Читать книгу Pretty Lethal - Joe Schreiber - Страница 5

‘American Idiot’ – Green Day

‘Don’t kill me.’

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.’