Coyote Read Online Free PDF Page B

open so I threw a chair through it and used the axe to clear out the broken glass. The gaping window sucked the black smoke from the elevator shaft even further into the foyer. Soon flames would follow it.
    I lifted Wauhope back onto my shoulder and sucked in as deep a breath as I could. Positioning myself in relation to the window and the pool, I backed about ten feet into the thick, clogging smoke. I wasn’t game to go back any further.
    Now, coughing and almost blinded by the tears streaming from my eyes, I ran towards the window like it was a lover’s arms. I pushed my calves and thighs to the max, thrusting my feet into the floor like pistons.
    We burst out of the smoke and straight through the window.
    There was no room for holding back. I pushed off the ledge, in one final bound, like an Olympic diver going for gold.
    We flew across space for a few precious seconds of momentum. Then gravity wrenched Wauhope’s body off my shoulder and we dropped.
    Into cold water.
    Â 
    I hauled Wauhope up and out; he was still breathing but it was far too laboured. I looked back. Flames now poured out of the broken window we’d just dived from. I grabbed heavy pool towels from the lounges, wet them and covered us both. The hotel seemed okay; it had just been evacuated. We made it down the stairs to safety and across the road to the park.
    I knelt to place Wauhope gently on the ground then turned in wonder to see that Portsmouth Square was ringed in fire.
    Above us a weathered stone statue of a man clad in Western gear, boots and spurs, and holding two pistols ready to fire, took aim at the conflagration we’d just escaped.
    I blinked. It was the hero from Professor Wauhope’s lecture — Hector Kershaw.
    Wauhope muttered something. I leant in. His eyes were open and staring up at the statue behind me.
    â€˜What did you say?’
    He mumbled.
    I leant closer.
    â€˜I don’t understand,’ he whispered. ‘Why now?’
    â€˜What, Professor? What are you talking about?’
    He coughed once, then wheezed, struggling for each breath. ‘But the rattlesnakes mean vengeance?’
    His glazed eyes held a question. His last. And one I couldn’t understand — let alone answer.
    â€˜But why now?’ Wauhope’s face froze and he gave a long whistling exhalation, the question still shaping his lips.
    Above, the heavens opened and heavy rain battered down on us. It was as though someone had opened a trap door in the bottom of a dam. I tried to shelter Wauhope from the sudden deluge with my body.
    The sirens wailed, converging on us from every direction.
    The paramedics surged into the park.
    I put my head in my hands — they were too late.

5
THE ZEBULON HOTEL,
PRENDERGAST STREET,
SOUTH OF MARKET
    It was afternoon by the time the San Francisco PD finished with whoever hadn’t been hospitalised.
    The rain hadn’t let up yet, so I was still dripping wet. I was also barefoot and my new work suit was hanging off me in stinking tatters. I was already late for work and didn’t have time to drive home to get changed, so once I’d made it back to my car in the Sansome Street parking station I drove straight to my gym near Union Square. My profession — and the stress that went with it — required easy proximity to a heavy set of weights, an equally heavy punching bag and serious martial arts training.
    My job meant I had to be ready for literally anything … but I didn’t feel that way just at this particular moment.
    Stanley Wauhope’s dying face shimmered in frontof my eyes. I shoved it aside. I’d cried my heart out over him, kneeling there in the drenching rain. He shouldn’t have died that way. No one should. Now I had to just deal with it.
    I dragged my bag of tricks out of the boot of the car and went into the gym. I spent the next twenty minutes under a blast of hot water, trying to work out how to get through the rest of this