Fun and Games Read online

  Stealth.

  Don’t let them see you coming.

  Inflict maximum damage as quickly as possible.

  Get the girl.

  Get the fuck out.

  Of course, Hardie had no idea how many of them there were inside the house. Could be one guy in there or a dozen. There had to be at least two, right? One to steal his Honda Whatever while the other kept watch on the front of the house?

  Whatever. Keep it stealth.

  Hardie finished his charge up the hill and came around to the front of the house. Nobody in sight. He crouch-walked to the front door and saw the device the crafty fuckers had stuck to the door frame.

  Hardie was no mechanic, but even he could see how it worked. Your victim opens the door, a little leg thingy falls, and then a nozzle sprays the knockout shit. Well, the leg thingy was down; payload spent. Hardie grabbed the box by the edges and pulled. It came loose easily. He tossed it in the bushes. Maybe it would come in handy later—at their trial. Exhibit A, Your Honor. The little box of death that almost murdered me!

  Hardie put his hand on the doorknob and took a mind-clearing breath. This was it. Remember: stealth.

  He twisted the knob and pushed open the door and—

  BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

  A.D. looked at O’Neal.

  O’Neal signaled.

  Check it out.

  A.D. hit the stairs.

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, Hardie thought, looking for a place to hide, some kind of weapon… anything.

  Up on the first floor in record time, silent the whole way. The actress might be up here, waiting to ambush them. Then A.D. saw the front door, still cracked open. The empty body bag on the floor.

  Goddamnit. The house sitter.

  Charlie Hardie.

  If Hardie had run for the literal hills, that meant someone (probably A.D.) would have to waste even more time chasing him down. A.D.’s first impulse was to go through the front door and see if he was still within view—after all, the alarm had only been triggered a few seconds ago. Then he wised up. The road ran down behind the house. He could just go to the back deck and see if Hardie was headed down toward Belden. If so, then he could back out and run down his stupid ass with the van.

  A.D. darted through the media room and was two steps onto the deck before he realized he’d stepped in animal shit. Great. O’Neal would never let him live this down. He scraped his shoes on the wooden planks.

  And somebody grabbed him from behind.

  Number of accidental falls per year: 14,900.

  There wasn’t time for Hardie to take a good look at his attacker, but at least this one was fully dressed. Looked young, too, with one of those shaggy haircuts all the teenagers seemed to have these days.

  Hardie propelled him forward toward the edge of the deck, using all of his weight to body-check him into the railing. The force of the blow was so intense, the guy immediately vomited—whatever he’d eaten last came spraying out of his mouth and made a four-story drop to the grass below. His arms flailed uselessly at his sides, trying to find something to hold on to. It probably hurt like hell. Hardie didn’t care. He couldn’t waste any time with this one.

  Hardie took a few steps back, then ran up and placekicked him in the balls, sending the guy up and over the railing. He saw the guy’s legs kicking out like he was riding an invisible bicycle, and then he disappeared.

  There.

  Two down.

  Who the fuck knows how many to go.

  Which is exactly the moment Hardie went stiff, tried to curse, then hit the patio floor.

  12

  Swell.

  —Clint Eastwood, Sudden Impact

  AND THAT would be fifty thousand volts, motherfucker.

  O’Neal gave him fifteen seconds in the back, enough to drop him. Then another ten seconds to discourage him from getting up again.

  He hooked the Taser back onto his belt, then took the pen out of its zip case and popped the top. O’Neal didn’t know how this stubborn bastard had survived the wasp’s-nest blast—maybe they’d underestimated the payload for two people. But he wasn’t going to make it through this.

  If O’Neal were ever to be stopped and searched by the LAPD, the pen could be easily explained as an EpiPen, used in case of an allergic reaction (and O’Neal had the requisite card in his wallet to back up this claim). But the pen actually contained a dose of something a mob-backed scientist perfected back in Vegas during the go-go sixties: an injectable heart attack. Works within seconds, utterly untraceable.

  Heart attacks were the leading cause of death of men in Hardie’s age group, followed by cancer and strokes. Someone had actually come up with a stroke simulator, deliverable by injection, but why go for the third-most common when you could use the best?

  O’Neal loved the pen.

  He’d use it all the time if he could.

  He lifted up Hardie’s arm for a direct vein jab. Sure, it would work if you stuck it pretty much anywhere. The muscles would absorb the toxin and diffuse it to the bloodstream soon enough. But O’Neal preferred the straight shot right to Aortaville.

  He unlatched the safety mechanism with a flick of his thumb, then pressed down on the top to activate it.

  Enjoy the afterlife, my friend.

