that's why you dropped it." Then the rest of it hit me. "They have your parents." I didn't ask it-I said it.

She dropped to her knees. "They killed my father. They cut his fucking throat right in front of me! And then they put the knife against my mother's neck!"

"Oh, God. I'm so sorry." I got up and walked over to her but she shoved me away. She kicked at me and clawed and I stepped back, then dropped down and sat on my heels. "How did they find you? Was it me? Did they track some of my jumps in Trenton?"

She was lying on her side, curled in. "He did it! Goddamn him. He did it. He wanted to check up on you. After he found that sketch, he got a friend to run a criminal check. They showed up with police badges and he answered all their questions. He gave you to them on a silver platter and then they cut his throat. Daddy, you idiot! The fucking phone won't get a signal! Oh, God. They'll kill them both!"

Oh. "They have your brother, too."

She screamed again and pounded the ground with her fists.

I understood, then. "You went up on the ridge to try to get a signal. If you'd reached them, what would you have done? Come down and finished me? Wait until they came and confirmed my death?"

She jumped up and ran down the arroyo, north. She was still sobbing. I pocketed the phone and, cautiously, the black cylinder, then took up her purse. I let her get about fifty yards away and tripped her, appearing beside her path with my foot outstretched. While she was still down, I hooked the waistline of her jeans and jumped her back to the Hole.

She looked at the bed and collapsed on the floor, sobbing, sobbing.

I couldn't stand it and I jumped away, to the Greenwood Shell petrol station across from her high school. There, in the light of the fluorescents, I looked at the rod. It had four projecting electrodes, sharp, for sticking through clothing, and a slide switch, like on an electric torch. I turned it on, but it didn't spark, so I suspected it was actuated when a partial conductor bridged the points.

I took out the cell phone and called, using the only number in the cell phone's call log.

"Speak." It was Kemp's voice.

"She's dead. I blame you."

I hung up.

I didn't want to hear his threats against Mrs. Kelson or E.V.'s brother, Patrick. I wanted to lower the bar, remove any reason for the bastards to kill them. The phone buzzed in my hand, vibrating, and I thought about throwing it away. Instead I held down the power button until it turned completely off.

I jumped back to the Hole. "Where did they have them?" She flinched at my voice and looked up at me. "What?" "Where did they have your mother and brother?" "They said they'd be moving them. Not to bother with a rescue since they wouldn't be there."

I looked at the ceiling and squeezed my eyes shut. "That's what they said. Where were they when they killed your- when they threatened your mother?"

"In the basement. They were all in the basement."

"How many of them were there? That you saw?"

"I don't know. None of the men at the club were the men at the house. There were four at the house." I jumped.

The house was dark. I'd walked from the petrol station, expecting them to show up in cars or on foot. Hell-I half expected them to parachute in.

But they hadn't.

I remembered the bomb at Alejandra's and I wondered if that's what they had in mind. I jumped away, to the Empty Quarter, and then back again.

Nothing.

I kicked the front door in and jumped away, to the sidewalk.

The dog began barking from the backyard.

I went around the side. There were covered stairs-storm-cellar type, just short of the fence. Booger danced on the other side, barking and wagging his tail at the same time. I tugged at the handle and it opened but I jumped back to the sidewalk before it swung to the side.

Nothing.

I remembered the bomb in San Diego, the one they'd set for movement in the house, unless a door was opened first. They'd used a cell phone trigger in Mexico. How about here? Surely they knew I was here. Even if they were all over at the Teen Club, they could surely feel my jumps.

Or they were waiting inside.

Standing just inside the front door, I flipped the light switch up and jumped back to the sidewalk. The light came on. Nothing exploded. No one jumped out of the coat closet with a knife or a stun gun. I jumped into the house, to the end of the hallway where it ended at the kitchen, then away.

Nothing.

I returned and flipped on the light switch in the kitchen and jumped away.

