Nine hundred feet up in the November wind, it’s hard to enunciate properly, especially with the barrel of a Glock nine-millimeter jammed in your mouth. They don’t tell you these things on the Travel Channel.

Gobi takes the automatic out from between my lips. Her eyes sparkle and shine. I think about what she told me back in Venice, what she said at the hotel that night. That all seems like a long time ago now.

She smiles, blood and lipstick smeared over her face. Down below, blue lights on the Champ de Mars flash off the steel framework of the Eiffel Tower, warping in the rain. Over her shoulder I can see the gendarmes on the other side of the observation platform with automatic weapons, yelling at us in the language of love. I remember just enough from two years in Mrs. Garvey’s French class to decipher ‘police’ and ‘surrender.’

‘As tave myliu,’ Gobi says. With her free hand, she reaches out and brushes the wet hair out of my eyes. Her fingers are ice cold. ‘Your hair is getting shaggy, mielasis.’ Then she points the pistol back at my head.

‘Just tell me what you’ve done with my family.’ I’m begging now, and I don’t care how it sounds. ‘Just tell me where they are.’

‘I am so sorry, Perry.’ An almost inaudible click as she switches off the safety. ‘Au revoir.’

‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ – The Killers

‘Miss me?’ she asked.

I leaned forward to kiss the ice cream from her upper lip – maple fudge ripple, arguably the best flavor in the known universe. We were standing barefoot next to the picnic tables by the Twin Star restaurant on Route 26, watching the gray waves of October rolling up and crashing on the shore.

Me and Paula.

It was Fall, the best time of the year for this battered stretch of shoreline that Connecticut shares with the sea. All around us, the rest of the beach was deserted, a long, unhurried curve of sand, eel grass and wooden fence slats bullied and pushed over sideways by decades of rough Atlantic weather. During the summer this place was mobbed with families and kids, teenagers, bikers, couples – my parents had even come up here on a date once, according to family lore. Now it all felt pleasantly haunted, the parking lot almost empty, the restrooms already locked up for the season, leaving the two of us and the guy behind the ice cream counter just itching to put up his handwritten SEE YOU NEXT SUMMER! sign in the window.

High above us, seagulls squeaked and wheeled in the gunmetal sky, sounding lost and far away.

Paula hugged herself and shivered. ‘It’s chilly.’

‘Here.’ I took off my Columbia sweatshirt and wrapped it around her shoulders. ‘Better?’

‘Always the gentleman.’ She smiled and looked down at the beach, her cell phone still clutched in her hand from the call that she’d just finished. ‘So, do you want to hear the big news?’

‘I thought you’d never tell me.’

‘I thought you’d never ask.’

‘Officially asking.’

‘I just got off the phone with Armitage . . . and he wants to book Inchworm . . .’ she paused, making me wait an extra split-second . . . ‘for the whole tour.’

‘Europe?’

‘Twelve cities in eighteen days.’

‘No way!’ I laughed, and she grabbed me, and I hugged her, lifting her up off her feet and spinning her around. ‘Paula, that’s unbelievable.’

‘I know!’ Her smile had blossomed into a full-out grin, and I looked at all eleven of the sun freckles across the bridge of her nose. I’d counted them when we were waiting in line for one of the rides at Six Flags last month.

‘How did that happen?’

‘I told you the new songs СКАЧАТЬ

Pretty Lethal. Joe Schreiber Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу Pretty Lethal - Joe Schreiber страница 2

‘American Idiot’ – Green Day

‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ – The Killers

Pretty Lethal. Joe Schreiber
Чтение книги онлайн.