[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

kept her hands over her face, but allowed him to seat her.
Then the boy chose another seat for himself, directly across from
Hal's, and slumped into it.
The bus started up. Hal sat down quietly. When he glanced across the
aisle, the boy was watching him. "Will you wake me when we get to the
castle?" he asked. Hal nodded.
"You bet." The boy smiled and closed his eyes.
You were the best.
There was no mistake about it: He had used those very · words.
You're the best, kid. The best there is.
Hal shuddered. He looked over at Taliesin, but the old man had also
dozed off.
He stared out the window. He wouldn't sleep, he knew. Not now, not
tonight, maybe not for a long time.
Things had gone far beyond coincidence. The chance encounter with
Taliesin, the strangeness of the game-show questions, the boy quoting
from his dream . . . They were all connected somehow. He believed
this with the same instinct that had singled out the dark man in the
first seat as trouble. He believed, but he didn't understand a damned
thing.
No, he wouldn't sleep. The dream was too close to the surface.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A few minutes after the boy fell asleep in the seat beside Hal and
Taliesin, the woman with him came over from her own seat to cover him
with a jacket. She touched him tenderly, Hal saw, smoothing the red
hair on the boy's forehead. When she turned to face Hal, her eyes were
glassy with tears. "I apologize for my rudeness," she said quietly.
"My nephew and I have been under a strain for some, time. I was afraid
that you might try to harm him." : Her hands were still trembling.
Probably chronic, Hal thought. His own hands shook for months after
Jeff Brown's death, until he discovered the no-worry of the bottle
after his release from the hospital. "I thought the same about you,"
Hal said.
She nodded. "That's understandable, I guess. The Seconal--I wasn't
forcing it on him. He hasn't been able to sleep. He has nightmares .
.
."
She stopped abruptly, as if sensing she'd said too much.
With another tight, controlled smile, she stood up. "Hal Woczniak," he
said, extending his hand. She shook it. "Emily Blessing." :
"Vacation?" "Yes," she answered. Too quickly, Hal thought.
She was about to scurry back to her own seat when the bus suddenly
veered off the road into the parking lot of a country inn with two
small, old-fashioned gasoline pumps outside. Emily thumped back onto
the seat next to Hal. "Oil light's on," the driver called out with a
sigh. "It won't take but a few minutes to set things right." He
pulled up to the rear of the old stone building, turned off the engine,
and rose. "Sorry for the inconvenience," he said, "but we want to
assure your safety. Go on inside for a cup of tea if you like. I'll
let you know when we can be off again." He dashed out before the
passengers could Start complaining. Slowly, they stood up and
stretched, murmuring in futile protest. Taliesin woke up, blinking.
"I say. Has there been an accident?" "Oil leak, I think. The driver
said to go inside." Taliesin looked out the window at the old stone
building. "Oh, I say, the Inn of the Falcon.
This is the place I told you about. It's quite nice inside." Hal
turned back to Emily. "Will you join us?" "No, thanks. I don't want
to wake Arthur. We'll just wait here." Hal and Taliesin followed the
other passengers into the inn, where most of them made a beeline for
the rest rooms. The place was quaint but sweltering. Almost
immediately Hal felt a thin trickle of sweat running down his back.
Just his luck, he thought, to come to cool, bonny England and run into
a New York City-style heat wave.
The old man seemed unaffected by the heat and chattered amiably about
the structure of the place. Hal pulled up a chair at one of the small
tables and waited for Taliesin to sit down. "Oh, my, no," Taliesin
said.. "We've been sitting for hours." .: . "Sit down," Hal
commanded.
Taliesin complied, raising an eyebrow. "As you wish." "I want to know
what the hell's going on," Hal said. "Right now." "What on earth .
. ." Taliesin was visibly relieved by the appearance of the waitress
and kept her attention for as long as possible, contemplating and
rejecting a number of teas. He finally decided on Earl Gray, smiling
as if he had made a momentous decision.
Hal leaned back in his chair, his arms folded over his chest, his face
dark and blank. When the waitress asked for his order, he only shook
his head. His eyes never left the old man. "Start talking," he said
once they were alone. "I'm sure I don't have the slightest idea . .
."
"Cut it, Taliesin. The 'coincidence' theory isn't holding water
anymore. You wanted to meet me. You set it all up. I don't know how
you did it, but you fixed the game show somehow, just like you somehow
managed to have that taxi show up out of nowhere. This trip of mine is
your doing. So's that boy outside who knows more about me than he
should.
I want to know why."
" "The boy? Which boy?" "The one who looks like a dead kid in New
York . . . enough like him to be his brother. His picture was in all
the papers. Mine, too.
Don't say you didn't know who I was the minute you staged that pratfall
in Manhattan." "You're speaking gibberish." "How's the kid involved?"
Hal went on flatly. "Involved in what?" Taliesin asked.
"The woman's a wreck. The kid's on Seconal. Exactly what is going on
here?" "Hal, you really ought to hear yourself ..:J ." "And the cops
ought to hear you. But I'm going to let you The old man sputtered.
When the waitress brought their order, he fairly melted in gratitude.
He sipped his tea and smiled. "Now," he said at last.
"Suppose we talk reasonably about your apprehensions."
"Apprehensions, my aunt's fanny. You brought me on this trip for a
reason, and I want to know . . ." His train of thought left him. The
bus driver came in, his hands covered with oil. As he took his place
at the end of the washroom queue, the swarthy man who had been sitting
in the front of the bus rose slowly from his table and put on a jacket
he'd been carrying. It was an innocuous piece of business, except that
the air inside the inn was hot enough to explode dynamite.
Why put on a jacket."?
The dark man placed some coins on the table, then casually walked out
the front door. "This is utter nonsense," Taliesin said, but Hal had
stopped listening to him.
He stood up and followed the dark man outside, slowly and at some
distance. The man walked quickly up to the bus and climbed aboard.
Instinctively Hal reached for his gun. It wasn't there. He hadn't
carried a gun for more than a year. For the first time in all the
liquor-soaked months since his resignation, he felt afraid.
He cast about for a weapon. The best he could come up with was one of
the fist-sized decorative rocks around the juniper bushes that lined
the inn's foundation. He wrapped his fingers around it and ran in a
crouch to the side of the bus. ! The dark man was slowly making his
way up the aisle, toward Emily and Arthur Blessing. Emily saw him and
stiffened.
When the man slid a gun out of his jacket, she moaned. "Take it," she
said. "It's on the seat, in the red lunch box." She pointed to the
seat she had occupied.
The man looked over at the place she'd indicated, then back to her.
The movement took less than two seconds, but during those two seconds
Hal understood worlds. He knew the man was going to kill Emily
Blessing, and probably the boy, too, whether or not he got what he
wanted. He also knew that he was not in a strong position to stop him.
If Hal shouted, the gunman would shoot him first, then go after the
woman. If he tried to storm the bus, he would be giving the man even
more time.
All he had was the rock. That, and the good fortune of a bus without
air-conditioning. The open windows gave him a chance, if he could find
a line of sight. But the man's head was above the window edge. No
matter how well he threw, Hal wouldn't be able to do any real damage. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]