And then something slammed into his face.
Which would be Hardie’s fist.
Which happened to be studded with cacti spines, and Hardie hoped it hurt like fuck. Because it had hurt like fuck to reach out and grab hold of something, anything… and realize that it was full of sharp needles. It hurt even more to scramble up through a field of fucking cacti to make it back to the pavement.
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
THE 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.