Fun and Games (14 page)

So this tall guy had nothing to complain about.

Hardie threw another punch, which made his chest, and fist, throb with agony all over again, but he really didn’t care. Something dropped out of Tallboy’s hands and shattered on the ground. Hardie grabbed two fistfuls of Tallboy’s fake landscaping uniform and slammed him into the side of the van, and again, and again, watching the guy’s neck seem to loosen with every blow.

Hardie knew he should put him in some kind of hold now, or cut off his air, something. Slap him around to revive him, then start in with the questions. Who are you. How many of you. Why do you want to kill Lane Madden. Who’s in charge. But Hardie’s blood was up. It didn’t feel right to stop and ask questions. Fuck questions. This guy tried to run them off a road, make them fall to their deaths.

So Hardie adjusted his grip, ran Tallboy over the edge of the canyon, then launched him outward. Tallboy yelled and waved his arms and legs, and that was the last thing Hardie saw before he disappeared.

Hardie took a step back, breathed out, put his palms on his knees. Thought about the events of the day.

Women punched in the face: 2.

Men thrown off something high: 2.

Hardie was nothing if not consistent.

For an instant O’Neal felt his stomach go all giddy. The air blasted across the back of his neck, and it reminded him of a million dreams he used to have about falling to his death. He didn’t want to die. Not when there was still work to be done. O’Neal threw out his hands to grab whatever he could to break his fall.

His body made impact and he instantly felt hundreds of spines stab his palms, his arms, his back, crushing the plant that held him before he started sliding backward down the hill. O’Neal pounded his heels into the ground and he clawed at the earth, fingers bent like the teeth of a rake, his brain screaming, stop STOP
STOP!!!

For the third—fourth?—time in the past twelve hours, Lane Madden had saved her own life thanks to something she learned appearing in stupid action movies.

She was stunned by how many of these moves had become reflex. For instance: falling.

When you fall, you should go loose and push the air out of your lungs. Basic stunt lesson, straight from Enrico. A tense body is a hurt body.

So, when Hardie shoved her onto her back, she instinctively went loose and pushed the air out of her lungs. She also kept her head up—that is key because, of all the body parts you don’t want to damage, your head is at the top of the list. As you go down, you fold yourself like an accordion, collapsing every bendable part of your body one at a time:

ankles

 sknees

     hips

         elbows

Finally—if you can remember to do this—Enrico taught her to slap the ground with her palms to help break the fall. Lane ran through these steps countless times while training for
Your Kiss Might Kill Me
—hours of nothing but falls on an exercise mat. Then Enrico took away the mat. If Lane could do anything, it was fall.

There was no mat here. No flat surface either. And her bendable parts were already sore beyond reason. But the technique still worked, and after Lane slapped the ground, she reached out for the fat stubby trunk of a bush. She rolled over onto her back just in time to see Charlie sliding past. Lane reached out and grabbed a handful of his T-shirt. Which ripped six inches and then… held, preventing him from sliding the rest of the way down into the canyon.

At the end of her arm, Charlie wriggled like an insect caught until he found some handholds, some footing. One he’d stabilized himself, she heard him hiss:

“I’m going to fuck up that motherfucker.”

And then up Charlie went, scrambling through the brush and cacti. He’d just cleared the top when Lane heard a door creaking open.

Lane made it up just in time to see Hardie launching their tormentor over the edge.

The craziest thing was the absolute exhilaration Hardie felt watching Tallboy’s body disappear. It was a sensation he thought had been lost to him. Strange that the one thing that made him feel alive for the first time in three years was killing somebody.

20

Listen, Charlie, before we go in,
there’s something I have to tell you. It’s been on my conscience,
and you can punch me if you want to.

—Oliver Platt,
The Ice Harvest

T
HE KEYS
were still in the van, hanging from the steering column. They climbed inside. Lane eased back into the passenger seat, not offering to drive, not saying a word. Hardie was about to give her shit about being Miss Daisy but then remembered the accident. She’d probably done enough driving for one day.

He craned his neck around to make sure there were no hidden surprises in the back of the van.

Now he saw that the back was
loaded.

Lane heard him move and cracked open an eye.

“Where are you going?”

“Hang on.”

The cargo area was packed neatly, efficiently. Row upon row of plastic containers assembled on metal racks. Some of the stuff he recognized. Hardie popped open the top of one container. Syringes, sterile and sealed in plastic. Hardie checked another. Rubber tubing, the kind nurses use when they draw blood. Another container: gauze and tape. Hardie knew he should grab as much of this crap as possible. He was in shock and in too much pain to be slapping on bandages at the moment, but they would come in handy later. If there was a later.

Another container was full of small plastic bags of coke, heroin, and other goodies Hardie recognized from his days battling Philly drug gangs with Nate. The street value, based on his best guestimate, was enough to buy a house in the suburbs. And probably a sweet piece of automotive eye candy to park in the front drive.

Other items weren’t so familiar. Hardie popped the top of a plastic container that held a bright orange suit that was heavy and reeked of rubber. Another contained little pouches labeled
RSDL
—“reactive skin decontamination lotion”—and next to it, a box of injectable ampoules of hydroxocobalamin.

