“Our employers?” Hardie said, but already his mind was reeling. Was Mann actually here to recruit him? Have Hardie join their little team of assassins? Good God—no. Hell, no. Put a bullet in his brain right now, be done with it. Or maybe he’d play ball just long enough to get his hands on a gun so that he could finish off Mann here, once and for all.
“You’ll be briefed down below—and let me tell you, the staff is looking forward to meeting with you.”
Now his patience had run out. “I’m not going to work for you. You can forget it.”
“Work for me? Oh, that’s funny, Charlie. Seriously. No, I don’t think you’d be a good fit for my team.”
“Then what’s this about a staff?”
“I think you’re going to find working with them extremely rewarding. I mean, they’re all truly good people. Heroes, really.”
Again, Mann was fucking with him.
“Oh, almost forgot. I have a present for you.”
At long last she opened the long cardboard box on the table. Hardie thought there could be anything in there. A shotgun. Dozen roses. A slender chain saw.
Instead, Mann removed a black cane and gently slid it across the table toward Hardie.
“A little parting gift.”
“You can shove that up your ass,” Hardie replied.
“That’s extraordinarily tempting,” Mann said. “But before I do that, why don’t you try standing up? It’s why I removed the handcuffs, you know.”
Hardie put his palms on the table and stood up. Immediately his right leg gave out and he slammed his ribs into the edge of the table before slipping down even farther. Mann flew forward and caught his head in record time, her hands grabbing his ears. She yanked forward. Hardie struggled to find his footing, but it was as if his right leg weren’t even there. Left arm—useless.
“You’ve suffered some pretty serious neurological damage,” Mann said, her breath hot in his face. “Your leg probably won’t work all that well for the rest of your life.”
“Bite me.”
Mann bared her teeth. “You saying you don’t want the job? Because it doesn’t matter to me. In fact, it would thrill me if you spit in my face and tell me you don’t want this job.”
Hardie obliged her, launching a wad of saliva that struck her cheek and began a lazy roll down her face.
“I don’t want the job,” he said.
Mann reached out her tongue and slowly licked the spittle from her face, as if savoring it.
“Wonder if Kendra will spit in my face, too, when I show up in her bedroom tonight. Maybe I’ll force her to lick my face, ask her if she tastes her dead husband. Think she’d like that?”
Before Hardie could reply, Mann let go, and Hardie’s own body weight pulled him down fast, the edge of the table slamming into his jaw. Vision went white for a second. The pain like a firecracker in his skull. He spun, landed facedown. Mann was over the table and straddling him as he struggled to roll over. Again, she leaned in close.
“Nothing would make me happier than to kill you, then go kill your family. Because you’re right, Charlie. No such thing as ancient history.”
“You so much as even look at my wife or son I’ll—”
Mann grabbed Hardie’s ears and slammed his head into the floor hard enough to make him bite his tongue.
“Don’t write a check your ass can’t cash, old friend. In about sixty seconds, I’m going to leave this room, take an elevator to the surface, where I’ll receive my shot, and be on my way to have that drink I mentioned. Right after that, they’re going to seal up the entranceway nice and tight and permanent. With cement and steel, just like they do whenever there’s a new arrival to site number seven seven three four. There’s no way out, Charlie. None. That’s the point of this facility—no escape. Ever. All you can do is grab your cane and take the elevator down to your new life. Don’t worry. I’ll be toasting you back in the real world. And if you fail to perform your duties, just know that I’ll be the first one they’ll call. And then I will delight in destroying your family.”
Mann climbed off Hardie’s body, staring at him carefully, waiting for a reaction. Hardie didn’t give her one. After a few moments she made a pfft sound with her lips and left the room.
* * *
Sure enough, after a few minutes Hardie could hear the sound of construction: the banging of steel, the muffled scrape of mortar hoes against some hard surface, the shrill buzzing of power saws.
Which was more than a little troubling.
Hardie pulled himself up off the ground, using his only good arm and only good leg to steady himself on elbow and knee. Balancing himself on that single knee, he reached out and grabbed the edge of the table, slowly working himself up again. He took the black cane from the tabletop. His right leg was still numb and fluttery, like a phantom limb. He needed the table.
He took a series of wobbly steps and, by way of sheer luck, eventually crashed into the door that Mann had used to exit. Hardie balanced himself, grabbed the handle. Locked tight. Somewhere above him, some unseen construction crew labored. Clanging. Pouring. Welding. Sealing.
“HEYYYYYYYYY!” Hardie screamed, so hard that he lost his balance, a misstep exacerbated by a sudden coughing fit.
“HEYYYYYYYYY UP THERE, CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
No response came. Either they were unable to hear him above the din of the power tools or the construction crew was dedicated to doing their job and their job alone.
Hardie made his way back to the table and sat down and considered his options.
He didn’t have to think long—because his options sucked.
So little of this made sense. It was like snapping awake from a horrible, sweat-soaked dream, only to discover that the world was about to end, the H-bombs were dropping everywhere, and boy, you’re about to wish you’d stayed in that bad dream.
The elevator door was the only way out.
Out was not up; out was down. Deeper into the bad dream.
To his staff—is that what she’d said? What the hell did she mean by that?
The stubborn knot in Hardie’s gut told him to stay put. Just sit here and do nothing. Eventually he’d dehydrate, maybe even be lucky enough to pass out. Just to spite Mann. Write a little message on the wall for her before he finally expired. Hope you choke on the olive in your fancy-ass cocktail.
Yeah.
Sometimes after a tough case Hardie would find himself hanging out on Nate Parish’s broken couch in his Philly PD office. One of the fabric-covered arms had long ago snapped, leaving a perfect V in which Hardie could rest his aching head. Hardie would crash on that couch, sipping a can of lukewarm beer, too keyed up to go home, too tired to move. Once, he’d said to Nate:
“We’ve been really busy lately.”
“We’re always busy. Remember what Pascal said.”
Hardie had no idea who Pascal was—some South Philly mobster he’d never heard of, maybe?
“What’s that?”
“All human evil comes from a single cause—man’s inability to sit still in a room.”
Nate turned out to be right, of course.
Hardie stepped into the elevator cage, slid the old-fashioned accordion-style gate shut. His grandmother’s old apartment building used to have an elevator like this. As a kid he’d constantly worry about getting his fingers chopped off when the gate slid open. That never prevented him from running his fingers over the greasy gate anyway. He pressed one of only two buttons in the elevator—ancient semen-colored circles of plastic adorned with the chipped words UP and DOWN. He seemed to already be UP. That left DOWN. Hardie pressed the button, which lit up. Somewhere, ancient machinery kick-started; pulleys and cables started turning. Hardie’s body jolted as the car slid downward. Here we go.