Trust With Your Life. M.L. Gamble

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Chapter One

       September 2

      Like most women, Molly Jakes was good in emergencies.

      The sight of blood, particularly other people’s, did not freak her out. Which is why, without hesitation, she was ready to help as soon as she spotted three wrecked cars and four people scattered across the sloping concrete freeway off ramp, a mile from her home.

      As she braked, she noted it was 3:00 a.m. exactly by the car’s clock. Above her in the damp, late-summer air, ribbons of fog wound around the thousand-watt fluorescent bulbs atop the light poles lining the double-laned expanse, giving animate and inanimate objects alike the spooky blue tint peculiar to the middle of night.

      The accident had occurred just a minute or two ago, she estimated, reaching for the cellular phone in the car console. Her fingers brushed the cold leather where the mobile unit was usually nestled and she swore under her breath. The phone was being repaired, and all she had in her purse was the antiquated pager that gave her no ability to call out.

      She glanced in the rearview mirror, hoping to see the reflection of oncoming headlights, but caught only a blank swatch of asphalt. Clearing the incline, she braked and rolled past a red-and-silver Bronco, its wheels still spinning. From her location she saw a handful of twinkling lights from the sleeping houses lining the hills of Mission Viejo. The town-house development where she lived was just beyond. For a moment, she considered driving on and calling for help from home, then returning. But the smell of burned rubber and the sight of people tossed like rag dolls thrown by a malicious giant changed her mind. Years of first-aid training had taught her that in many cases five minutes’ delay could cost a life.

      Molly judged that the wreck had started in the left lane, for the Bronco had left a long trail of skid marks that cut across both lanes at an angle. The car it had run into—a small blue compact—was smashed into the two-foot-thick abutment on the right, facing east in the westbound lanes. It was hooked into the Bronco’s door panel by its rear bumper.

      There were four people on the pavement. Two were facedown near the back of the Bronco, which was spitting out a threatening plume of white smoke from under its hood. One lay on his back in a strangely restful pose, the fourth a few yards over against the abutment.

      He was the only one she knew for sure was dead. Even at a distance of twenty feet, Molly’s brain registered his missing limb and the bright smears on the ground.

      She slowed and scouted a safe place to stop past the carnage, a shot of fear immobilizing her for a second before giving her brain a tremendous rush. As a phone company manager with eight employees reporting to her, Molly had completed over a hundred hours of emergency training. She even knew basic sign language commands. Traffic accidents, electrocution, cuts, poison, burns and broken bones, she had studied how to handle them in films and handbooks. Monthly newsletters, called Flashes, parked themselves weekly in her In box, and over hurried lunches she had made it a point to read them all. There were countless examples of how death resulted because the most basic safety rules weren’t followed.

      Thanks to her training, all the procedures for keeping herself safe kicked in together in her head. She continued past the accident for twenty yards, leaving room for the cops and ambulances, and parked cleanly off the road. She was directly in front of a call box, right under a light. While waiting for the operator to answer, she removed her dark windbreaker to reveal a more easily seen white T-shirt. Molly noted more skid marks and a flattened safety fence lying on its back just ahead of her and glanced down the steep hillside.

      Imagining another night’s vehicular violence gave her a chill, but she remained cool and gave the necessary information to the operator, whose sole responsibility was to communicate with motorists in trouble. A minute later, she hung up and grabbed two blankets she always kept in the trunk, looked both ways and dashed into the traffic lanes at the edge of the mayhem.

      At that moment, a man in a black pickup truck rolled toward her. He stopped in the left lane and jumped out, yelling, “Did you call it in?”

      “Yes. They’re coming,” she answered. “Do you have any flares?”

      “Good idea.” The guy ran back to his truck while Molly hurried to the man lying on his back. He was young and preppy-looking, dressed in a white polo shirt, khakis and one deck shoe. The emblem on his shirt wasn’t an alligator, though. It was a face, a smiling Oriental face. She threw one of the blankets over him, smacking her knuckles on something hard as she tucked the cloth around his knee.

      Her fingers wrapped around the object and she scooted it out from under him, recognizing its shape before she saw it, even though she had never held one before.

      It was a gun. Small, heavier than she would have guessed, it was warm to the touch.

      For a second, Molly couldn’t think what to do with it; panic squeezed out all thought. Finally she took a big gulp of air and stuck the thing into the pocket of her denim skirt. In the fullness of the fabric, the pocket swallowed the gun.

      Molly pressed her hand against the man’s neck. No pulse. She pulled his eyelids up and found his pupils were dilated and motionless.

      He was dead.

      Molly drew back, suddenly cold, noticing how incredibly noisy it was near the truck since its engine was still running. Her train of thought was probably born out of reflexive self-protection, she realized, remembering people say that in times of great tragedy it’s possible to put one’s emotions on hold and take them out later when there’s more time for a nervous breakdown. Which is what Molly felt she might have someday when she recalled how lonely it felt to sit beside two dead men.

      These were the first corpses she had ever seen, and her eyes filled with tears. They were so still. And heavy, as if gravity was sucking their bodies down into their graves already.

      A few months ago she had been circumstantially involved in a murder case, but it had not saddened her like this. In that matter, Molly had been witness to no mayhem, had not been privy to dead eyes and wounds and blood. Because of that, she had remained calm. She had given the police various coherent statements, had coolly appeared before a grand jury, was set to testify next week at the trial. Molly had not even spent one sleepless night because of images of corpses.

      Something told her that this time things were going to be different.

      Now that she was face-to-face with violence, all she could think about was the car’s engine, the pebbles digging into her knee, the weight in her pocket, the sound of her heartbeat echoing in her ears and her own mortality. If she had been driving СКАЧАТЬ