Read Online The Nature of the Beast by G.M. Ford - Free Book Online Page B

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    Audrey Williams watched as Jackson Craig finished giving instructions to the Mobile Security Supervisor. At the far end of the block a trio of Secret Service SUVs rolled slowly down the street.
    Last to leave was the ambulance carrying Craig’s father Charlie who was on his way to the bureau’s Secure Care Facility in West Hollywood. As far as Pasadena Oaks was concerned, the sooner he left and the further he went the better they liked it. Apparently, in the old folks trade, gunfire was bad for business.
    The moment forensics had finished with the scene, two teams of workers had arrived. The first began cleaning up the considerable mess, using a BOBCAT with a miniature front-loader to transfer the mounds of glass to a nearby dumpster. The second team of tradesmen followed closely on the heels of the first. South Pasadena Glass arrived like an invading army, at least a dozen of men in half that many trucks, measuring, cutting and then replacing the shattered glass front of the building one piece at a time. A few minutes ago, they’d towed in several banks of lights, indicating they planned to work deep into the night.
    Audrey watched as Jackson Craig turned his back on the street and headed her way. His face was too asymmetrical for Hollywood, where eternal boyishness was coin of the realm. Craig was more in the European mode of leading men, craggy and worldly, all bellicosity and big sad eyes. Very handsome in his own way.
    “My name is Jackson Craig,” he said offering his hand.
    She took it. His grip was firm and dry.
    “Sounds like the new James Bond,” she quipped with a smile.
    “Apparently any resemblance ends with the name,” he said disgustedly.
    “Audrey Williams.”
    “My guardian angel,” he said.
    “Your new partner,” she corrected.
    “Needless to say, my sister and I are grateful,” Craig said. “Without you…” He let the sentence peter out.
    She shrugged. “Right place. Right time.” she said. “Logistics told me where to find you. I figured I’d wait across the street until you were finished with family matters and then introduce myself. About the third time I look up I see this guy crossing the street with a MAC10.” She made a wry face. “The rest, as they say, is history.”
    “Without you, my sister and I would have been history,” Craig insisted. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you again,” he said with great sincerity. She watched as he pulled back his jacket and deposited his Secret Service ID in the inside pocket.
    She nodded at his left hand. “That’s amazing,” she said, shaking her head in wonder. “I had no idea that was possible.”
    Craig was momentarily taken aback by her frankness. Most people either failed to notice his hand at all or went to great lengths to pretend they hadn’t. Sometimes to the point of foolishness. But this young woman was right up front about it. He liked her immediately. If he was going to be saddled with a partner, she was probably as good as it was likely to get.
    “It looks exactly like the other one.”
    “It should,” Jackson Craig said. “It’s a computer generated representation of my right hand, except in reverse. Right down to the hair on the knuckles.”
    “And the dexterity…”
    Craig rolled the artificial fingers in the manner of a child waving bye bye.
    “I’m the poster boy for sensory reinnervation,” he said. Anticipating her confusion, he went on. “They take the amputated nerves and transfer them to skin and muscle tissue. Takes about a year for them to begin to grow into the muscle. Once they regenerate themselves the patient has sufficient nerve impulses to control the myoelectric function of the fingers.”
    She stepped in close. Looked down at the hand. “May I?” she asked.
    Jackson Craig lifted the prosthesis to waist level. She took it gently in her hands as if holding a wounded bird.
    “It’s actually warm,” she said.
    “In all ways superior to the original,” Craig