And even if his body were completely numb, 100 percent paralyzed from the Adam’s apple down, he was going to escape from this place. Even if he had to decapitate himself and drag himself along the floor using only the suction of his tongue, one inch at a time.
They were not going to win.
He had been thinking about Kendra and he was overcome with worry about her now. On the phone, Deke had promised to double her protection. She and the boy, Charlie, Jr., lived in a quiet, nonflashy Philadelphia suburb, a small but pretty house, built in the late 1940s, the dawn of the postwar boom. Hardie had never set foot inside it—he had only driven by it. And Kendra didn’t know about the protection provided by Deke and his fellow Father Judge High School boys at the FBI. That had been part of a complicated deal in which Hardie had given up essentially everything—his career, his past, his life—in exchange for his family’s safety.
But that old deal had been struck when Hardie was worried that the men who’d shot him (and killed Nate and his family) would come after Kendra and Charlie, Jr., just to be dicks. An FBI presence, even a light one, Hardie reasoned, would be enough to convince the Albanian mob that such a move would not be cost-effective.
Now Hardie had new enemies, and his stomach felt like a bottomless pit because he didn’t know a damn thing about them.
Clearly, he was not just duking it out with Mann and her killer boy toys. She had a boss, and that boss had enough juice to have a team of EMTs, surgeons, and this secret hospital facility. All put into play tonight to keep him alive…
For what?
If they were worried about him snitching, they could have given him a shot in the ambulance and been, like, Whoopsie, cardiac arrest, bummer, man.
They were keeping him around for something. Which probably meant they wanted to ask him questions. And if they were going to ask him questions, they were going to need something to threaten him with.
Kendra and Charlie, Jr.
Their address was secret. Although it wasn’t anything near witness protection, it was fairly secure. But such a secret wouldn’t last forever. You try hard enough, you can find anything.
They would find it.
They would find his wife and son.
They would let Hardie know that they’d found his wife and son.
And they would say:
So what do you want to do now, tough guy?
Hardie stared at the ceiling above him, which was nothing more than a fuzzy white arrangement of tiles. The lights were off; there was no clock in the room. Not one that he could see, anyway. Kendra used to keep a fancy Bed, Bath & Beyond alarm clock on her bedside table that projected the time on the ceiling in ugly red digits. When Hardie would wake up in the middle of the night—without fail, go ahead and set your atomic clock by it, federal government—the bloodred digital display would read 3:13 a.m. His personal witching hour.
When the night terrors would come.
Was that something in his lizard brain, the lizard brains of all men, dating back to the dawn of time? Did prehistoric men wake up and realize how alone they were, how tenuously they clung to life, how everything they knew and loved could be snatched away from them by a smiling predator, teeth gleaming? Hardie kept a firm lock on his emotions during waking hours—especially when he was working. As if there were a fat steel pipe in his brain with EMOTIONS embossed along the side, Hardie would pull the heavy switch and, shhhhhhUNK, turn it off every morning. After a while, he didn’t even have to pull.
And every night, at exactly 3:13 a.m., he’d pop awake and find that someone had turned the damn thing on again.
And he’d push his legs and try to undo Kendra’s pouch, because, goddamn it, you could not suffer proper night terror if you were tucked in like a joey in a mama kangaroo’s front pocket.
There was no clock in the room now, but Hardie would bet anything it was 3:13 a.m.
7
I genuinely feel these people are trying to kill us.
—Evi Quaid
IN HIS AIRPORT hotel room, Deke’s cell phone buzzed. It was his liaison at Wilshire, telling him to find a TV or laptop and check the news immediately.
The Jonathan Hunter story had exploded everywhere—Web/cable/TV/Facebook/Twitter—quickly eclipsing the Lane Madden murder. There was only so much attention you could give to a dead celebrity, except maybe run some clips of old movies or snatch a sound bite from industry people the dearly departed worked with. People expected celebrities to die, usually in threes, and unless you were administrator of the Official Lane Madden Fan Club website (of which there were three), the news probably shot through your eyeballs, tumbled through your brain, and quickly turned into synaptic compost. The “killer on the loose” angle was interesting, because that meant there would be a sequel to the story, but in this case it wasn’t all that shocking. Not Manson-worthy. There would not be books written about the Lane Madden murder; she’d be a chapter in a celebrity death roundup book.
The Hunters, though…
Oh, man, people would be puzzling this shit out for ages.
They turned up in Vancouver, at a small video studio. Hunter agreed to talk, but only to the news networks—which pissed off his own network, to be sure. If he was going to break some major news, why not throw his own people the bone?
The press conference was teased a full hour in advance—and speculation had run wild for hours before that. There had been Hunter family sightings up and down the California coast, out in the Southwest, as far south as Mexico, and as far east as Times Square in Manhattan.
Last America heard, there had been a hit attempt at the Hunter home in Studio City, California. On family movie night, no less! Many shots were fired, many pints of blood spilled. None of it matched that of the Hunter family, which was good. But the Hunters? Totally missing. Along with their beloved family minivan. Where had they gone? Why hadn’t they called anybody—not even their attorneys? Nobody knew! It was a proper mystery, and America loved its mysteries.
When Jonathan Hunter finally appeared on camera, the on-screen titles claimed he was broadcasting live from Vancouver, but he quickly shot that down. He announced that the press conference had been previously taped, and that he was no longer anywhere near the Vancouver area…and all America was, like, Ah, I see what you did there! and they loved it.
But they really went crazy for the next part.
“My family and I are being hunted by a group of elite assassins who specialize in murdering celebrities and their families. These individuals broke into my home and attempted to slaughter my wife and children. I will not be speaking about particulars at this time, because I believe that doing so will further endanger my family.”
No. No way—he did not just say that…
“But I will say that a man named Charles Hardie, who I understand is a security guard, helped us out. Again, I cannot go into details, but the same people who tried to murder my family also killed Lane Madden. It was these celebrity whackers, not Mr. Hardie. He is innocent and he is a hero.”
An hour later, Deke was in Barney’s Beanery in West Hollywood, eating a loaded western omelet and sipping a Shiner Bock—his body clock was hopelessly off, so what the hell. Clever son of a bitch, that Jonathan Hunter.