Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake (лучшие книги без регистрации txt) 📗

“Dark Moondancer is a secret no longer worth keeping. I thought my penance was living the rest of my life as a quadriplegic, but it has become clear that I cannot live …”

The letter took up most of the page, twelve-point print. Laura returned the note to the floor where she found it. There would be plenty of time to look at it later; right now, she needed to find out if Jay was alive or dead.

She approached the open doorway to the master bedroom. The black iron dogs guarding the foot of the bed were gone, but she saw them as clearly as if they were here in real time, along with the indelible image of Jay Ramsey tangled in the sheets, bleeding onto the white carpet.

Superimposed by reality.

Now Jay Ramsey sat in his wheelchair. A bottle of whiskey and an empty pill vial lay in his lap. A plastic bag had been pulled over his head.

55

Laura holstered her weapon and was at Jay Ramsey’s side in three strides. The bag had already been torn by his desperate fingers, leaving a hole, probably the last thing he did before he lost consciousness—suicides often had second thoughts.

A possibility then that he was still alive—she felt for a pulse. Weak, but there.

She removed the plastic bag and checked his airway—unobstructed. Breathing through his mouth. Good, she didn’t have to give him CPR. She couldn’t risk moving a quadriplegic from his wheelchair and laying him out on the floor.

Laura fumbled for her cell phone and pressed the TALK button.

“What’s going on?" Mike Galaz called from the hallway.

“In here,” she called. “Ramsey tried to kill himself, but he’s still alive.”

Galaz appeared in the doorway, his gun out and held at his side. “Is someone on the way?”

Face pale, eyes dark in his head. Agitated. “Did you call dispatch? 911?”

“I was just going to call it i—“

He put his gun away and crossed the space between them. “Let me do it.”

Before she could object Galaz seized the phone from her hand. He looked at the screen for a moment, raised his arm, and threw the phone savagely across the room. It hit the wall and exploded into plastic shards.

Laura stared at the wall and back to Galaz.

“Houston, we’ve got a problem!” Galaz shouted. “Do you hear me, Mickey?”

Laura heard a noise from the master bathroom and pivoted, but it was too late; her fingers had just brushed the grip of her Sig when two huge hands closed down on her wrists like a vise, wrenching her arms up against her spine. Her shoulders and neck protested as Harmon shoved his knee square in the small of her back. He pushed her hard against the bedside table with crushing force, knocking the breath right out of her. Cuffs ratcheted around her wrists.

She didn’t feel the gun being taken from the holster, but knew he had it. Smelled his sour breath: Pickles. Harmon yanked her upright, and as he did so, Galaz darted in like a bantam-weight prize fighter, jabbed her in the hip with a hypodermic needle.

He jumped back as Laura howled.

Galaz started pacing. “Dammit!”

“Don’t worry, boss. We can contain it.”

“You don’t understand! She’s not some dime-a-dozen street hustler off Miracle Mile. She’s DPS. This is not going to go away!" He crossed over to Jay and fiddled with the plastic bag. “There’s a hole in this thing!" He tore the bag apart, crumpled it up and shoved it into the pocket of his slacks. Breathed deeply. “The whiskey and the pills’ll finish him off. All we needed was a little time.”

He sat down on a chair by the window. “There’s a way to do this, I just have to figure it out. I know what to do, I just need a little space. It’ll come." He checked his watch, then looked at Ramsey. “He can’t last much longer. While we’re here, we might as well stay around and make sure.”

Mickey kicked Laura’s feet out from under her, and she sat down hard on her tailbone, legs jarring as they hit the floor.

Shit-scared. What had he given her?

Galaz crossed one elegantly-trousered knee over the other and stared down his elegant nose at her. “Under the weather, Laura? You should start to feel it any time.”

“What? What did you give me?”

“Do you feel hot?”

“Hot?”

“Not hot as in Girls Gone Wild’—I mean hot as in burning up.”

She did feel hot. She tried to bring her legs under her to stand up and found she couldn’t. Her legs weren’t responding. They felt like wood. Rigid.

Her tailbone throbbed from the fall, and her hip hurt where the needle went in. The ache seemed to be spreading up into the small of her back. “What did you give me?”

“Steatoda juliei.”

“What?” Her body was clenching. Sweat popped out on her forehead, her upper lip, her arms, trickled down her sides.

“Steatoda juliei,” Galaz said. “It’s a neurotoxin that comes from the false black widow.”

It felt like she was cramping up—everywhere at once.

Galaz continued, “The term ‘false’ is misleading, since there are few differences between Steatoda and Latrodectus. The black widow is glossy black, as opposed to a matte finish—that’s steatoda—and the steatoda doesn’t have the hourglass on its belly, but otherwise, they’re almost identical. Especially where their neurotoxins are concerned.”

Locked in pain, Laura followed his words, but there was a lag. She could feel a buzzing in her brain and knew it was pure fear. This wasn’t just pain, it was agony, her body slippery with sweat—soaking every inch of her skin, in her eyes, blotting her blouse with it. And clenching, God, her toes were clenching and the pain just wouldn’t stop …

Galaz said, “There are variations in neurotoxins from species to species. Some are far more extreme than others. This particular neurotoxin is pretty severe, but fortunately for you, not long-lasting. One, two hours at the most, and then the effects wear off. Another choice of spider, and you could be in incredible pain for two or three days. But I chose Steatoda juliei because we don’t need that long.”

She looked at his crossed legs, the top leg moving back and forth. Using his knee as a fulcrum. He was smiling. “I gave this Steatoda its name. Since I spent months studying the effects of its venom on everything from bunny rabbits to horses, I can safely say this was an unnamed species, until now. That’s Phylum: Arthropoda; Subphylum: Celicerata; Class: Arachnida; Order: Aranae; Genus: Steatoda; Species: juliei.”

Suddenly, her lower back bloomed like a bright red flower, pain so crushing and absolute that for a moment she couldn’t breathe.

She closed her eyes and moaned. Her instinct told her to curl up in a fetal position on the floor, but her abdominal muscles were as stiff as a washboard. She gulped air, tried to roll with the cramping pain, but couldn’t: It was the bright screaming center of her brain.

Galaz was talking at her but she didn’t understand much of what he said.

“When you find a new species you can name it after anything you want—other than yourself. That would be in bad taste. You just add an ‘i’ to the end. So I named it Steatoda juliei. Do you know why I chose juliei?” He leaned his upper body as far forward as it would go so he was looking into her eyes.

Julie Marr. She didn’t know if she spoke it out loud or if she just thought it.

“I meant this dose for Buddy Holland’s daughter. I wanted to see how she reacted, but—” He shrugged— “The best-laid plans … you know the saying.” He turned to Harmon. How is our other patient?”

“He’s dead.”

“You sure this time?”

“Uh-huh.”

Galaz stood. “We’d better go then. You’ll have to carry her. Give me her gun.” Galaz removed his own gun from the paddle holster on his hip and traded it for Laura’s Sig Sauer. Harmon tucked Galaz’s gun into his ankle holster.