Point And Shoot Part 21

You need time. Keep her talking. Take advantage of the fact that this is personal for her. Just like it is for you.

"Where's my wife and son?" you ask.

The smile on her face is pure f.u.c.king evil. She's absolutely relis.h.i.+ng this.

"Their bodies are in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Had a nice chat with your boy. He's just like you, in a lot of ways. You should be proud."

You do the only thing you can do, the most Charlie Hardie thing you can do.

You start giggling. "I'm sorry."

Mann doesn't take the bait. "You wouldn't be giggling if you walked down into the bas.e.m.e.nt and saw what I did to them. Maybe I should drag you down there and carve open your skull in front of them."

"Let's find out."

Which would give you a fighting chance as she dragged your pincus.h.i.+on body to the house and down the flight of bas.e.m.e.nt stairs that only exist as images in your mind. At the very least, you'd like to see the interior of your family's house before you die.

Mann, to her credit, seems to think it over. "So tempting, but that wouldn't be professional of me. My orders are simple. Take the device out of your head and then finish all of you off. You. Your wife. And that darling boy of yours for last."

You start giggling again. "Really, I'm sorry."

No reply from Mann this time. Instead she grabs you by the hair and jerks your head to the left, which sends fresh new spasms of pain up and down your body.

"Right or left, right or left. You know, they told me there would be a scar, but I'm not seeing anything. Guess you heal fast, since you can't be killed and all."

Then she jerks your head to the right. Crazy intense explosions of agony all over, your body signaling all of its complaints in an urgent, frenzied, desperate way. To think that at one point, in your previous life, you fantasized a few times about sticking your p.e.n.i.s into this woman. You have the desperate need to hurt her back, but you can't, because you're immobilized and in so much pain you can barely think. The tip of her blade presses into your scalp.

"Gotta start somewhere."

Then you realize something that would hurt her the most.

Two things, actually.

"Before you start digging around my skull," you tell her, "there's something important you should know."

"What's that, my dear?" she asks half-distractedly as she pulls the blade across your scalp.

"I'm not really Charlie Hardie."

29.

You remember when we were in training? They always told us, You can't be a good cop if you're a dead cop. Here's your chance to prove them wrong.

-Joe Piscopo, Dead Heat.

SIEGE COULD MOVE his fingers. At first he thought it was an involuntary twitch, like your body jolting after a bad dream. But then he tried to repeat the jolt and he realized it was him consciously doing it, not some automatic part of his brain. The one-eyed b.i.t.c.h had said they'd be paralyzed for an hour! Well, she lied obviously. She lied about a lot of things. He focused on each finger individually. Pointer. Middle. Ring. Pinky. Back to the middle. If nothing else, Siege wanted to be able to shoot the bird to whoever came down here to kill them.

"Mmmmm," he said, trying out his mouth, trying to say "Mom," surprised to hear any sound at all.

"You're telling me you're not Charlie Hardie," Mann says, genuine amus.e.m.e.nt on her face.

"Nope," you say.

Mann pulls the blade from your scalp. There's already a lot of blood on it. Head wounds bleed a lot. She jabs the tip of the blade under your chin. You feel it cut into your flesh so deep you're worried she's made it all the way to the underside of your tongue.

"So," Mann says, "this is obviously a mask, and if I just cut here a little, I'll be able to rip it off and discover your true ident.i.ty."

You need to be able to speak to convince her. So you start speaking: "Moorpark, June, the school activist and his family, swimming pool electrocution. Barstow, July, the actor and the producer, car crash. Big Sur, also July, the money manager, car crash. Phoenix, again July, the writer, drug overdose."

As you blurt out the bullet points of your resume with Mann's team-starting from the very first a.s.signment you worked together-you see it instantly sink in. There's no one who could know that information. Not unless you were Gedney, Doyle, or Abrams. Or you were a member of Mann's team.

Which you were. In a previous life.

"O'Neal!?"

"Yep."

"No. No f.u.c.king way," Mann murmurs, the fury burning in her eyes like jellied fire, and for a moment you think she's going to slit your throat out of sheer rage.

"Mom."

Siege's first word happened to be "Da," something that his mom liked to throw in his face now and again just to tease him. But now, seventeen years later, he was all about the word mom. Siege couldn't quite turn his head yet to see if she heard him, so he tried again.

"Mom."

There was a mumbling moan in reply.

She was still conscious. That was great. But only the first step. If his plan was going to work, he was going to need her talking ...

HARDIE.

Once again, the name lit up in Mann's brain like pure neon.

HARDIE.

She knew they should have killed him in that hotel room, and then in the prison, and then in the secret hospital. You don't leave a man like that alive. Not after what he's seen. But her bosses wanted HARDIE.

kept alive, to be dealt with later, in a manner of their choosing. Well, now it was up to her to take down HARDIE.

no f.u.c.king around, no fancy s.h.i.+t, because a man who's too stubborn to die will be too stubborn to stay put, and G.o.d f.u.c.king d.a.m.nit she should have listened to her gut on this one because now HARDIE.

was going to be the end of her.

