Point and Shoot (15 page)

“I know they do. Don’t you think it’s kind of cool to scare them every once in a while?”

The Minder chuckled. “You’re putting me in a delicate position here.”

“Ah, I’m just kidding, bro. Guess we’re going to Flagstaff.”

“I think you’re going to have fun.”

Of course Phil and Jane Kindred would have fun. This was their idea of fun, and it still struck Phil now and again how lucky they were to be able to indulge themselves like this. Most psychopaths weren’t as lucky. At best, your average serial killer could look forward to a bullet in the head or a stack of life sentences in some supermax penitentiary in the middle of nowhere. Sure, a few got a TV movie of the week or a cheapo paperback. But not the Kindreds. They were blue-chip killers, with a publishing/film deal already in place with the biggest media conglomerate in the country. They were branded. They were untouchable.

They had four more people to kill before this tableau beneath Montreal was complete. “Let’s get a move on, sis,” Phil said. “We’ve got a busy couple of days ahead of us.”

T
HE LAST TIME
something like this had happened to Charlie Hardie, he’d woken up in a body bag. Thankfully, this time was different.

This time he jolted awake inside the trunk of one of those goddamned coma cars, with IV lines already shoved into his veins. And hey, wow, bonus! The trunk lid was still open.

“Oh hell,” his identical twin said, holding in his hand a clear plastic mask attached to a tube. Obviously he hadn’t expected Hardie to wake up so quickly.

“Fuck …,” Hardie said. He went to lunge at him … only he couldn’t, because he was already strapped down into the gear. “Fuck you, you fucking fuck!”

Hardie wasn’t afraid to admit it: He had an irrational fear of the trunks of these stupid coma cars.

“Listen to me carefully,” his double said in a tone usually reserved for the mentally challenged. “This is for your own good. For
your family’s
good. You’re no use to me if you’re weak and ready to pass out every two minutes. I need you rested and rejuvenated if we’re going to survive this thing. Only I know you’re too stubborn to actually rest. So consider this a forced R and R.”

“
Eat me!”

“It’s not as bad as you remember. They’ve made a few modifications to the design in the past year. See this?” His double held up the plastic mask. The face portion was soft and rubbery, shaped like a pear.

“This is called a laryngeal mask. No intubator, no hose down the throat. This just slips over your face and you settle into a nice, peaceful sleep. Think of it as going down on a woman. You have to admit, it kind of does look like a pussy.”

Hardie could see that. Yes, the mouthpiece looked like a pussy, if the woman happened to be opaque and made of plastic. But he didn’t care what the mask looked like, because there was no way he was spending any more of his life in a trunk of a car.

“FUCK YOU AND UNDO THESE STRAPS.”

“Shut up. There’s no time to argue. Your family’s in danger, so I need to haul ass to get to them before the Cabal does. So, I’m sorry, please accept my apologies and all that, but it’s night-night time.”

“FUCK YOU.”

Hardie lunged again. His right wrist snapped out of its binding with a pop. This surprised Hardie as well as his double. Hardie recovered more quickly, however, and gathered up a bunch of his double’s shirt in his bandaged fist. Then he yanked back as hard as he could. His double’s head slammed into the top of the open trunk with a satisfying
THUNK
. Blood spurted from the wound. The double’s eyes rolled up, his mouth started trembling, and then he went down.

“Huh,” Hardie said.

Ow.

Ow ow ow.

You wake up a short while later with a grand prize winner of a headache. It takes a second for your short-term memory to reload, but once it does, you understand why you can’t move your arms or legs.

You also understand why Charlie Hardie is looking down at you, plastic mask in his hand.

“How about
you
eat the pussy now,” he says, this crazy glint in his eye that frightens you, because it looks like a mirror image.

You shout in a last-minute attempt to explain, but Hardie doesn’t give a crap. Not with that kind of glint in his eye. He slips the mask over your mouth and you can’t help it—you have to suck in some air from the big plastic pussy eventually, and within a few seconds you’re

A
MERICA IS NOWHERE
near as big as space. It is a mere sliver of an insignificant spec in the solar system, let alone the universe.

But from the ground, it can feel hopelessly vast.

Even when speeding down the blacktop at 110 miles per hour in a bulletproof coma car.

Hardie kept track of the mile markers, all the way through endless (neverending) rocky, dusty, barren Nevada, past the gaudy purple glam of Wendover—which seemed to be nothing but casinos and gas stations—directly into Utah and its infamous salt flats. All the while he checked the rear and side mirrors for a flash of red. Try explaining the body in the trunk to a state trooper.
Gee, officer, I had no idea he was hooked up to life support …

Though if the Other Him was right, Hardie could jet down the highway in this Lincoln Town Car of Death as fast as he wanted and nobody would touch him. The coma car was a
GET OUT OF JAIL FREE
card on wheels …

He hoped.

Hardie’s brain was fuzzy, his eyelids heavy. The thing he wanted most in the world was the thing he couldn’t have right now: a nap. He’d never felt more tired in his life. Probably the residual effect of that goddamned spray he’d been dosed with. But there was no way anything resembling that could happen. He couldn’t even afford to blink. Hardie had wasted enough time tangling in the Cabal storage depot, talking to a cockroach in a disgusting toilet, and eating cherry pie. Kendra and the boy were walking around with targets painted on their heads, and they most likely had no idea they were in mortal danger.

The salt flats were just as advertised, Hardie realized. Salty. And flat. As if God had decided to smite an entire city and this gray, expansive patch of harsh nothing was all that remained. Well, that wasn’t true. Every couple of miles you could see a formation of rocks spelling out a name or two. Did people come out here for fun, just to leave their mark in the middle of all this desolation?