  One common misconception about the Taser is that it renders you briefly unconscious.

  Au contraire.

  You are completely cognizant. Entire body racked with the worst kind of pain imaginable, but cognizant nonetheless. You are even fooled into thinking you can speak, and most people think they’re delivering a Tourette’s syndrome version of the Get-tysburg Address at five thousand words a minute. But in reality, you’re not saying a thing. Your body has just ridden the lightning, and your mind is patiently waiting for it to come back.

  Most people, that is.

  Like most Philly cops, Hardie had had Taser training. And if you have Taser training, you have to ride the lightning at least once. It’s a rule. Just so you know firsthand what you’re dishing out.

  Hardie’s first time became a kind of legend in law enforcement circles. Because just a few seconds after the training officer put the contact pads on Hardie’s back and gave him a fifty-thousand-volt kiss and started to explain the effects of the shock, Hardie coughed and began to stand up. He shouldn’t have. Not so quickly. The training officer blinked and halted his speech, kind of stunned. He quickly hem-hawed and said the unit must be defective or carrying a low charge, and he asked Hardie if he’d be up for another shot in a few minutes. Hardie told the training officer that if he came near him with one of those things again, he’d shove it so far up the man’s ass, he could use it as an emergency pacemaker.

  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 sl
iding 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.

  My own personal panic room, he’d called it.

  But Andrew really used the secret space to hide his drugs and master tapes.

  Even the real-estate agent who’d sold Andrew the house didn’t know about it. Andrew had been moving stuff into his closet when he tripped over a shoe and tumbled forward. His hand caught the sweet spot, and the entire wall—which appeared to be a seamless piece—tilted a few inches to the right. Andrew cleared out the clothes and wiggled the wall until it opened all the way, revealing a second closet—double the size—behind the visible one.

  Andrew did some digging and learned the house had been built by some rich dude back during Prohibition—he’d built a few houses up in Beachwood Canyon during its earliest days, apparently. Clearly it was a place to hide booze until he could move it somewhere. Andrew decided that, in the spirit of the house’s original owner, he would likewise use it to store organic materials that the government currently did not allow its citizens to use, buy, own, or sell. He kept an amazing stash of pot back there.

  They’d been bored one night, and Lane had asked if he was carrying anything, and a smile broke out over Andrew’s sweet face and he said, Do you want to see something cool?

  Something cool that had just saved her life.

  Just a few minutes ago, Lane had heard them outside the door, tapping it, pushing against it. They don’t know, she told herself. They don’t know.

  They didn’t know.

  Then they went away.

  Lane decided to sit here for as long as it took. She knew the human body could go without food for close to a week, and water for a couple of days. Maybe Andrew would be back in a few days, and they’d be forced to withdraw and move on. It was a ridiculous thought—Charlie the House Sitter had said Andrew was in Russia… but still, maybe he wasn’t supposed to be gone too long. Maybe he’d know and come back for her and make everything okay.

  Then she heard Charlie yell Fuck! and she realized
that maybe this nightmare was over, maybe she wouldn’t have to wait.

  Hardie stood over her unconscious body and prayed he hadn’t killed her. There would be some horrible irony there, duking it out with three crazy strangers to save a fourth, only to end up accidentally killing her. He might have a tough time explaining that one.

  Lane coughed, then moaned.

  “Oh, thank God,” Hardie said.

  He carried her semiconscious body to the middle of the floor. Blood had spurted out of her nose, and one eye was already puffy. She was in shock. You would be, too, if someone punched you in the face.

  Hardie followed the shock playlist: elevated her legs (on a stack of music composition books he found in the studio); made sure she was breathing; checked her pulse to make sure it wasn’t racing.

  “Lane.”

  “What…?”

  “Lane, you’re okay. Just relax and breathe, everything’s going to be okay.”

  That was important with shock victims. They were like five-year-olds waking up in the middle of the night after a bad dream. You had to reassure them. Let them know you were in control of the situation, and that you weren’t going to let anything bad happen to them. Well, again.

  “What… happened to me?”

  “I seem to have punched you in the face.”

  “You… wh-what?”

  “I thought you were one of Them.”

  Despite the blood and the shock, Lane smiled.

  “You said Them. I guess you believe me now.”

  “I guess I do.”

  Hardie went to the bathroom, wet a rag with cold water, then used it to wipe away some of the blood from her face. Her eye was even more swollen now. Which was not good. He went back to the bathroom, rinsed out the rag, then folded it into quarters, which he put over Lane’s eye. Guess it was all about stabbing and eye injuries up here in the Hollywood Hills today.

  Her lone eye stared up at him. It was a beautiful eye.