PsyCop 2: Criss Cross by Jordan Castillo Price Read Free Book Online Page A

I expect them to keep me comfy and cozy and safe? No. But I can count on them to do what it takes to keep me upright and babbling.”
     
    “...and that partner of yours?”
     
    “Roger? You think I need to worry about a guy who buys me Starbucks?”
     
    “Look,” said Jacob. “Here’s what you should do. Take your cash card, and mine, and withdraw the maximum amount from each account. Then go to the train station and buy a ticket with cash....”
     
    “What? Why should I go anywhere? I don’t even know what this supposed danger is. And where would you be in all of this?”
     
    Jacob stared at the side of my cheap white laminated dresser. “Here. Figuring out what’s going on.”
     
    “You expect me to go somewhere without you?”
     
    Jacob’s jaw worked for a moment, and then he put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. “You’ve got to get away from me. Lisa said....”
     
    “Lisa said? You told me you couldn’t even understand her!”
     
    “She said I brought it.”
     
    I stared. I tried to piece something into that phrase that would make sense of it. What did he bring me? A stomach virus? What about something more insidious...like hope?
     
    I really, really wanted a Seconal.
     
    “Look,” I said, doing my best to put on a voice that was incredibly reasonable sounding. I did a pretty good job. “She didn’t give you a full message, so we can’t act on it. I don’t know what she meant. Do you?”
     
    Jacob looked at me sideways.
     
    “That’s what’s wrong with Psychs,” I said. “The sixth sense doesn’t match up with the other senses, so anything we describe comes out flawed. It’s like trying to describe how purple smells, or what pain sounds like.”
     
    Jacob stared at my knee as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to look me in the eye. “But we can’t just sit back and do nothing,” he said. He’d quieted down, but his voice still held a clipped urgency. “You didn’t hear how panicked she sounded.”
     
    Good thing. I’d already thrown up and sort of fainted. I didn’t need something else to worry about. “It’s not going to help for me to go running off,” I told Jacob. “If the clinic, or whoever, is as dangerous as all that, they’ve probably got some kind of chip in me already.”
     
    Jacob finally did look me in the eye, and his face went ashen.
     
    I shrugged. I’d been on a short leash ever since I can remember. That's how I’ve turned out to be such a liar. “Lisa did her job,” I went on, trying to calm Jacob down. “She warned us. Now we know to look out.”
     
    “Look out for what?”
     
    I sank back onto my bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Who knows? But if we just play dumb and keep our eyes open, we’ll find out.”
     
    ***
     
    Jacob made me some eggs and toast and I ate it, and washed it down with orange juice. Breakfast at eleven thirty p.m., since I wasn’t supposed to eat after midnight. We curled up on the couch together and watched an old rerun of Ghostbusters. It probably shouldn’t have struck me funny, the idea of green, gooey ectoplasm and a bad guy made of marshmallow, but it did.
     
    And the next thing I knew, Jacob was shaking me. And not very gently, either.
     
    “Say something,” he said.
     
    “What?” I mumbled, struggling to orient myself. “What?”
     
    “Can you hear me? What day is it? Who’s the president?”
     
    “Yes, I don’t know, and a horse’s ass.”
     
    Jacob let go of me. We were on the living room futon with all the lights on and a re-run of Three’s Company on TV. Dark showed through a gap in the miniblinds. The VCR blinked 12:00 -- no help there -- but I couldn’t have been asleep for long. My heart fluttered in that nervous rhythm it gets when I’m ripped out of the early stages of sleep.
     
    “Were you having a nightmare?” Jacob asked.
     
    If I was, it hadn’t been very impressive. I actually didn’t have many nightmares. My waking life probably gave my