"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 281 - Town of Hate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

With the next thunder-clap, Zeke was through the outer door and gone into the first sweep of rain that
lashed through the gorge. He couldn't have chosen a better moment for departure, because he merged
with the downpour as though it had swallowed him. The sprawling inn was gone from sight by the time
Zeke caught his breath and threw a hunted look across his bowed shoulder.

Zeke's truck wasn't parked in the one-time stable yard behind the inn, where it should have been. He had
left it at a turnout in the road, a short distance toward town. There, the highway made a level hairpin turn,
before taking the twisty slope down toward Lamira. Just before that grade stood the old bridge that
crossed the Kawagha. It lead into a side road that traced an offshoot of the gorge, but Zeke wasn't
concerned with those particulars.

Only the turnout was important and there was a reason why Zeke had chosen it. If Zeke had been
parked in the old yard, he would have been forced to drive out the other direction and go clear around
the inn, where the highway curved in plain sight of it. Zeke wanted to be as far away from the inn as
possible when something happened. He was therefore following a well-laid plan.

Loping along a path among the trees, Zeke was a hundred yards away when another flash of lightning
came, with the thunder close upon it. Stopping short, Zeke huddled tensely. Relaxing, he laughed
hoarsely and wiped the rain from his face as though mistaking it for a mass of perspiration.

Still ahead of his own game, Zeke had no cause for worry now. The lightning flash had shown him the
short but steep embankment leading down between two brush-flanked trees. It sloped squarely to the
road, where his truck was standing in the turnout on the other side. All Zeke had to do was clutch those
two slender trees, let himself down carefully, and hop over to the truck.

He calculated on accomplishing it before another lightning flash. Though the embankment was already
muddy, a slight slide wouldn't hurt.

In fact, the slide would have helped if Zeke had taken it, which he didn't.

As Zeke gripped the trees, the nearest bush stirred. The trees were at a slight angle and the bush was
therefore perfectly placed for the next thing that happened. In the preternatural twilight, beneath the heavy
storm cloud, a pair of heavily gloved hands took an angled grip upon Zeke's neck.

There was the strength of a vise in those clamping hands and the bulge in the gloves told why. The broad
palms of the thick gloves contained strips of soldering metal that was pliable under pressure. Those two
strips became the segments of a collar that included Zeke's windpipe. Nor could Zeke fight against them,
for when he threw back his own hands to attempt a struggle, he lost his footing on the edge of the
embankment. He could only claw madly to regain a hold upon the supporting trees.

Lightning zigzagged sharply and with its flash, Zeke writhed like the occupant of an electric chair. His
backward lurch obscured the murderous foe who clutched him. As Zeke sagged forward, a roll of
thunder boomed a ponderous knell. That writhe was Zeke's last; in the darkness, he became a different
type of victim, a figure that seemed dangling from a hangman's noose.

The hands unclamped, the gloves spreading the improvised metal collar. Zeke's feet were on the
embankment, so his fall was strictly a forward topple that didn't carry him far. His arms, twisted as crazily
as the boughs of the gnarled trees, caught against the trunks and steadied him, thanks to the directing
placement from the murderer's hands.