Of course, this immediately made the rounds, and cops were calling Hardie “shockproof ” and trying to egg him on for another go, even placing bets as to how long it would take Hardie to get up afterward—five seconds? Eight? Maybe even three? Hardie told everyone to go fuck themselves. He didn’t think he got up fast. He thought he was down for an eternity, and in massive fucking pain the whole time.
Just like now.
No idea how long he was down.
But the split second the paralysis eased up, Hardie executed something that could only be described as a kind of breakdancing move—something half-remembered from his childhood in the early 1980s. He wasn’t going for style; he was trying to get up from the floor as quickly as possible.
But his move had the bonus effect of colliding with O’Neal’s hand, the one holding the heart-attack pen, which—
THWOK
—slammed down into his own thigh.
Shit!
Shit Shit Shit…
The shit took three or four seconds to absorb, and O’Neal yanked it back out after one, maybe two… maybe closer to one… but enough of the shot got into his system. Shit shit shit shit. He may even have hit a vein, which was seriously bad news. O’Neal dropped the pen and crab-walked backward, toward the sliding doors. Shit fuck shit fuck SHIT. There was only one thing he could do now. Get himself out to the van. Ignore the vise grip in the middle of his chest, the jolts of pain in his arm, the sudden feeling of impending FUCK THIS HURTS AND I AM GOING TO DIE.
Hardie meanwhile had no idea what the hell had just happened. He coughed—which hurt—and rolled over in time to see somebody crawling back into the house through the living room like a toddler on crack. Had his leg even connected with anything?
Doesn’t matter.
Get up.
There are probably more of these creepy assholes in the house. Get up and go find them.
Save the actress.
Save your family.
O’Neal didn’t know how many times he fell on the short walk from the front door to the van. Didn’t really care. He pumped his fists, trying to keep the blood flowing, and slammed them into his chest from time to time. He was a young man, kept himself healthy—fuck, he’d trekked to the North Pole not too long ago, and that was his idea of a relaxing vacation—but the toxin in his chest didn’t seem to care about any of that. It wanted him dead. Quick. That’s what it had been designed to do.
The only thing that would discourage the toxin was inside the van, already loaded in a syringe.
Things were simple now:
If O’Neal could get to it, he would live.
If not…
A.D. coughed. The acid vomit burned his throat. The pain in his legs was unbelievable. His stomach felt like it was twisted up in a knot. But he was alive. That’s all that mattered, right? He’d fallen off the top of a house and he was somehow still alive and he wanted to scream FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE at the top of his lungs.
Mann stood up. Opened her eyes experimentally. Some vision. Not all of it gone. Which was good. This was not over.
13
You’re muckin’ with a G here, pal!
—Sean Connery, The Untouchables
AFTER DEAD-BOLTING the front door, Hardie made his way downstairs for a hurried systematic search of the house—room by room, closet by closet, around corners, behind curtains. With each turn, Hardie was totally prepared for someone to pop out of a hiding space and try to stab him with something sharp. Which seemed to be the running theme this morning.
But there was nobody here.
Not even Lane Madden.
Hardie called out her name, experimentally, once he was sure none of the bad guys were still inside. Part of him wondered if she had been a mirage or a hallucination. Maybe all his drinking had finally caught up with him and he was seeing things. Instead of pink elephants, it was famous people.
Hardie knew that was ridiculous. She’d been here; he didn’t impale himself in the goddamned chest.
This could only mean that they’d already gotten her. Killed her, bagged her, put her in the van across the street. And the two guys who were inside were just cleaning up after themselves; Hardie had interrupted nothing more than their janitorial work. All those fake heroics. All for nothing. Another person was dead and Hardie had completely failed to stop it.
Worse than that—he’d failed the moment he opened the door. She’d begged him not to do it. Stubbornly, he had. And that had gotten her killed.
Hardie pulled the stolen phone out of his pocket, checked the screen. Yep, still had service up here. So it wasn’t the mountains. It wasn’t the house. It was them, somehow blocking everything except their own phones.
Well, joke’s on you, assholes.
The one person Hardie trusted in this world was named Deacon “Deke” Clark, and he was a special agent with the Philadelphia FBI. Back in his previous life, Hardie and his partner, Nate, had worked on a joint task force, and Deke was the man in charge. If Hardie could reach him this morning and convince him this whole thing was real, Deke would have a bunch of dudes with suits and guns rolling up into Beachwood Canyon and taking out these cocksuckers within thirty minutes.
Maybe they were top-drawer assassins, highly organized, with a bit of a specialty. A little flashy, just like the rest of L.A. But that was all. They could be arrested. They could be stopped.
Hardie pressed 1. The screen changed, then asked for an eight-digit pass code.
“Oh, no.”
Frustrated, he typed in random numbers. The phone shut down and powered off completely.
“Fuck! You fucking assholes. Oh, you are such fucking assholes! All of you can just suck my cock!”
Utter silence greeted his outburst.
Then, downstairs, something moved.
Hardie made his way down the staircase, ears cranked to maximum. No idea if his mind had just invented the sound or not. Hadn’t he just checked the bottom two floors?
No.
There it was again. Someone was definitely moving up from the bottom floor. Maybe one of them had broken through the windows down on the bottom floor and was making his way up to finish Hardie off. Maybe it wouldn’t be with a needle this time. Maybe they’d decided this was a special occasion, and it was time to break out the automatic weapons.
Hardie steeled himself. The footsteps were coming closer. When the person cleared the top stair, Hardie pivoted his body and threw the hardest punch he could muster through the open doorway.
Right into Lane Madden’s face.
Hidden away in a pocket of the third floor nobody knew existed, Lane Madden had heard the magic word echo through the house:
Fuck!
Could it really be him? Was her would-be protector somehow still alive?
You fucking assholes!
She had been sure Charlie was a goner. He opened the door—against her pleas, mind you—and some kind of mist had exploded, hitting him in the face. Lane didn’t hear it. She was too busy hauling ass back down the stairs, running for her life, thank you very much. Down one flight, then the second, not stopping until she reached the bedroom closet and squeezed past Andrew’s pants and shirts and ran her fingers along the drywall searching for the sweet spot, the one he’d shown her two months ago because he thought it would impress her.