Repairman Jack [02]-Legacies

"Okay. Write this down." Jack rattled off the number at the Tenth Avenue drop. "Tell her to leave a message on the answering machine. Tell her that's how you get hold of me."

"Will do. Are we still on for this afternoon?"

"Sure are. Westchester, right?"

"No," she said, drawing out the word. "FAO Schwartz."

"We'll discuss that later. See you at noon."

4.

"Oh, my God!" Gia said. "What's that?"

"Just a little bruise."

Jack looked down at the large purple area on his left chest wall. Damn. He'd hoped she wouldn't notice, but here in the warm afterglow of their lovemaking, he'd forgot all about it.

They'd dropped Vicky off at her art class after lunch. She spent most of every Sunday afternoon learning the basics of drawing, painting, and sculpture. Her teacher said she showed a real flair for drawing. Jack figured it had to be genetic, what with her mother an artist and all. Vicky loved the classes, and Jack loved the chance to be alone with Gia on Sunday afternoons.

Their routine was to dash here to Jack's apartment immediately after dropping Vicky off. Often they didn't travel ten feet inside the door before they were tearing at each other's clothes. From there they usually wound up on the nearest horizontal surface. Today, however, they'd made it all the way to the bed.

Jack pulled the sheet up to his neck, but she pushed it down.

"I'd hardly call that 'little.' " He watched Gia's fingers trace over it. "Does it hurt?"

"Nah."

She pressed and he winced.

"Right," she said. "Doesn't hurt a bit. How long have you had it?"

"Since last night." Since a little before midnight, to be exact.

He told her about the creep taking a shot at him, and how the Kevlar vest had saved him.

"Thank God you were wearing it!" she said. She couldn't seem to take her eyes off it or stop touching it. "But if the vest is bulletproof, how come you're hurt?"

"Well, it did keep the bullet from going through me, but the slug's still got all that velocity behind it. Something had to absorb it, and that something was me."

Jack still wasn't sure why he'd given in to the impulse to wear the Santa suit. Usually if he dressed up it was either as a lure or to allay suspicion. Last night's flamboyant performance with the ho-ho-ho's and the beard and red suit was not his style.

But somehow… this time, this job… he'd felt compelled to make a point.

And he'd known that was stupid. Experience had taught him, when you try to make a point instead of simply getting the job done, you up the chances of things going wrong, which ups your chances of getting hurt.

So Jack had taken precautions. He never wore body armor, but had made an exception last night. Normally he would have opened a can of mace and lobbed it into the truck, then taken down the guy or guys with a sap when they tumbled out the door. But doing the Santa thing required more exposure, and he knew sure as hell someone would have a gun.

He'd been right. The guy got off a lucky shot that felt like a four-by-four slamming end-on into Jack's chest. Knocked him off the truck and the wind out of his lungs, but the ten-ply vest had stopped the slug.

Good thing he'd had those weighted gloves. Abe hadn't been able to find white ones, but he'd provided Jack a pair of white cotton gloves to wear over the more traditional black leather. The lead inserts doubled the impact of every punch and allowed him to make short work of the creep.

And then Jack had lost it. Maybe it was the pain, maybe it was thinking how he'd be dead if he hadn't worn the vest, and maybe it was remembering the victims of the slimeball's rip-off. Whatever, the darkness within slipped out of its hole and took over for a little while.

Gia slipped an arm around him and pulled him closer.

One of her breasts rested on the bruise. She nuzzled against his neck.

"When are you going to quit this?" she said.

Jack took a deep breath and felt a sharp stab of pain. He figured the bullet impact had caused a minor separation in his rib cartilage. Not the first time for him, probably not the last.

"Oh, we're not going to get into that now, are we?" he said softly, smoothing her soft blond hair.

"It's just that I get so scared when I think about people shooting at you."

"It's not an everyday occurrence. Most of my fix-ups are strictly hands-off affairs."

"But there's always the potential for things to go wrong. I mean, you're not exactly dealing with upstanding citizens in your line of work."

"You've got a point there."

Maybe if he kept agreeing, she'd let it drop.

"I know I owe Repairman Jack, but—"

"You don't owe him anything."

"Yes, I do. Vicky is alive because of him. That crazy Indian killed Grace and Nellie, and if you had been anybody else, he would have fed Vicky to those things …"

She shuddered and pressed against him.