Repairman Jack [08]-Crisscross by F. Paul Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

went back to arranging her shells.
    A virus… Jack hoped that was all it was.
    Gia grabbed his hand. "I see that look. Don't worry , okay? I just had my monthly checkup and Dr. Eagleton says everything's going fine."
    "Hey, if she can't tell whether it's a boy or a girl yet, how do we know she—?"
    Gia held up her hand in a traffic-cop move. "Don't go there. She delivered Vicky and she's been my gynecologist ever since. As far as I'm concerned she's the best OB on the planet."
    "Okay, okay. It's just I worry, you know? I'm new to this whole thing."
    She smiled. "I know. But by the time March rolls around, you'll be a pro."
    Jack hoped so.
    He poked at his calamari rings. He wasn't so hungry anymore.

9

    Jack returned to his apartment after dropping off Vicky and Gia—who was feeling better—at their Sutton Square townhouse. He'd been carrying his .380 AMT Backup at the restaurant but wanted something a little more impressive along when he visited Cordova's place—just in case he got backed into a corner.
    He wound through the Victorian oak furniture of his cluttered front room—Gia had once called it "claustrophobic," but she seemed used to it these days—and headed for the old fold-out secretary against the far wall. He occupied the third floor of a West Eighties brownstone that was much too small for all the neat stuff he'd accumulated over the years. He didn't know what he was going to do with it once he and Gia were married. It was a given that he'd move to Sutton Square, but what would happen to all this?
    He'd worry about it when the time came.
    He angled the secretary out from the wall and reached for the notch in the lower rear panel. His hand stopped just inches away. The hidden space behind the drawers held his weapons cache—and, since Florida, something else. That something else tended to make him a little queasy.
    He pushed his hand forward and removed the panel. Hung on self-adhering hooks or jumbled on the floor of the space lay his collection of saps, knives, bullets, pistols. The latest addition was a souvenir from his Florida trip, a huge Ruger SuperRedhawk revolver chambered for .454 Casulls that would stop an elephant. Not many elephants around here, and the Ruger's nine-and-a-half-inch barrel made it impractical as a city carry, but he couldn't let it go.
    Another thing in the hidden compartment he couldn't let go—or rather, wouldn't let go of him—was a flap of skin running maybe ten inches wide and twelve long. Another leftover from that same trip, it was all that remained of a strange old woman named Anya. Yeah, a woman with a dog, a heroic little chihuahua named Oyv.
    He'd tried to rid himself of this grisly reminder of the horrors that had gone down in Florida, but it refused to go. He'd buried it once in Florida and twice again during the two months since he'd returned, but it wouldn't stay. By the time he got home it was already here, waiting for him. As little as a year ago he would have been shocked, repulsed, horrified, and questioning his sanity. Now… he simply went with it. He'd come to the gut-wrenching realization that he was no longer in control of his life. Sometimes he wondered if he'd ever been.
    After the third try he'd given up on burying the skin. Anya had been much more than she'd let on. Her strange powers hadn't prevented her death, but apparently they stretched beyond the grave. For some reason she wanted him to have this piece of her and was giving him no choice about it. That being the case, he'd go with the flow, certain that sooner or later he'd find out why.
    He unfolded the rectangle of skin, supple and fresh as new leather, showing not a trace of decomposition, and stared again at the bewildering pattern of pocked scars crisscrossed with the lines of fine, razor-thin cuts. It meant something, he was sure. But what?
    Quarter folding it, he put it away and picked up his Clock 19. He checked the magazine—9mm Magsafe Defenders alternating with copper-jacketed