Читать книгу Bestselling Conspiracy Thriller Trilogy: Sanctus, The Key, The Tower - Simon Toyne, Simon Toyne - Страница 102

Rodriguez was also looking at Samuel, standing on the famous bridge in Central Park, his arm draped over the shoulder of a girl who looked just like him. The photo was in a cheap clip frame that matched several others dotted across the wall of the apartment.

Breaking in had been easy enough. The girl lived on the ground floor of a purpose-built block close enough to the city centre to attract young professionals, and by the time he’d got there, everyone was out at work. He’d just had to hop into her tiny garden, with dense enough foliage to give plenty of cover, hold up his windcheater to deaden the noise and punch out a window. His brothers in Ruin would deal with the girl. He had to make sure she’d left no loose ends.

He hadn’t known Samuel that well inside the Citadel so seeing fragments of his previous life frozen on his sister’s wall was a strange experience. There was another shot of him looking much younger, sitting in a rowing boat with an equally fresh-faced version of the girl, both squinting against the sunlight. He’d spotted the photos by the phone, partially hidden by the tendrils of one of the many plants that covered practically every horizontal surface.

Rodriguez pressed the flashing message button and listened to the playback while he piled all the paper he could find in the middle of the living-room floor. There were two calls, both from what sounded like her boss, bawling her out for skipping town without filing copy.

He dragged her duvet off the unmade bed and added it to the heap, remembering a film he’d seen as a kid about some guy who was obsessed with aliens and filled his house with a mountain of junk like this.

He felt like an alien now.

When he’d gathered enough flammable material in the living room he went through the rest of the apartment splashing gasoline over the bed, the carpets, the couch. He didn’t have time to check the place thoroughly so he needed to make sure everything would be destroyed.

He went back out the way he’d come in, then tossed a lit match through the broken pane, heard the other windows crack with the pressure wave as the gas fumes caught. He didn’t stop to watch it burn, though he’d have liked that a lot. He had two more stops to make before he could fly away from here for ever.

He was doing God’s work. There was no time for pleasure.