Assignment to Disaster Read Online Free PDF Page A

against the door and heard the latch click. His hand moved toward his inside pocket.
    "Don't," the girl said.
    He stood motionless.
    "I didn't do it," she said.
    He stood silent.
    "Believe me," she said.
    He stood waiting.
    Her mouth shook again. There was a small rip in the shoulder of her suit. There were violet shadows under her eyes. Fear crawled over her, slimy and ugly. It was quiet in the apartment. The sun glared in long slivers of brilliance through the slats of the Venetian blinds.
    "Give me the gun," he said.
    She shook her head, red hair swinging. "No. No, I can't trust you."
    "I'm going to take it from you," he said. "Go on, shoot."
    He walked toward her. Her mouth was partly open. Her white teeth gleamed. The gun shook in her hand and he saw her knuckles go tight. He thought she was going to squeeze the trigger. At the last moment she dropped the gun and it bounced on the floor, clattering, as he grabbed at her wrist and twisted it hard. She gave a small, stifled scream. He threw her angrily aside, without mercy, away from him. She fell into the couch across the room. Her red hair swept across her face.
    "Stay there," he said. He didn't recognize the sound of his own voice as he picked up Lew Osbourn's gun.
    Lew Osbourn. The knife in his back. Not a gun, a knife. He saw it now, looking at the dead man from this angle. A switchblade, buried between the shoulders, not too far below the neck. Into the spinal cord. How far wrong could a guy get? Thinking of Sidonie Osbourn, the laughing twins, the little house in the development near Alexandria, he felt a taste of acid in the back of his throat. His stomach lurched and heaved. He swallowed. Thinking of Lew, with more hair in other years, in Cologne, reckless and laughing then, tough, eager to do the job right; but always checking, always alert. How could this have happened, so easily, so silently, so finally?
    He felt hate and anger, remorse and pity. He felt a deep, irrevocable dedication to finding the man whose hand had done this thing.
    His thoughts jumped back to the girl. Not her hand? But her fault. Because of misguided loyalty, a misguided sense of family duty. That's why Lew Osbourn was dead.
    He looked at the apartment again. It had been neat and tidy before. Now he saw for the first time the quick, insane wreckage of it.
    "All right," he said to Deirdre Padgett. "Tell me. Make it quick."
    "There was a man in here. He came in…"
    "How?"
    She gestured. "The kitchen window. The fire escape."
    He went to the kitchen door. The window over the sink was open. Red-painted iron stairs laddered up into hot sunlight to the roof. But Lew had left someone up there on watch.
    "And?" he asked.
    "He took me by surprise," the girl whispered. She rubbed her cheek, touched the rip in her suit. "He forced me to be silent. He had the knife. He began to search the place."
    "Who was he?"
    "I don't know."
    "You never saw him before?"
    "Never."
    "Then?"
    "I made a sound. I wanted help. And your friend — this man — came in. I tried to warn him. I don't know what happened. I think the man — the stranger — hit me. I don't remember. I just woke up, a few moments before you came in."
    "Did this stranger speak to you at all?"
    She nodded.
    "What did he want?"
    "My brother," she said. "He wanted to know where to find Calvin. But I didn't tell him."
    "You're going to tell me," Durell said quietly.
    She looked up at him, something sharp on her tongue, gray eyes angry for an instant, resenting him. Then her shoulders sagged. She nodded. She whispered, "I need help. I didn't expect any of this. I'm sorry."
    "Come with me," Durell said.
    He had made a decision.
    She did not object when he told her to climb out onto the fire-escape platform beyond the kitchen sink, nor did she accept his help. Her movements were lithe and graceful. On the steel slats of the platform, she waited for him. Durell looked down at the back garden, but there was little to be seen. The foliage of the poplar