Cars have one bad trait - if they “get sick”, they don’t hope to “pass by themselves”. My Renault was naughty from the day before yesterday, and I even tried to help him with what I could - after listening to experts from the Internet, I changed candles, which cost me a broken nail. It even seemed to help, but now, when I stopped at the traffic light, in the dimensional work of the heart of my iron horse, the annoying “bu-bu-bu” is again clearly heard.

“Okay, convinced,” I sigh. Plans for the upcoming weekend, it seems, will have to bury, I drag myself through the whole city tomorrow to the workshop with Sana'a. Bouncing around much closer, but the eighth hour is already, even Friday, not a fact that it is open. Except that...

A ray of light on my headlights, which before lit up trash cans and roadside bushes, snatches an advertising stander out of early autumn darkness, a glowing cheerful, luminescent yellowish advertising stander - not later than two hundred meters from here is a round-the-clock service center. I travel this way every day at least twice and didn’t pay attention to the advertisement before, but apparently I did myself a mark somewhere in my subconscious - something had made me tear my eyes away from the choking disaster that all our roads turn into barely leave the center, and look in the right direction at the right moment. Or is my Frenchman just such a good guardian angel? Because it is only a sign.

Two hundred meters, as is usually the case, turned out to be five hundred - a broken primer leads me into a garage cooperative, where an archetypical watchman, sleepy, in a jersey and galoshes barefoot, opens the barrier and waves his hand somewhere to the right in response to my question about car service. Not that I waited for me to be met by a glittering glass and neon building on the outskirts of the city, but these torn-ups begin to strain me a little.

However, everything is not so bad. The workshop turns out to be a hefty building of concrete blocks, without a single window - it looks like either a warehouse, or even a bunker, in which you can sit out an atomic bombardment. The gate, fortunately, is hospitably wide open, light and music pour out of them with a generous stream, to my joy, not blatnyak - neutral pops. Next to the gate, as I understand it, the owner himself is busy, obviously intending to close them, but the sound of a car pulling up changes his plans - shielding his eyes with his hand from the headlights, he looks at my car from under the visor of salted baseball cap.

- Is it written “around the clock”? - I protrude into the open window, not hurrying to jam the engine.

- Yes, it's cold just with a soul wide open. Who needs to call the bell. Come on, taxi, - the voice is young, rather a guy than a man. Vaguely even familiar. All right, I will consider later, in the light, with whom the close world has brought me together.

The gates with the clang close behind the Renault, cutting off a large, lit up by a dozen fluorescent lamps, from the wet autumn darkness. I turn off the engine, get out of the car, heels smacking on concrete. How are they not choking, without windows? A glance runs along the walls - the ventilation grilles under the ceiling, further, behind the pulled back curtain of dense polyethylene, the vent of an industrial exhaust hood. There is no overpass, but there is a pit, across which several thick boards, tables and racks along the walls are thrown, and in the center of the ceiling, from the gate to the opposite wall, there is a monorail from which a construction reminds me of basements of the Inquisition - wheels, chains, hook . Winch? Tal? I do not understand these mechanisms, but here the hooks in the ceiling for some time I strain.

- Well, what hurts us? - the voice of the guy sounds over the very shoulder, I even shudder in surprise.

“We have a troit,” I answer, turning around.And I stop in amazement, for a full ten seconds losing the thread of what is happening.

"Our person".

That's how I know that voice. Over the past few months, the Predator seems to have heard even more at the shoulders and matured. The cheeks and the skull under the baseball cap are shaved smoothly, on the left cheekbone there is a dark smeared spot of some kind of automotive chemistry, it also smells of it, the thick, like a young oak, neck with tattooed sticks out of the stretched gates of the old payta , you will not get rid of it) - the dice, to which the fingers of the skeleton stretch, the rest is not visible. Over the payta green kombez with pockets, badge on it. Predator's name is Roman.

- Hello, May, - a pleasant smile, and I am somewhat let go, eerie images, periodically visiting me in nightmares, retreat to where they belong — into the jungle of the subconscious. “I immediately recognized you.”

“Hello ... Roma,” I hope the return smile doesn’t look like a grin. I kind of understand it with my mind that everyone who was at that damn meeting, lives somewhere in my city, but still the meeting is unsettling. There are moments and people who (and whom) would be better to cross out of their lives, forget once and for all, like a bad dream. At some point it seems that it turned out, but then, after months or even years, they suddenly emerge like drowned people from the bottom of the pond, and poison your existence with their ... stench.

Most of all I now want to go back behind the wheel and get out of here at full speed, creaking rubber on bends.

- C'mon, why have you strained? Come on, turn on, turn on the idle, see what and how, - Predator retreats back, goes to the hood Renault. I exhale. What scared something really? Well, he was at a gathering of Pakhomovs - so I was there. And he did not kill Vasilisa, in my opinion, he was not even in the room then. He has no less reason to be afraid of me than I have - to be afraid of him. True, it weighs twice as much ... So I am not a schoolgirl, but a major of justice, I can’t take me with my bare hands.

Renault is started up from the third time, which was not observed before. For some time I was sitting in the cabin, staring through the glass at the open hood and the Predator digging in the intricacies of the details - he pulls something with a key, listens, nods to himself, turns something again. At his command, I cut down the engine, looking for something again, this time with a half-nose that pleases.

“You will keep the wilderness and come here, you will keep it here,” says Roma, and I obediently get out of the car. The guy throws an ironic look at my heels: - And comfortable?

- A matter of habit, - I shrug, bend over. - Where to keep?

- Here, - Roma points to a bundle of wires. - Do not touch Klemm only.

- Yeah, - I stretch my hand, intercepts the wiring. The guy takes a step back.

And then in my head fireworks explode, and the world goes out.

Oh, head ... The first desire that arises in such a situation for everyone - to touch a sore spot with a hand - cannot be fulfilled. Hand does not obey. Not because I do not feel it - something bothers me. I open my eyes, fumble my teeth from the disgustingly sharp, annoying light of the eyes, and immediately recall everything, twitching my whole body in a belated attempt to escape.

Late.

My hands are pulled behind my back, right over my clothes — the raincoat was removed from me, but the blouse and jacket are still in place and even fastened. Wrists do not cut - scotch? I lay on the floor, face down, head turned on its side, weakness in the body, nail-whipping in the back of the head, in any case, the feeling is exactly that. And, in my opinion, they pull off my skirt.

- Do not you dare bitch! - screaming, trying to roll over. Yeah, the hell there - in the back rests a heavy palm, presses to the dirty concrete. Yes, and “screaming” is a strong word, the mouth is plastered with a piece of scotch, so it turns out to make only a set of muffled sounds.

- Do not feel sick? - the voice of the Predator is almost caring.

I am a little bit stunned by the question, but then I understand: apparently, I wonder if I have a concussion. Not sick, just a head like wet cotton and full of weakness, there was not even a dash of sensible.How is it still checked? Eyes from side to side, up and down - the pain does not increase, the memory is also in order - I remember everything, right up until the moment of impact. Yes, I don’t hit the Turgenev lady, I’m not hitting a blow;