Crosscut by Meg Gardiner Read Free Book Online

said.
    “Yeah. Robin Klijsters.”
    She frowned, trying to place him. “I know you, don’t I?”
    “I was Antonia Shepard’s student teacher. I’m here with Len Bradovich.”
    Ceci unwound. Len Bradovich had played on the basketball team. Six-foot-three with soft hands. He never gave her a look and he threw like a girl. Well, well. Robin Klijsters couldn’t have topped five-five. He was soft and pouty and had a silly punk-rock haircut and those cheekbones. Huh. She’d always wondered if Len played for the boy-on-boy team. And here was a girlie little man he’d hooked up with.
    His eyes were dark and wide, all pupil. Did pain do that to sissy boys? He dabbed the back of his hand to his forehead.
    “Sorry, dentists’ offices make me nervous. Think you could get me set up? I don’t want to hang around longer than I have to.”
    Ceci put on her professional smile, businesslike and wise. “Let’s wait for Dr. Hankins. In fact, why don’t I call him and see if he’s—”
    “Please.” Pain spun in his eyes. “He said he’d be right here. And Len, I promised him I’d get back to the picnic as soon as possible.”
    Pussy-whipped, and by another man. What a homo. He was even wearing a fanny pack. Heterosexual men didn’t wear fanny packs, except maybe artists or academic types.
    She waved him through. “Come on back.”
    In the exam room she gestured toward the chair, patting him on the shoulder, as she liked to do with nervous patients. He flinched. So did she. Under the baggy shirt he was rock-hard. She put on her safety glasses, snapped on a pair of latex gloves and pulled over the implement tray. He had not sat down.
    She gestured again to the chair and turned on the big examination light. “Please, Mr. Klijsters. The only way we’ll repair that filling is if you sit down and open your mouth.”
    She put a hand on his back, nudging him toward the chair. He lurched, grabbed the examination light, and swung it into her chin.
    Ceci’s head snapped back. What the hell? She put a hand to her mouth. She’d bitten her tongue. She stared at Klijsters, appalled.
    “You freaking little wussy,” she said.
    He swung his arm, backhanding her across the face. Her safety glasses flew off. She crashed into the implement tray. Oh, shit.
    He stood absolutely still, staring at her with those black eyes.
    She grabbed a curette from the implement tray. Before she could think twice, she stabbed him with it. She shoved it straight at his chest, impaling him through his shirt.
    He jerked from the impact, but his eyes remained cool.
    “Fight,” he said. “Excellent.”
    The curette protruded from his chest. Blood coursed down the front of his shirt. He let it run. He didn’t flinch. He unzipped the fanny pack.
    Ceci ran for the door.
    The Taser darts struck the back of her blouse. She went rigid, hair to fingertips, vision streaking white with the electric shock. She saw the room tipping sideways, heard the noise as she hit the implement tray. She crashed to the floor.
    She heard a sound. Snap. Snap. Klijsters was double-gloving.
     
He hit the power button for the dentist’s chair, raising it and tilting back the seat. The examination light hung above Ceci’s face, surgically bright. Her hands and feet were bound to the chair with electrical tape.
    Klijsters appeared above her. He was no longer cringing with toothache. And he wasn’t Robin Klijsters, she knew. He looked calm.
    “Now.”
    She heard the sound of metal implements tinging against each other. The sickle scaler appeared in his hand. The pick on the end was long and slightly curved and sharp at the tip. He leaned toward her.
    “No,” she said.
    She turned her head away. The Taser appeared in his other hand. It was shaped like a gun, but with electrical contacts instead of a muzzle at the end of a solid barrel. He pressed the contacts to her eyelids.
    “Do not move.”
    She smelled talc and latex. He touched the sickle scaler to her lips. She felt the