"Doranna Durgin - Heavy Metal Honey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Durgin Doranna)

discovered him within visual range. "I just wish I'd had a chance to talk to the suits.
There are things going unsaid. Important things." Not that it mattered. They'd come
to get a drug-dealing smuggler, and they would. When it came to the bad guys,
Kimmer gave no quarter.
Kimmer gleefully gave no quarter.
And Rio laughed, angling along the other side of the trail from her, his
wheat-blond hair hidden by his helmet but his large, lanky frame making his sleek
motorbike look not quite up to the job. "Why do you think they stayed out of your
sights?"
Kimmer grumbled, but she knew he was right. Agency directors tended to avoid
her, simply because she had a knack for reading the truth behind a situation. Any
situation. Anyone.
Almost anyone except Rio. She'd had to figure him out from the ground up. At
first it had scared herтАжand now she had learned to revel in it. Just as they were
learning to reconcile Kimmer's alienation from all things family to his tight-knit,
compassionate relatives.
Rio's voice changed, became all business, "Here we go тАФ"
For the dust had drifted away into the dark night, and the trail widened into a flat
area littered with the refuse of previous runners тАФ water bottles and suitcases and
belongings that these travelers had once thought they couldn't do without. And here,
a figure stood by a dirt bike, shapeless under layers of ill-fitting clothing, long stringy
hair hanging limp, shoulders slumped with fatigue.
Good. The better to snatch you up.
Kimmer gunned the eerily silent engine and shot forward, balancing as though she
rode a living thing, aware of Rio a beat behind her. They circled the figure in an
unmistakable message тАФ we found you! тАФ kicking up dust in a ghostly silent
display and all the while expecting the smuggler to go for a gun, to jump for the bike.

But none of those things happened, and when Kimmer stopped her bike, she was
greeted with exhausted relief. "Finally!" the smuggler said in Spanish, and using a
woman's voice to do it. She reached inside her baggy long-sleeved shirt to tug at the
hem of the oversized T-shirt beneath. "Take this, and give me my papers!"
Rio sent Kimmer a quick look, as startled as she at what they'd cornered; she
lifted one shoulder in a shrug of reply.
"Well?" The woman tucked lank hair behind her ear and mustered up a glare from
a young face already careworn. "That's what you said. I bring this over the border. I
don't get caught. You give me my papers. So take your drugs! I don't want anything
more to do with them!"
Not exactly the gutter-crawling nastiness Kimmer had expected тАФ just a mule,
trading honor for the American Dream. She took a second look, a closer look тАФ she
saw the fear and exhaustion and the edges of hope. Kimmer almost felt sorry for her.

Almost.
"The problem is," Kimmer said, also in Spanish, "you got caught."
"I тАФ" The young woman looked at Kimmer, looked at Rio. Her hands went to
her waist and the fanny bag now visible beneath her clothes. "Madre de Dios!"
"You must be kidding," Kimmer told her. "She was a mom. Probably a charter
member of Mothers Against Drugs."
"But they'll kill me!"
"You don't look so hot now." And it was true. The woman didn't stand quite