"Michaela Roessner - Vanishing Point" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roessner Michaela)

with names of colors he'd never heard of. He didn't want to see again the strange titles adorning the
spines of what should have been familiar books.
In the master bedroom he snipped the seal on the canister's nozzle. With hands made clumsy by the
gloves he trailed thin, clear liquid under the drapes and along the baseboards, shoving furniture aside with
one foot when he had to. He didn't want to take the slightest chance of stepping into the fluid. He couldn't
risk splashing himself. Bright red logos embellished the container's crisply white surface: flames
constrained within thick hoops, the traditional slash heralded across them, and slogans that exclaimed in
heavy block letters corrosive, flammable, TOXIC, DANGER.
As he approached the last bedroom, a pastel-decorated nursery, he began sweating. The home he'd
owned thirty years ago had had a similar nursery. He thought of his wife Jennifer lying beside him, rosy
and swollen with her pregnancy. The toxic fluid trembled as he poured it.
When he reached the stairs again he focused his attention on trailing the fluid so that it pooled back
inward on the surface of each step. He didn't want it to pour over the edge and get ahead of him. At the
bottom he put the empty canister behind the stairs, opened the second container and anointed the ground
level. Looping in a circle back to the front of the home, he puddled the last of the liquid at the doorsill and
set the second emptied container just inside the door.
He stepped outside, pulled the gauntlet off his left hand, and reached into a pocket for a roll of fuse.
Reaching back inside the building, he draped the end of the wicking into the fluid. He wedged the front
door firmly and began unwinding the roll, stepping backward away from the house, working quickly now,
afraid the mild rain might dampen the wick. To his relief, when he touched a match to the end of its length
it caught fire immediately. The spark marched slowly but steadily along the twenty feet of fuse to the
house, then disappeared under the door.
Eyes trained on the front door, he resumed walking backward till he bumped into a row of bushes
separating the property from the sidewalk. He edged around and took cover behind them. Only then did
he pull off the gas mask.
As if his will could help guide it, he imagined the flame's route through the home. It would ripple along
the fuel's glistening track, encircle the rooms and reconnect with itself like a spiderweb spun out of heat
and light. As it grew it would leap higher to catch on brittle, sun-rotted curtains. Those would flare against
the windows, whose heat-stressed glass would crack and shatter. More oxygen from outside would rush
in to engorge the names. The flames would use the drapes as a ladder to clamber upward to the ceiling.
Ascending and descending fire from the upper floor would meet, disintegrating the flooring, dissolving the
roofs support, till the whole house collapsed in an imploding maelstrom.
As he imagined this sequence, he waited for the signal of success he'd become familiar withтАФthat
initial flash of light at the windows. He waited long minutes. It was taking too long. The flash didn't come.
Finally he sidled carefully, slowly, back to the home, angling away from the door and the windows as
much as he could in case they suddenly exploded. At the spot where he'd lit the fuse he stopped and
donned the gas mask again. The door still looked closed, but if any of the toxic fluid had evaporated and
leaked out, he wanted every inch of skin possible covered.
Spreading himself flat against the wall, he ducked around for a quick peek through the living room
window. It looked gray and peaceful inside; the sofa set mounded high with snowy drifts of dust, the dim
light that reached through the dusty windows milkily filming every surface. The most disruptive elements
visible were tracks of his footprints crisscrossing the floor from the course of his investigations, and the
spots where he'd scraped or plowed aside dust along the baseboards.
He slumped against the side of the house. What had happened? The other four fires he'd set had
burned like cauterizing miracles. Maybe the door had crimped the wick too much, starving the flame. Or
the chemicals were old, a bad batch. Or the canister had been breached or weakened long ago.
Even though it was obvious the fire hadn't caught he exercised caution before reentering the building.
Near the door he exposed the smallest patch of skin on one wrist, waited for any caustic stinging. Then
he pulled off a glove and laid his palm against the door. Feeling no sensation of heat he donned the glove
again and opened the door in small increments. With that release of tension, the blackened wick slumped