"Mercedes Lackey & Ellen Guon - Bedlam Boyz" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

Billy was the one who kept them together. Billy, who knew all about shoplifting and
jimmying locks and using Sterno to heat up cans of chili. He treated them like his kid sisters,
though sometimes Kayla caught him looking at Liane in a way that wasn't very brotherly. Kayla
knew that she and Liane would never have made it on their own without him. We're lucky he was
at that foster home, too, she thought. I don't think I would've been brave enough to leave there
without him. . . .
Billy's words broke into her thoughts. тАЬHey, Kay, there's the QuickStart. Didn't you want
some aspirin?тАЭ
тАЬYeah, sure.тАЭ Though she was sure that it wouldn't help. Nothing seemed to help, not
anymore. тАЬYou guys hang around up front, I'll get the pills.тАЭ
The headaches weren't the worst of it; she could live with the pain, not a problem. It was the
weird dizziness that hit her every so often, making her feel like she'd touched a live electrical
wire. She was sick with something, she knew that, but it didn't pay to worry about it . . . there
was no way she could go to a doctor, at least, not now.
They walked into the store, a brightly-lit building with rows of metal shelves, past a cheerful
woman who was chatting with the store clerk, a quiet-looking young man with shoulder-length
blond hair. Liane and Billy started looking through magazines near the front counter, and Kayla
moved to the back of the store. In the last few weeks, they'd refined shoplifting to an art, running
interference and distracting the people so one of them could walk out with enough food for
dinner. It was a lot easier than other kinds of theft. Kayla smiled in spite of herself, remembering
how Billy had climbed through an open apartment window only to find the occupant, a fat
middle-aged man, up to his neck in bubbles in his bathtub with several rubber ducks floating
around him. He'd yelled and Billy had practically fallen out the window, terrified but still unable
to keep from laughing.
The three of them still laughed about that one, but the time when Billy had gone through an
open house window and another guy had reached for a handgun next to his bed, that hadn't been
so funny. Fortunately for him, the gun hadn't been loaded, and by the time the guy had managed
to put some bullets in the revolver, Billy, Kayla, and Liane were already two blocks away and
still running.
Since then, Billy had said that they'd have to get by without any more breaking-and-entering.
Shoplifting, that was a good trick, though Kayla was getting very tired of pork-and-beans heated
in the can, chili, and stew. Sometimes she caught herself fantasizing about fresh-cooked food,
something that didn't come out of a can: baked potatoes, pancakes, or even bowls of oatmeal.
Anything but canned spaghetti.
She found the brand of aspirin she was looking for and checked the overhead mirror to make
sure the clerk wasn't watchingтАФthose mirrors worked both ways, if you knew what you were
doingтАФand slipped the package into her jacket pocket, smiling to herself. It was a quiet night, all
right, and once she took some pills to get rid of the headache, she'd be feeling fine. . . .
Gunshots shattered the silence.
Liane screamed a moment later, a sound that echoed through the store. Kayla didn't even
think about it; she ran toward the sound of Liane's scream and skidded around the corner of the
row of shelves, stopping short at the sight before her.
The woman was lying very still in a pool of her own blood, sprawled across a small potted
palm. The clerk's body wasn't in sight, but Kayla could see more blood sprayed across the wall
behind the counter. A man wearing a long leather coat stood near the doorway and smiled at her,
a military assault rifle clenched in his hands.
Not three feet away from her, Billy held Liane in his arms, both of them frozen with terror.
The man brought the assault rifle up, aiming at the three of them. Kayla brought up her hands
instinctively to shield her face.
Nothing happened.