Hardie tightened his grip on the wheel, which sent new waves of pain down his burned fingers. He wondered how long he could keep this up. Not a good sign just a few hours into the journey.

His mental geography of this part of the country was sketchy. He was pretty sure Salt Lake City was on the other side of this stretch of flat, salty nothingness. And then beyond that … um, the place where they held the Sundance Film Festival, maybe? Hardie would have to stop for a map. Which would be interesting, considering his facial bandages. Nope, that wouldn’t be memorable to, say, a gas station attendant. Who would immediately call his brother-in-law, who would just so happen to be the chief of police in SLC or some shit like that.

Did the coma car have some fancy-pants GPS or something? It must, right?

Hardie felt himself jolt.

What was that? Did he just nod off?

C’mon, buddy, let’s keep it together.

Forget the bandages. Hardie knew what he needed. A drugstore. Raid the pharmacy shelves for some kind of uppers. Just like Kowalski in
Vanishing Point
. Jack yourself up and hammer the accelerator all the way to Philly. Probably could be covered in a day, day and a half, right? Of course you’d be spent when you arrived. And you’d still have to deal with your estranged wife (
“Hi, honey, I’m home!”
) and the son who probably grew up hating your ass—and somehow convince them that they needed to get in the coma car and travel with you to some secret location in Virginia …

Don’t worry about the big-picture stuff, he told himself. The big picture was always overwhelming. Take it one little piece at a time. First piece: Stay awake behind the wheel until you could figure out your next move.

Still, Hardie couldn’t help but think about what it would be like when he knocked on his ex-wife’s front door. Starting with the door itself. Hardie had seen the surveillance shots of the inside of Kendra’s new house for months now, but never the outside. Were they still near Philadelphia? Hardie thought so. She wasn’t one to pick up and move to another part of the country. But right there—another problem. His enemies knew exactly where Kendra lived; Hardie didn’t even know the neighborhood.

Stop thinking about it and drive.

The midday sun blazed bright off the flats. Hardie squinted a little, wishing he had sunglasses. Wouldn’t that make him look badass. Bandaged mummy dude in shades.

Were there enemy agents inside the house right now, creeping up on Kendra and Seej?

And then, in a fraction of a blink:

Hardie opened his eyes and then the coma car started rocking up and down, shifting from side to side. Each jolt through his body was so painful it brought tears to his eyes. It seemed like it took an eternity to send the message from his brain to his foot:
Stomp on the brake
. He did. The car spun a few times before making a complete stop. Only when it rocked on its suspension did Hardie realize he was screaming.

Throwing open the door, he tumbled out into the flats. Touched the ground just to make sure it was there. How far away was the road? Very, very far. He’d somehow veered off the road and gone off into the great barren nothing …

Oh God, Hardie realized, with his palm pressed against the dead, hot earth. He’d fallen asleep at the wheel. And then he threw up, right through the bandages.

Deke Clark’s FBI agent brain worked at lightning speed. He might be ex-FBI, and he wasn’t getting any younger or handsomer … but he still had the moves. He quickly found the poet’s abandoned SUV, then traced that to another stolen car—a Honda Fit. Traffic cameras along 80 from Vacaville to Reno picked up the Fit as it traveled just a hair above the speed limit all the way to the state border. Another set of cameras picked up the Fit, but then, strangely, the car disappeared between Winnemucca and Battle Mountain. Up in that desolate part of northern Nevada, there aren’t many places you can go. Why would Charlie Hardie hole up there, of all places? Answer: He wouldn’t.

Unless his accomplice wanted him here. The guy in the face bandages.

So either they’re staying put here for a while, or they’re moving on.

Deke knew they weren’t staying put.

Whatever Hardie was up to—and Deke didn’t even pretend to think that his investigator brain could puzzle out
that
one—it involved steady eastward movement. For some reason, after all of these months of silence and hiding, Hardie was headed home.

If it came to it, Deke could hop a plane and tuck Kendra and her son away somewhere safe, then sit in the empty living room, shotgun draped across his lap, and wait for his old pal Charlie to show up.
Hey, how’s it going, buddy
? Actually, Deke wouldn’t even bother with a question. He’d cold-cock the mysterious bastard with the stock of the shotgun and ask plenty of questions later. The last time he’d seen Hardie, the man had taken advantage of their friendship and Deke had woken up with piss-stained pants on the floor of a garage.

So that was one option. But Deke couldn’t help but think that was a tactical mistake. It also didn’t factor in the mysterious mummy man, who could be anybody from D. B. Cooper to D. B. Sweeney. While Deke was busy subduing his old pal Charlie, the other guy could get the drop on
him
. It was foolish to go there alone and just wait for trouble to come knocking on the door.

Which made Deke think that he had to do his best to capture Hardie while he was still on the road.

And to do that, Deke was going to call in some more favors.

You’re vaguely awake, breathing through the plastic pussy.

It’s not bad, really, except for the nagging idea that you’re missing something important, that you’re botching some important job …

And then the universe opens up its lid and unholy light shines down upon you. Rough fabric hands pull the mask from your face, the needles from your veins, the bindings from your arms and legs. Then you’re pulled out of the trunk and deposited on hard earth and somebody is telling you:

“Okay, fine, you were right.”

You blink until the sunlight is almost tolerable. You’ve been in a lazy half-coma for what’s felt like days, a half-waking dream. All you wanted to do was tuck into the pillow and roll over … only you couldn’t, because you were on life support in the trunk of a luxury car.

“C’mon, wake up already. If I’m going to apologize, I’d like you to be conscious to hear it.”