The Lucifer Code Read Online Free PDF

and dropped the seat belt across his chest.
    You’re about to die and this is going to be the last thing on your mind?
    Lourds couldn’t believe himself. Then he had no more time to think because the strap snapped tight round his chest, the woman wrapped her arms round him and buried her face against his back, and the SUV ploughed through the abandoned tables and chairs.
    Something hard pressed into Lourds’ groin. Despite his situation, he couldn’t help looking. Kristine’s pistol lay in his lap. Before he could grab the gun, the SUV slammed into the side of the café. The right side of the car crumpled and the bloodstained windshield caved in and became a glittering haze of shrapnel ricocheting inside the SUV. Like a dazed boxer, the SUV rebounded from the wall and careened back toward the busy street. Lourds felt the shock of the impact all the way through his body. But the van rolled on. No sooner had the SUV rolled back into the street than a produce truck collided with it on the left side. More pain.
    But he was still alive. The pain made that clear.
    The crumpled side of the SUV dropped and Lourds thought he felt the front wheel roll away. With mass and speed on the side of the cargo truck, the SUV sagged and rolled over like a submissive hound before its master.
    Lourds braced himself against the ceiling, but he and Kristine were thrown across the vehicle’s interior. Feeling cut in half by the seat belt, Lourds dangled. He watched in horror through the broken window as the right side of the hulking man’s face was ground away on the rough street as the SUV skidded along the pavement. The hulking man screamed briefly in agony before the shrieks stopped. The SUV continued careening down the street. Lourds fought to stay away from the huge hideously dead corpse. He feared the body would be reduced to scraps and then he’d share the same horrible fate.
    Then both vehicles came to a stop.
    The sudden lack of movement seemed almost inconceivable after the last few seconds, but the terrible sounds of screeching metal and human screams continued echoing inside Lourds’ head.
    We’re alive! he thought.
    Then he looked at the ground-up corpse and the driver with part of his head missing.
    Well, some of us are still alive .
    ‘Get up,’ Kristine ordered.
    Lourds didn’t move. ‘You’ve got your pistol in my crotch.’
    Kristine moved the pistol. ‘Get up.’
    Lourds tried, but the strap was too tight with his weight against it. He couldn’t pull free. ‘I can’t. The strap’s—’
    A short combat knife flashed in the young woman’s hand. The strap parted like butter under its keen edge.
    She has a knife , Lourdes thought. A very sharp knife …
    It terrified him even more than the gun.
    The strap’s release caught Lourds off-guard. He fell onto the hulking man’s bleeding body. Before he could recoil, Kristine fell on top of him, then swung round, kicking him in the head in her haste, and stood. She pocketed the knife, shoved the pistol into the back of her waistband, and turned her attention to the broken door, currently above her head.
    A familiar sickly sweet odour tickled his nostrils.
    ‘Do you smell gasoline?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    Wetness slid under the hulking man’s corpse. Lourds hesitantly touched it and sniffed his finger. It was definitely gasoline. The smell overpowered even the stench of blood and death.
    ‘There’s gasoline under us,’ he said.
    ‘The impact must have ruptured the gas tank. Give me a hand with this door.’
    ‘No! All we need is a spark, possibly from messing with that jammed door, and we could be burned alive.’
    ‘Do you really think just sitting here is our best option, Professor? Haven’t you realized there’s worse out there than fire?’
    Lourds didn’t say so to his weapon-toting keeper, but he thought waiting for help was an incredibly intelligent idea.
    ‘Get up and help me,’ Kristine said, ‘Even if the police arrive to rescue us, I’m not