"Shadow - 341201 - Back Pages - Grace Culver - Double Chocolate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Roswell)

chuckled nastily. "And the time to look around, no?"
He was like a. cat, playing with her. Grace felt weak with dread at the menace
lying behind his onyx-black eyes. Slowly, shivering despite herself, she struggled
upward to her feet.
"What goes on?"
It was the gray-haired newcomer speaking. His brick-red face was peering
over Jorgen's shoulder. It was expressionless.
"Ah, Pete! A lady honors us who was a. customer at my store. Perhaps also
you see her at your delicatessen? Or you, Mal, at your dry goods store?"
The egg-head growled: "Nope" and the one called Pete made a similar sound
of denial. But it seemed to Grace that the eyes of both had hardened.
Other outlets for Jorgen's counterfeit money. It was easy to tie up Pete and
Mal with the business at hand. Running fronts like Ivan's own curio shop, they
could pull the same game on others like the ring Boss had played to-day on
Maggie Moody and her own red pocketbook.
.Mal, his naked skull gleaming, walked forward slowly.
"We oughta do something, Jork. We ougtha fix her, huh?"
Their cold eyes bored into herЧfour pairs of killer eyes, all determined that
she should never leave this cellar room alive. A semicircle of death, closing in on
her, glittering, wicked.
Suddenly something snapped in Grace's taut brain. Hopeless as it seemed
to break through, she hurled herself forward at Jorgen with all the force left in
her.
A snarl of rage replaced the mockery on his lips. Thick brows contracting, jaw
shut, he lunged for her,
Quick as an arrow, she was past him. His extended fingers, clawing, scraped
down the side of her arm as she hurtled across the room. Pete blocked the door.
But there were weapons on the work benchЧsomethingЧthere must be
somethingЧ
Her right hand caught up the first thing it touchedЧa long, thin scraping knife
like a thick knitting needle. She whirled to face the room. Not an instant too
soon.
Mal, the egg-head, was upon her. His lips were drawn back from yellow in a
grimace of hatred. His paws were up, and in one of them a blunt-tipped blackjack
wavered.
Driving hard, in a frenzy of fighting fury, Grace let him have the knife.

It was the force of his own descending blow that saved him. The thin blade
ripped him from shoulder to elbow.
Blood spurted through the long gash in his coat sleeve. Screaming, he tottered back.
Before the girl could recover, Rocco was upon her. Those pitiless iron arms
clamped around her again, crushing. Her own arms, pinned to her sides, were
powerless.
"Bloody devil!" Mal was shrieking. Rocco growled menacingly.
"Maybe you like I slap her around some more, eh. Boss?"
Jorgen strode across the room until he was standing directly in front of her,
his face a mask of hatred as he thrust it close to hers.
"No slapping, Rocco! This lady who know so much, too muchЧshe need
more than a slapping, no?"
Grace faced him with the blood gone from her cheeks. Her eyes were wide.