Then there was a box in the middle of the floor, half full of little spring-loaded vials. Just like the ones Hardie saw in that box they’d mounted on the front door of the Lowenbruck house. He fished one out, held it up to the light. Inside, clear liquid. Didn’t look like anything, really. Hardie slid it into his back pocket. You never know.

There were no guns. With every container top he opened, Hardie kept hoping, wishing, praying. But there was not so much as a slingshot.

“Charlie, come
on.
What are you doing?”

“One minute.”

There it was. Tucked into the corner, sealed in thick, opaque plastic.

His luggage.

Hardie reached out and touched it, just to make sure it wasn’t a mirage. He pressed his fingertips against it, saw the headless Spider-Man, and
yeah.
Definitely his bag. Hardie wondered what they had planned on doing with it. Burn it? Bury it? Divvy it up with a dice game? Which made Hardie think about the poor courier who’d had the unlucky assignment of delivering this bag. His body wasn’t in the van, and his delivery truck was nowhere in sight. Which was further proof that the world was random and mean and didn’t really give a shit about anybody. The world would run you down and slam a tire over your exploding skull and not even wonder what it had just hit.

Hardie was about to go back to the front of the van, when he remembered his carry-on. It should be back here somewhere. Maybe tucked away in some secret compartment?

Hardie began opening more tiny doors, kicking others. Had to be here. Where else would they have put it?

“Charlie! Get up here now or
I’m
getting behind the wheel.”

“Hang on.”

“Seriously? You’re really going to do this to me?”

“Coming, coming…”

The carry-on bag contained the only thing that couldn’t be replaced, the one link to his old life, the one reminder that he used to be a decent person…

Had
to be here.

Somewhere.

While Lane waited, literally on the edge of her seat, trying not to scream at Charlie for taking, like,
fucking forever
back there… her eyes fell on the GPS unit mounted in the dashboard. Huh. Maybe this would show where these creepy bastards lived. She tapped the touch screen and cycled backward through the searches until a familiar address popped up.

Her own.

572 Westminster Avenue, Venice, CA.

Goddamn it, did they come to the house last night? How long had they been watching her?

She tapped the screen again and another address appeared. One that made her body turn ice cold.

No…

They
couldn’t.

The carry-on wasn’t back here. Clearly the fuckers had stashed it somewhere else.

Hardie knew he was wasting time. They had to move. Now.

He gathered up a bunch of first aid–type supplies, unzipped the side of his bag, and shoved everything inside. He climbed back into the front and noticed Lane tapping the screen of a fancy-ass GPS unit on the dashboard. Hardie caught a glimpse of an address in bright white letters—
11804 Bloomfield St.
—before Lane tapped the screen again and it went dark.

“What was that?” Hardie asked.

“No idea,” Lane said.

“Hang on. Pull that address back up. Maybe that thing can tell us where these bastards live.”

“Already thought of it, already looked. There’s nothing. Just a lot of random places. Can we drive already, please?”

Just drive, Charlie.

Please don’t ask me to explain.

Thankfully, Charlie let the thing rest… for the moment. He slid the van gearshift into drive and tapped the gas and they lurched forward. All at once a horn blasted and a black Audi swerved around them, missing them by inches. As the Audi zoomed forward, a slender feminine hand appeared out of the open passenger window and extended a dainty middle finger. A beat later, a male hand popped out of the driver’s side, the thick middle finger lifted high and proud, the driver making sure they could see it over the top of the roof. Both held their salutes until the Audi was a good tenth of a mile away. Just to make sure they didn’t miss the message.

Charlie muttered, “Nice fucking town.”

“Do you want me to drive?” Lane asked. “Because—”

“No.”

After a wide curve, they passed a rocky overlook where a couple of groups of tourists lined up to take photos of one another with the shimmering reservoir and City of Angels in the background. Lane looked at all of their cars parked along the road. The children all bounced around up there, mugging for the camera, some of the older ones flashing fake gang signs.

“Lane.”

“Yeah.”

“You said you know this area.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you mind directing me the nearest highway?”

“I just thought of something.”

“What?”

“Do you think they have this thing LoJacked or something? They could be tracking us right now.”

Hardie sighed.

“You know what? I don’t give a shit. I’m tired of crawling through cactus plants and running up stairs and down mountains. Let’s put a few miles between us and them, then ditch the van somewhere.”

“So that’s your big plan.”

“Well, sweetie, to tell you the truth, I’m kind of making it up as I go along here. I should be drunk in somebody else’s house, watching
Singing in the Fucking Rain,
okay?”

Lane couldn’t stop thinking about that address, what it meant that the address was programmed into
this
GPS unit, in
this
van.

By the time they reached Lake Hollywood Drive, Charlie announced that he did have a plan, as a matter of fact. Charlie wanted to call somebody named Deke, kept repeating, Deke will know how to handle this, Deke this and Deke that, prompting Lane to finally ask who the hell Deke might be. Deke turned out to be Deacon Clark, some FBI agent Charlie knew from his Philadelphia days.

“That’s pretty much the dumbest fucking idea in the history of dumb ideas,” Lane said.

