"Barbara Karmazin - Blackbird 2 - Out of the Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Karmazin Barbara)

He shook his head. It would take too long for her to go back up to the surface, speak to Dr. Nour and
return to his home. This woman needed help as soon as possible. тАЬI'll come with you.тАЭ

тАЬYou can't let other people see you. They wouldn't understand.тАЭ
тАЬDr. Nour is Muslim, correct?тАЭ

She nodded slowly.

тАЬThe women who frequent her clinic, they wear the chador, do they not?тАЭ Mider didn't have to touch
Rachel's hand to feel her confusion. The expression on her face told him that. He went to the chest at the
foot of the bed, opened it and selected two black chadors. Rachel usually got a fair price for his chadors
at the street market. тАЬI am small-boned. Five foot eight is tall for a woman but I should be able to pass as
long as I'm decently covered.тАЭ

Rachel pursed her lips. Then sighed. тАЬThat should work.тАЭ

Mider grabbed a pair of tinted sunglasses and willed his heart to slow its headlong pace. If he wanted
this Sidhe woman to survive, this was the only choice he had. He stopped. His heart skipped a beat.
What about the child that had been with this woman? Where was that child's father?

He coughed.

Rachel turned around and arched her eyebrows.

The sudden tightness in his throat made it hard to say the words, but they must be said. If this woman
had kin within the city тАж he shook his head. She was wounded. They didn't have the luxury of time to
seek her kin right now. тАЬAfter Dr. Nour has treated her injuries, you should return to the Spaceport and
find her family. They must be frantic with worry over her disappearance.тАЭ

****

Dirt and small stones flew up around the billowing skirt of Mider's chador. He balanced the Sidhe
woman in his arms and followed Rachel up the narrow sidewalk. Cavernous warehouses and loading
docks loomed over them. Side streets led up to the parking garages and luxury hotels on Upper Wacker
Drive.

His heart thundered in his ears. He was walking on the surface in broad daylight and no one saw
anything strange about him. Why hadn't he tried wearing a chador before? Why had he been so cautious,
always creeping about in the shadows like a thief?

Huge concrete posts supported Lower Wacker Drive. This section contained two lanes of
tractor-trailers zooming by in both directions. No cars. Gas was too expensive now for private cars.
Concrete arches let in patches of sunlight from the river and lightened the dim twilight of the expressway.

The new was always layered on top of the old. That was the way of every city. The rich and mighty flew
on the glittering skyways high above the decrepit trains and battered sidewalks used by the poor. Only a
few obscure historians knew about the network of abandoned freight tunnels forty feet below the streets
of Chicago.