"Nayler, Ray - All The Way West" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nayler Ray)

She cleared the short barbed-wire fence in a clumsy leap and ran into the corn, stumbling. Grasshoppers, confused, jumped into the air and thudded against her legs and arms. Her foot caught on a furrow of earth and she fell, smashing into dry stalks. Behind her, she heard a growl of pain and rage, and the scraping of gravel. He was getting up. He was coming for her. She regained her feet and ran blindly, cutting diagonally through the rows, slapping the stalks aside. Grasshoppers burst into the air in a thousand different directions like shrapnel...the neglected field was infested with them. Her hand kept its grip on the wrench as she ran.

She stopped after a long while. Her breath came in short, choked gasps. Her ears strained, listening. The grasshoppers sawed away noisily. And inside that sound was another...the dry sound of stalks being pushed aside, coming closer. But not from one side...from two. She could no longer tell which way she had come from, but she could distinctly hear two movements through the crops, closing on her. She looked down the row she was standing in. The corn went on forever, gray in the dying light, its tips touched sunset-red, like dim torches.

A voice called out and she jerked, swinging around toward it, bringing the wrench up, readying it.

It was not his voice.

"Hey! You better clear the hell out of there! I'm comin' for ya!"

Both sounds of movement in the corn paused.

"I hear you in there!" The voice sounded slightly fearful.

She parted the corn as silently as she could, moving toward the voice, across the rows. She could no longer hear Jason moving toward her...but she felt his presence somewhere in the field, as strongly as if he were standing just behind her, ready to pounce. She saw his shape everywhere in the dim gray, crouching in every new row that she entered.

The voice called out again. "You better just turn around and clear out." It had a definite waver of fear in it now. A small circle of light appeared suddenly, rows ahead of her, and projected a weak cone out through the corn, like the beam of a land-locked lighthouse. The cone missed her the first time. She walked silently toward it as it swung back in her direction. Calling out to the man would only attract Jason's attention...tell him immediately where she was. The light swung slowly back toward her. She was very near to it, now. It could not be more than six or seven rows away. Its beam cut through the corn, casting long, thin stalk-shadows on the ground. Finally, it found her, and stopped, blazing into her eyes.

"Stand right there, you," the voice said. "I have a 30/30 pointing right at your goddamned chest, and you're on my property. I'll shoot you just as dead as can be."

She did not doubt it. She could feel a small, cold circle on her chest, where the bullet would enter.

Her voice came out little more than a stammering croak. "P-Please. I need help. There's someone after me."

The voice did not answer. The light, she realized, was growing. It bobbed up and down, slightly, waxing and waning as it was obscured by stalks of corn. She could see nothing of what was behind it. Then, there was a crunch of impact. The circle of light swerved crazily and dropped to ground level, pointing off at nothing. She heard the rough sound of breathing.

There was another crunch, and a grunt, and then Jason's breathless voice.

"You just stand right there, bitch. I'll be with you in a moment."

She was already running, smashing blindly through the corn. A shot rang out, then another, and another. He was firing blindly after her. Her back was alive with cold potential holes as she ran.

She hit the barbed-wire fence at a dead run. Its spikes bit into her leg as she went over it and onto the gravel, her hands out to break her fall. Her face thudded into the sharp rocks, and she saw stars, felt them ripping into her skin.

It did not matter. She was up in a second, her feet scrabbling for play on the loose rocks. She saw the car ahead of her and went toward it.

The passenger door was still open. The keys were in the ignition. She threw herself behind the wheel and twisted them. The engine roared to life. The car bucked forward, tires spinning on the rocks, and then got onto the road. The headlights caught Jason in their beams for a moment, a crimson-headed ghost entangled in the barbed-wire fence, its mouth open in a scream. He raised the long black rifle and fired. The bullet thudded into the car's body somewhere, and then she was out of his range, rocketing west.

She did not stop until the gas gauge was pointed at E. Then she pulled off the highway, into the large, well-lit circle of a Phillips 66, where she guided it to a pump and shut the engine off. Her hands did not want to come off of the steering wheel. Slowly, she forced her fingers to uncurl. Her hands fumbled at the door handle. She got it open and stepped out onto rigid, stiff-kneed legs. Using one hand on the car's body to support her, she stepped slowly, until she gained control over her muscles again.

The bullet hole was in the side of the car's body, near the back. It had gone into the trunk. Uneasily, she wondered if it might have passed through something vital...the taillight wires or something that would get her pulled over and questioned. She imagined trying to explain the fresh scratches all over her to some blank-faced cop while he ran the car's registration through his computer and found god-knows-what. A cop who would lead her straight back into the loving arms of her husband and daughter, back to the dying Christmas tree and the lipstick-smeared wrapping paper. Back to the PTA. She shoved the key into the lock of the trunk and opened it.

The bullet had hit nothing vital except a large suitcase, which it had passed through, exploding out and showering bits of green and white paper all over the trunk of the car before thudding into the trunk's other side, leaving a dent nearly the size of a fist in the steel.

Shannon opened the suitcase with shaking hands.

It contained more money than she had ever seen before. Much more. Sheaf after sheaf of hundred dollar bills.

She slammed the trunk shut and got into the car.