"Nightworld 8 - Black Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Lisa J)

Her mind had gotten hold of the idea quite clearly, but there was no reaction in her body, no terrible feeling in her stomach. An instant later it swept over her, exactly what she'd been afraid of. A wash of adrenaline that made her skin tingle painfully and a horrible sensation of falling in her stomach. A numbness that started in her cheeks and spread to her lips and jaw.

Oh, please, she thought stupidly. Please let it not be true. Maybe he's just hurt. That would be all right. He had an accident and he's hurt-but not dead.

But if he were hurt her mother wouldn't be standing there screaming. She would be on her way to the hospital, and nobody could stop her. So that didn't work, and Maggie's mind, darting and wheeling like a frightened little animal, had to go back
to Please don't let this be true.

Strangely, at that moment, it seemed as if there might be some way to make it not true. If she turned around and sneaked back to her bedroom before anyone saw her; if she got into bed and pulled the blankets over her head and shut her eyes ...

But she couldn't leave her mother screaming like this.

Just then the screams died down a little. Her father was speaking in a voice that didn't sound at all like his voice. It was a sort of choked whisper. "But why didn't you tell us you were going climbing? If you left on Halloween then it's been six days. We didn't even know our son was missing...."

"I'm sorry." Sylvia was whispering, too. "We didn't expect to be gone long. Miles's roommates knew we were going, but nobody else. It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing-we didn't have classes on Halloween and the weather was so nice and Miles said, hey, let's go out to Chimney Rock. And we just went...."

Hey, let's go. He used to say that kind of thing to me, Maggie thought with a strange, dazed twinge. But not since he met Sylvia.

The male sheriff was looking at Maggie's father. "You weren't surprised that you hadn't heard from your son since last Friday?"

"No. He's gotten so independent since he moved out to go to college. One of his roommates called this afternoon to ask if Miles was here-but he didn't say that Miles had been gone for almost a week. I just thought he'd missed a class or something...." Maggie's father's voice trailed off.

The sheriff nodded. "Apparently his roommates thought he'd taken a little unauthorized vacation," he said. "They got worried enough to call us tonight-but by then a ranger had already picked up Sylvia."

Sylvia was crying. She was tall but willowy, fragile looking. Delicate. She had shimmering hair so pale it was almost silvery and clear eyes the exact color of wood violets. Maggie, who was short and round faced, with fox-colored hair and brown eyes, had always envied her.

But not now. Nobody could look at Sylvia now without feeling pity.

"It happened that first evening. We started up, but then the weather started turning bad and we turned around. We were moving pretty fast." Sylvia stopped and pressed a fist against her mouth.

"It's kind of a risky time of year for climbing," the female sheriff began gently, but Sylvia shook her head.

And she was right, Maggie thought. It wasn't that bad. Sure, it rained here most of the fall, but sometimes what the weather people called a high pressure cell settled in and the skies stayed blue for a month. All hikers knew that.

Besides, Miles wash t scared of weather. He was only eighteen but he'd done lots of hard climbs in Washington's Olympic and Cascade ranges. He'd keep climbing all winter, getting alpine experience in snow and storms.

Sylvia was going on, her voice getting more jerky breathless. "Miles was ... he'd had the flu a week before and he wasn't completely over it. But he seemed okay, strong. It happened when we were rappelling down. He was laughing and joking and everything.... I never thought he might be tired enough to make a mistake...." Her voice wavered turned into a ragged sob and the ranger put his arm around her.

Something inside Maggie froze. A mistake? Miles?
She was prepared to hear about a sudden avalanche or a piece of equipment failing. Even Sylvia falling and knocking Miles off. But Miles making a mistake?
Maggie stared at Sylvia, and suddenly something in the pitiful figure bothered her.

There was something odd about that delicately flushed face and those tear-drenched violet eyes. It was all too perfect, too tragic, as if Sylvia were an Academy award-winning actress doing a famous scene-and enjoying it.

"I don't know how it happened," Sylvia was whispering. "The anchor was good. We should have had a back-up anchor, but we were in a hurry. And he must have ... oh, God, there must have been something wrong with his harness. Maybe the buckle wasn't fastened right, or the carabiners might have been upside down...:'
No.

Suddenly Maggie's feelings crystalized. It was as if everything came into focus at once.

That's impossible. That's wrong.