Outside, I moved down the cellar steps. The door was locked but it had a diamond square glass inset. I showed my head and jumped away.

Nothing.

There was nothing to see-the lights were out and it was pitch black within. I found the inside cellar stairs leading down from the kitchen. There was a light switch at the top. I flipped it and jumped away.

A few minutes later I looked back in the glass inset from the outside cellar door.

Mr. Kelson was on the floor, facedown, his hands cable-tied behind his back. They'd done it next to the floor drain so there wasn't as much blood as I'd seen in Consuelo's kitchen. On the far wall, pushed up against a leaning pile of disassembled cardboard cartons, Mrs. Kelson and Patrick Kelson were in wooden chairs, their legs duct-taped to the chair's front legs, their arms duct-taped to the chair arms. Duct tape covered their mouths, running all the way around their heads, and there was duct tape across their eyes, too.

I couldn't tell if they were alive or dead.

I couldn't see anyone else through the door but that didn't mean they weren't there.

I jumped into the middle of the room and away, as quickly as I could, so sure I'd trip a motion sensor that I panicked, and arrived back in the Empty Quarter with shreds of cardboard flying around me.

Boy, haven't done that in a while.

I jumped back to the sidewalk, outside. The house was still there. Men with knives weren't popping out of the bushes or falling from the sky.

Back in the cellar I could see their labored breath. They'd both soiled themselves and for some reason that made me madder than anything. They taped them up and just left them. I wondered how long they'd been without water.

I went to Mrs. Kelson and reached for the tape across her eyes and then froze.

My sloppy jump had dislodged the cardboard stack behind them.

And that's where the bomb was.

It was a military thing, olive drab nylon bag, one end opened, exposing olive drab metal with screw-down terminals and two different multiconductor wires, each leading across the floor to a chair. The wires went up the chair legs under the duct tape and transitioned to the chair seat, tucked under the backs of their knees.

Pressure switch? When you freed them and lifted their bodies off the chairs, did it complete the circuit or break it?

And could the bastards still detonate it remotely?

Call the bomb squad!

Right. And do they detonate it then, when they see all the trucks pull up?

Fuck it!

I gabbed the back of each chair and jumped.

My arms hurt and I couldn't keep Patrick's chair from falling over, but I did slow his fall and we were there, in the Empty Quarter.

Alive.

The wires had broken at the terminals-there was a bit of stripped copper still showing. I wondered if the bomb had gone off or not. Maybe there'd been a delay set.

I took the tape off of their mouths first, and their breathing eased. The tape over their eyes was tricky-I felt like I'd damage their eyelids, so I left it.

Mrs. Kelson groaned.

Patrick stirred. "Who is it? What's happening?"

I thought about reassuring him, then shook my head.

I left them taped to the chairs and jumped them, one at a time, to the sidewalk outside St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton-it was right across from the east side of E.V.'s high school. Someone shouted and I heard footsteps but I didn't even turn around before jumping back to Euclid Avenue in Trenton.

The house hadn't exploded.

I heard the dog barking still, from the backyard, and I was glad.

"Nine-one-one operator. What is the nature of your emergency?"

"There's a dead man and an unexploded bomb in the basement of a house on Euclid Avenue." I gave the street address.

I'd used the cell phone to make the call and when I hung up on the 911 operator's questions, it buzzed again, and I wondered if the operator was calling back.

It was Kemp.

"We'll kill her mother and brother, you know."

Did he expect me to turn myself over to them? Or did they have some way of tracking the phone?

"By all means, kill them," I said. "They deserve it."

I went back to the cellar, quickly, before the bomb squad got there. I wiped the phone off and set it beside Mr. Kelson's body. I was about to jump away again, when I saw a baseball bat leaning in the corner. It wasn't full size-probably left over from Little League. I wondered if it had been Patrick's or E.V.'s.

I looked down at the body.

"Mind if I borrow this?"

The first sirens sounded in the distance and I jumped away.