Nightkill by F. Paul Wilson

Author:F. Paul Wilson [Wilson, F. Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: assassins
Publisher: New York : Forge
Published: 1997-07-15T05:00:00+00:00

Jake sat on the edge of his bed and squeezed the hollow rubber ball over and over, gritting his teeth at the jolt each rep sent up his forearm.

He told himself he was not in a bad mood. How could he be.> Damn it, three months ago he'd been lying in bed unable to move, longing to die, and then a miracle had given him back his body— his life. After a fabulous emotional jackpot like that, he shouldn't be able even to imagine being in a bad mood, now or ever again.

All right, so the body given back to him was a frail, shrunken knockoff of the Jake Nacht from before that bastard Danziger had back-shot him. Frail was better than paralyzed—far better. He'd get back to what he was, he was working on it. He was getting there.

Like hell.

Coming out of the surgery he'd been able to grab the sheets, and now he could grab a rubber ball. Big improvement. Okay, yeah, he could walk—or totter, to be more accurate. The pain had laded, but the weakness seemed to be settling in for a permanent stay.

Those months in bed, not moving unless someone moved him.

m

F. PAUL WILSON AND STEVE LYON

had done a job on him. Angel kept assuring him that his soreness, frailty, and lack of coordination were completely natural and to be expected. That the work she and the other nurses had done in the hospital, flexing his arms and legs every day, had slowed the shriveling of his tendons and ligaments, but very little muscle tone could be preserved that way. Translated, his muscles had turned to jelly. Not just the big ones in his arms and legs but the litde ones in the pads of his fingers, around his ribs, along his spine. His back ached incessantly from the rehab exercises. Being fifteen pounds thinner than the day he'd been shot, he looked all right, but he hated the flabbiness his probing fingers found in his biceps, his gut. His head had stopped wobbling on top of his shoulders, but his neck was constandy sore.

Even now, after months of work, it took a fierce effort to more than dent a racquetball in his right hand, and his left was weaker still. His coordination was so scrambled he could barely hold a pen; scrawling his name took immense concentration. Here at Graham's clinic he had zero chance to get close to a gun, let alone pick one up, try to aim it, and squeeze the trigger. Even if he could, he had an idea what would happen: He'd be lucky to hit the wall instead of the floor.

If this was going to be it, he had about as much chance of sneaking up on Fredo and putting a bullet in his head as he did of winning the shot put at the next Olympics.

Patience, he told himself. I always had it before. I never capped someone until I'd planned every step, plotted escape routes, gone over

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