He spun the steering wheel, just barely countering the flailing oversteer in time to stop the limo’s trailing half from ripping free. But the vehicle was now held together only by a thread…
The engine misfired, sputtering. The fuel line under the floor had finally been severed.
He looked down Rodeo Drive. The Escalade was pulling away. The chase was over.
Wait…
Flashing red and blue lights some distance ahead. The police were setting up a roadblock.
The assassin reached another intersection and started to turn, only to swerve sharply back on to his original course as he saw that the cross-street was also barricaded. He continued past the junction before braking hard, slewing around on trails of black rubber and lurching to a stop.
‘They’ve trapped him,’ said Nina. ‘Okay, you can stop now!’
But Eddie didn’t slow. The Escalade’s door had opened, the driver jumping out, gun in hand.
He aimed it at the onrushing Hummer—
Nina dropped with a yelp as a bullet shattered what remained of the windscreen. Eddie hunched down as more shots clanged against the radiator and engine block. If he turned to escape down the cross-street, he would expose the limo’s sides to the gunman — and the thin sheet steel was no protection against even a pistol bullet.
Instead, he aimed straight at their attacker.
The man instantly changed tactics, switching his aim to the Hummer’s left front wheel as the limo reached the intersection. Two bullets struck the H2’s bumper — then a third blew out the tyre.
The steering wheel jolted in Eddie’s hands. He tried to hold it steady, but the limousine veered at the central divider, where a chromed statue of a human torso stood on a plinth. Instead he yanked the wheel to the left, stamping on the brake to hurl the Hummer into a skid—
The limo hit the plinth side on and was sliced in half, its burning rear end finally ripping loose and bowling down Rodeo Drive…
Straight at the gunman.
The scar-faced man’s eyes widened in fear, and he ran—
The flaming wreckage smashed into the Cadillac. Pedestrians fled as gasoline sprayed from the Hummer’s ruptured fuel line…
Both vehicles exploded, the blast shattering the front windows of the Louis Vuitton and Bulgari stores and setting palm trees ablaze. The cops at the roadblock dropped behind their vehicles as wreckage showered around them. Car alarms wailed, parked Ferraris and Range Rovers reacting in pain to the barrage.
The Hummer’s front half ground to a stop at the bottom of the arcing pedestrian boulevard of Via Rodeo. Shoppers and tourists regarded what was left of the smoking limousine with shock and amazement, phones and cameras clicking.
Eddie sat up painfully, a smear of blood from a fresh cut slowly oozing down his forehead. ‘Ow, fuck…’ he grunted, adding a wincing ‘Christ!’ as a drip of perfume ran into the wound like an acidic bee sting. ‘Nina, you okay?’
‘I think so.’ His wife had ended up in the Hummer’s footwell. She blinked blearily at him, then sniffed her clothing. ‘Oh, that’s… strong.’
‘Macy won’t need to visit the Chanel shop after all — she can just wring out your sleeve.’ He was about to open the door — then froze.
The assassin had been knocked down by the explosion, but he was still alive, crawling through the licks of flame dotting the street towards a metal object.
‘Shit,’ Eddie gasped. ‘He’s going for his gun. Get out!’
Nina pulled at the door release, but it refused to move. ‘It’s stuck!’
He tried his own door. It too was jammed, the frame twisted. The assassin had almost reached his goal—
‘Police! Freeze!’
Two uniformed officers emerged from behind a shrapnel-dented SUV, weapons pointed at the crawling man. He looked at them in alarm, then back at the object in front of him…
And kept moving, one hand stretching out to grab it.
‘I said freeze!’ one of the cops screamed. ‘Stop or I fire!’
Eddie saw desperation on the killer’s face as he finally clamped his fingers around the gun — only the Englishman now realised it wasn’t a gun, but some sort of container, a flask—
Four gunshots echoed around the street, both cops opening fire. The man on the ground jerked and twitched, then fell still. Blood pooled around him. One of the cops ran up and fixed his gun on the unmoving figure as his partner kicked the container out of his hand. It was a flask, about the size of a paperback book, and looking for all the world like something an alcoholic would keep in his hip pocket.
But the assassin’s attempt to retrieve it had cost him his life. Whatever was in the flask, Eddie realised, it was more than mere whiskey or vodka.
Running footsteps caught his attention. He hurriedly raised his hands. ‘Ay up,’ he warned Nina as she clambered out of the footwell. ‘Beverly Hills Cops.’
More officers rushed to surround the battered limo. Nina regarded the guns pointed at her in alarm. ‘So much for our vacation,’ she sighed.
4
‘So, ah… what are you in here for?’
Nina suspected that the nervous young blonde had wanted to ask the question since being brought into the cell twenty minutes earlier, but something had put her off; possibly the redhead’s dishevelled appearance, or more likely the overpowering miasma of Chanel No. 5. ‘Me?’ she said. ‘Take your pick: grand theft auto, reckless endangerment, destruction of property and vehicular homicide. Oh, and,’ she sniffed her sleeve, ‘air pollution.’ The girl’s mouth slowly dropped open. ‘What about you?’
‘I, uh, tried to take a bag from Versace.’
‘Riiight.’ They sat in silence. ‘Of course, there were mitigating circumstances,’ Nina eventually said.
The blonde perked up. ‘Oh, same with me! I don’t suppose you could… help me think of some?’
Nina was spared from further conversation by the arrival of two cops at the cell door. ‘Wilde!’ one barked. ‘Nina Wilde. Come with us, please.’
The ‘please’ was something new; her status with the Beverly Hills Police Department had apparently been upgraded. Had her phone call finally gotten results? She stood and waited for the cops to unlock the cell, then went with them to an office on a higher floor. A sunset sky was visible beyond the slatted blinds.
Eddie was already there. ‘Oh, thank Christ,’ he said as she entered. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ she replied as they embraced. She held him for a long moment, then eased her grip as she realised they had company: two stone-faced men in dark suits. ‘And you guys are…?’
‘Special Agent Daniel Beck of the FBI,’ said the older of the pair. He gestured to his companion. ‘This is Agent John S. Petrelli. Dr Wilde, we’re glad you and your husband are okay.’
‘We are, an’ all,’ Eddie told him with a humourless grin as the cops exited. ‘So, now that Nina’s here, maybe you can finally tell us what’s going on?’
Beck seemed uncertain himself, which did not fill Nina with confidence. ‘Firstly, all the charges against you have been dropped. We’ve been ordered to take you back to New York. A… situation has arisen.’
‘No shit,’ said Nina impatiently. ‘A man gets murdered right in front of me, then the killer tries to shoot me too? I’d call that a situation as well.’
‘Who told you to take us home?’ Eddie asked.
‘The order came direct from Washington,’ Petrelli told him. ‘From the State Department — but it was approved by the White House.’
The Englishman turned to his wife. ‘You must’ve done a good job with your phone call. Who did you ring?’