Rough Weather: A Spenser Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

they were in front of me, I shoved. Then we were at the door, I pushed it open, and we were out into the tempest.
    “Now we run,” I said.
    Susan kicked off her heels, and hanging on to each other, we sprinted away from the chapel into the roaring darkness, toward the barn.

 
    There were horses in the barn.
Probably the big Belgians. It was too dark to see them, but as we felt our way along the inside wall, I could hear them moving in their stalls and making that sort of lip-smacking snort that horses make sometimes, for reasons of their own. It was a stone barn, and the thick walls made the storm outside seem more distant. We found a bare space and sat down, our backs against the wall, and breathed for a while. I still had the gun in my right hand, and Susan’s hand in my left.
    “Do you think they’ll find us here?” Susan said.
    It was an actual question of interest. Not an expression of fear. Susan could approach hysteria over a bad hair day. But inmatters of actual crisis she became calm, and lucid, and penetrating. If they might find us here, we’d best prepare.
    “I don’t think they’ll look,” I said. “At the moment, I doubt that anyone in the chapel quite knows what happened. Think about it. The door bursts open. The candles go out. Shots are fired. People scream and run out. Most of their hostages are scattered all over the island.”
    “What did happen?” Susan said. “I assume it had something to do with you.”
    “It did,” I said. “But you may well be the only one who knows that. For all they know the doors blew open and the rest of it followed.”
    “So what will they do?”
    “It’s what Rugar will do,” I said. “Once he knows the deal, he’ll collect what hostages he has left and assemble them with his shooters by the helicopter. The first moment the storm allows, he’ll ditch the hostages, except Adelaide, hop in the chopper with his shooters, and get out of here.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Pretty sure,” I said.
    “Because?”
    “Because that’s what I’d do,” I said.
    “Should we try to stop him?” Susan said.
    I loved the “we.”
    “I have a thirty-eight with five rounds and a two-inch barrel,” I said. “Rugar’s got five guys with at least thirty rounds each, plus himself, who can shoot the balls off a flea at a hundred yards.”
    “I don’t think fleas have balls,” Susan said.
    “Their loss,” I said.
    “Yes,” she said.
    The barn was warm. The horses generated some heat. And a comforting horsey smell.
    “All those circumstances existed when you came to get me,” Susan said.
    “That’s true,” I said.
    “I get special treatment,” she said.
    “You do,” I said.
    “If we get out of this,” Susan said, “people may be critical that you didn’t save the bride.”
    “Probably,” I said.
    “What would you tell them?”
    “Never complain,” I said. “Never explain.”
    “No,” Susan said. “I want to know.”
    “I would,” I said, “tell them that saving you was all I could manage, and trying to save anyone else would have endangered you.”
    “And if someone said you sacrificed Adelaide for me, what would you say?”
    “I’d say, ‘You bet your ass I did.’ ”
    “And you couldn’t do both,” Susan said.
    “No.”
    “It is one of your greatest strengths,” Susan said. “Since I have known you, you do what you can, and do not blame yourself for not doing more.”
    “There is no red S on my chest,” I said. “I cannot leap tall buildings at a single bound.”
    “Short buildings?” Susan said.
    “Short buildings, sure,” I said.
    “No regrets?”
    “None about the buildings,” I said.
    “But otherwise?”
    “Sorrow sometimes. Like when I lost Candy Sloan. But …”
    “But?” Susan said.
    I shrugged, and realized she couldn’t see me. It was odd talking like this, two disembodied voices in the oppressive darkness. The lightning flashes seemed to be gone.
    “But I did what I could,” I said.
    “It helps