“Why?” Hardie asked.

“Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said? The Accident People are
connected.
Once our names go into the system, any system, anywhere in the world, we’re done. That means no police station. No hospitals. Certainly no FBI.”

“Then, what’s your bright idea?”

“We call my manager,” Lane said. “She’ll know exactly what to do, who to call.”

Charlie frowned. “Right. So don’t call my trusted source. Let’s call yours!”

Lane said nothing, because she realized that Charlie might be right. Hard to tell who to trust anymore. Every time she thought about who may have sold her out to these bastards, her heart started to ache.

There were very few people who knew what happened.

There were very few people who knew that address…

Including Haley, her manager.

How did Lane know that she
wasn’t
involved? How else were they able to tap into her alcohol-monitoring anklet, know her every move, and know what was crawling around in her mind over the past week, unless they got to Haley?

She was not prepared—not financially, not physically—to go into hiding. She was too notorious to appeal to the media. Not without them painting her as a drug-addled paranoid nutcase. She couldn’t run to Haley. Andrew was in Russia. She had nobody, nobody at all except…

Hardie twisted and turned the stolen death van through the streets of—well, he didn’t even know where this was. Was it Burbank? The Valley? He just wanted to see a road he recognized. He had L.A. boiled down to a few major routes in his brain: the 101, the 405, the 10. People complained about the gridlock and the psycho drivers, but that didn’t matter much to Hardie, since he was usually only passing through on the way to a house. Besides, he understood highways. He was used to Philly’s I-95 and the “Sure-Kill” Expressway. After a few minutes he finally saw it: a sign to the 101. He merged into the southbound lanes and headed down into Hollywood.

Lane looked at Hardie. “Okay, so where are we going?”

“Downtown. Or wherever there are a lot of people.”

“So you want to get stuck in downtown when we’re fleeing a group of unstoppable killers?”

Hardie thought about the one he’d sent flying off the edge of the cliff.
That
sorry son of a bitch didn’t seem too unstoppable. The guy’s surprised scream echoed in his mind. In fact, Hardie probably should worry about how much he liked replaying it.

Hardie signaled left, then changed lanes.

“What would you prefer to do? Drive out to the middle of nowhere, so they can hunt us down and kill us in total privacy? When you’re in trouble, you run toward people, not away from them. If they’re going to make a play, they’re not going to do it in broad daylight.”

“How do you know? I mean, they attacked me on a highway this morning. It was early, but there were plenty of other cars on the road. They didn’t seem to give a shit. Charlie, they could be tracking us right now, fixed on a LoJack signal or some crazy shit like that. Any one of these cars could just smash into us…”

“They wouldn’t do the same thing twice.”

“How do you know? Seriously, how the hell do you know
what
they would do? God, I feel like we made it out of that house but we’re still trapped, no matter where we go. It’s not as if I can hide all that easily. People tend to recognize me. Even when I’m looking like shit.”

Hardie glanced over at her. She was still a beautiful woman, despite the dirt and blood and swollen eye. He guessed that’s what separated famous people from the rest of humanity. People
would
recognize her.

And then Hardie figured it out. Their next move, until he could call Deke.

“Where’s Musso and Frank?”

“The restaurant?”

“Yeah.”

Lane shook her head, squinted, held up her hands. “Why the fuck do you want to go to Musso and Frank?”

Hardie told her:

“Lunch.”

They blasted past the entrance to the Hollywood Bowl. An electric marquee was mounted in a stately chunk of white stone; a jazz musician Hardie didn’t know was performing here tonight, eight p.m. Cars fought their way into the parking lot. Cars full of people who probably had no worries on their minds. After all, they were going out in the cool California afternoon on a Saturday to see somebody play jazz. How tough could life be?

But Hardie had always felt that way—separate from the good times everyone else seemed to be having. Like his own little world somehow sat parallel to the real world, but not actually
in it.

“Get over to the left,” Lane said. “No, really,
right now.
”

“I’m trying.”

But other vehicles quickly closed the gap, forcing Hardie to retreat. Somehow he ended up being corralled into the right lane. All down Highland giant billboards advertised movies he hadn’t heard of, featuring actors and actresses who were equally unfamiliar. Some of the cars on the road looked bizarre to him, too, now that he was really looking at them. If his life were a DVD, Hardie thought he must have skipped over a couple of chapters.

“Okay, we missed Franklin, so turn right onto Hollywood. We’ll have to come around.”

“Where…?”

“Hollywood Boulevard. The next light. Right. As in turn right…
right now!
”

And suddenly Hardie found himself at L.A. Tourist Ground Zero. Some of his homeowners had cautioned him to avoid this area at all costs. The sidewalks were jammed with goofy tourists being preyed upon by people in costumes and photographers and drug dealers and hustlers and punks. Traffic came to standstill a few car lengths away from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Hardie saw that the marquee read proximity, which apparently was having its premiere tonight. Another movie he’d never heard of. Outside, along dark velvet ropes, people stood around with vacant stares. Waiting to be entertained, trying to ignore the hustlers and kids hawking CDs.

“So… Musso and Frank?”