"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Spirit Guides" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

coated
with the scent of blood and burgers, his ears dogged with the faint sobs of a
pimply-faced boy rocking over the body of a fallen coworker. The images would
stick, along with all of the others. His brain was reaching overload. Had been
for a long time. But that little girl's voice, the plea in her tone, had been
more than he could bear.

For twenty years, he had tried to escape, always ending up in a new town, with
new problems. Shootings in Oklahoma parking lots, bombings in Upstate New
York,
murders in restaurants and shopping malls and suburban family pickups. The
violence surrounded him, and he was trapped.

Surely this time, they would let him get away.

A hooker knocked on the window of his car. He thought he could smell the sweat
and perfume through the rolled-up glass. Her cleavage was mottled, her cheap
elastic top revealing the top edge of brown nipple.
He shook his head, then turned the ignition and grabbed the gear shift on the
column to take the car out of park. The Olds roared to life, and with it came
the adrenaline rush, hormones tinged with panic. He pulled out of the parking
space, past the hooker, down Hollywood Boulevard toward the first freeway
intersection he could find.

Kincaid would disappear from the LAPD as mysteriously as he had arrived. He
stopped long enough to pick up his clothes, his credit cards, and a
hand-painted
coffee mug a teenaged gift in Galveston had given him twenty years before,
when
she mistakenly thought he had saved her life.

He merged into the continuous LA rush hour traffic for the last time, radio
off,
clutching the wheel in white-knuckled tightness. He would go to Big Bear, up
in
the mountains, where there were no people, no crimes, nothing except himself
and
the wilderness.

He drove away from the angels.

Or so he hoped.

Kincaid drove until he realized he was on the road to Las Vegas. He pulled the
Olds over, put on his hazards and bowed his head, unwilling to go any farther.
But he knew, even if he didn't drive there, he would wake up in Vegas, his car
in the lot outside. It had happened before.

He didn't remember taking the wrong turn, but he wasn't supposed to remember.
They were just telling him that his work wasn't done, the work they had forced