She didn't understand it. The motherf.u.c.king motherf.u.c.ker ... oh, this motherf.u.c.ker! Why was he cut to look like Charlie f.u.c.king Hardie, of all people? Now that she knew his real ident.i.ty, she could see the O'Neal beneath. Same eyes. You can't do much to change the eyes. How could she have been so stupid as to be fooled by this faux Hardie? She needed the real thing. If there was one last thing she would do on this earth, it would be proving that Charlie Hardie could be killed after all.

"So where is he, O'Neal?"

She rested the edge of the blade against his pulsing throat.

"Mom I just need to know one thing."

Siege could move his entire hand now. This was good. This was progress. But he was going to need more. He was going to need his entire right arm and, soon after that, his left. Fortunately, the more he struggled, the more his body opened up and let him back behind the controls.

"Mmmmrrrrmmrrr."

Siege had to admit, on any other day, his mother being unable to speak would be a fantastic thing. Not today. He needed her to be able to say four numbers.

"Mom, I need you to tell me the combination to the lock on Dad's steamer trunk."

"Tell me, O'Neal," Mann says. "Tell me or I'll slice your throat. You know me. I don't make idle threats."

She's speaking the truth. You do know her. She's going to cut your throat in about three seconds unless you tell her what she wants to know.

So ...

You tell her what she wants to know.

"He's in the trunk of a black Lincoln Town Car parked up Fox Chase Road. He's badly injured but still alive. I have him on life support, to make sure nothing happens to the package inside his head."

"Thanks."

And then she goes to cut your head off.

"Wait."

She's not really listening; she's really going to cut your head off now.

"I have the trunk b.o.o.by-trapped. You need me to open it."

Mann smiles this big warm smile, truly savoring your desperation. "You know, I can feel the bulge of your car keys against my thigh. Despite whatever you used to say about me, I'm not dead from the neck dow-"

As she's speaking she does two things: s.h.i.+ft her body weight a little to emphasize the bulge of car keys between your bodies, and lean forward to give her a stronger position to chop your head off.

And the second after she's done those two things, you do three things: Grab the back of her head.

Pull down.

And not-so-gently guide her good eye into the broken shaft of the arrow sticking out of your arm.

For Melissa McQueen, the mastermind a.s.sa.s.sin known to her peers only as Mann, a half-dim world went permanently black.

The second before her remaining eye was punctured by that sharp rod of wood and pushed back into her brainpan, she had an instantaneous revelation. And the revelation was this: Sometimes hard work and determination do not pay off. Just because you want something doesn't mean you'll get it. Just because you think you'll have the chance to destroy-down to the last atom-the person who ruined your life doesn't meant it'll happen.

Melissa McQueen died quickly, on a cold, browning lawn in Hollywood, Pennsylvania.

30.

Them fellers up there are gonna wonder why you bailed out. And I'm gonna tell 'em. You chose sides. Got yourself a little nookie and chose sides.

-Bill McKinney, The Gauntlet.

UP.

Get up and get inside the house. Just because you're shot full of arrows (two, only two, you big p.u.s.s.y) doesn't mean this is over. Because big picturewise, you're doing pretty f.u.c.king amazing. All of your enemies-even ones you didn't know about-are dead. You've got a long-sought-after prize on life support in the trunk of a big, mean invisible gas-guzzling car. You're about a two-hour drive down I-95 from the finish line.

But all of that means nothing if you won't have Kendra and CJ by your side.

Part of you realizes how ridiculous this all is-a year ago, you barely knew they existed. But funny how love works, isn't it. Love is a matter of force of will. You've come to believe that.

As you limp across the lawn toward the back door of the house, you think about what Mann said. Their bodies are in the bas.e.m.e.nt. She was trying to hurt you when she spoke those words. Was she implying that she'd killed them and put their corpses in the bas.e.m.e.nt? You don't believe it. That's not how Mann works. She was sent here to arrange an accident, and, knowing her style, she'd arrange it to look like you-Charlie Hardie-had come home to murder them both. To do that, she needed you. Charlie Hardie.

So you prayed.

Through the back door, through the kitchen. There were drops of blood on the linoleum. Ignore that. Find the bas.e.m.e.nt door. Of course, Mann could have been lying. She could have them bound upstairs, or she might not even have them here at all.

Come on, find the bas.e.m.e.nt door.

You know the layout of this house from those countless hours of studying surveillance footage, but moving through the actual s.p.a.ce has you temporarily confused.

Wait-there it is. The door.

For a moment you think the door might be rigged or trapped. Wouldn't take much for Mann to have installed a wasp's nest. You check the frame of the door for tell-tale signs. Scratches, but nothing obvious. A wasp's nest almost took out the previous Charlie Hardie all of those years ago. He managed to survive. You know you wouldn't.

Mann could have any number of surprises in this place-but you think about it. She wouldn't have time. No, the Kindreds attacked in the middle of Mann's preparations ...

Stop overthinking this. Go down there and gather your family and bring them up to the car and drive to that complex in Virginia. You don't have much time. Shots were fired, screams had to have been heard, and you're better off doing this without the local police up your a.s.s.

You put your hand on the doork.n.o.b, you twist ...

There is no hiss, no wasp's nest. No death traps set by your former boss.

Just a set of carpeted steps, leading down to the darkness.