Point and Shoot (24 page)

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 penis 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.”

S
IEGE 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 bitch 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 amusement 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 identity.”

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 assignment 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 fucking 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 fucking around, no fancy shit, because a man who’s too stubborn to die will be too stubborn to stay put, and god fucking damnit 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 motherfucking motherfucker … oh, this motherfucker! Why was he cut to look like Charlie Fucking Hardie, of all people? Now that she knew his real identity, 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 booby-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: shift 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 assassin 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.

U
P
.

Get up and get inside the house. Just because you’re shot full of arrows (two, only two, you big pussy) doesn’t mean this is over. Because big picture–wise, you’re doing pretty fucking 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 basement
. 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 basement? 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 basement 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 basement door.

You know the layout of this house from those countless hours of studying surveillance footage, but moving through the actual space 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 ass.

You put your hand on the doorknob, 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.

You’re about to call out but change your mind. Never give away anything more than you need to. There could be something
else
down here, waiting for you.

So you take the first few steps down the road to your new life, hoping your new family will be there alive and waiting for you …

And that’s when your chest explodes.

Siege lowered the .357 Magnum. He’d found only one slug—158-grain, tip painted gold. Probably a show bullet, meant to impress friends or put on display. But it had worked just fine. Siege heard the sorry asshole tumble down the stairs and collapse on the concrete landing.

The basement was only half-finished. Carpeted staircase but bare floors. Drywall in places, foundation walls in others. Light fixtures half in, half out. The owner had been in the process of remodeling when his mortgage went underwater. Which was why he and his mom were able to afford the rent. This recent wave of mass killings wasn’t going to do the owner any additional favors.

The bleeding person at the bottom of the staircase—who turned out to be a man—just groaned. Siege was almost disappointed. He was hoping to have nailed the one-eyed bitch. What’s more:

“Seeeeeeeeej,” the man said.

Something about the voice forced Siege to gasp suddenly, and his mother to start crying softly. A sudden realization smashed into his brain and all Siege could think was: no no no no
no
…

It had been easy to get caught up in the moment. Ten seconds ago Siege had heard the basement door open. Thirty seconds ago Siege had heard the back door open. Fifty seconds ago he had loaded the gun. A minute and a half ago he’d found the gold-tipped slug tucked in a corner of the steamer trunk. Four minutes ago he’d found the gun wedged under a deep pile of manila folders. Five minutes ago he’d squinted in the near-dark as he thumbed in the combination that his mother had managed to tap into his open palm,
Johnny Got His Gun
–style—

four seven three eight

—just five and a half minutes ago. Eight minutes ago he’d regained the use of both arms and his head and neck. Ten minutes ago he had been pleading with his mother to try, just try to speak … and somehow tell him the combination to the lock.

Ten minutes ago, it seemed like life couldn’t get any worse for Siege Hardie.

Ten minutes later it had.

Ten minutes ago, he was a victim of circumstance, a kid at the receiving end of a long run of total and utterly bad luck.

Now he’d killed his own father.

Siege used his arms to crawl across the cold basement floor to the figure at the foot of the staircase and confirmed the worst. A narrow shaft of light from above lay over his father’s face. Charlie Hardie Senior looked exactly how Siege remembered him—which was a complete shock. After years on the run, wanted for murder … the absentee father in Siege’s imagination looked much, much worse for wear. And while his face was bruised and cut and bleeding from many places, it was an essentially young face.

All of those newspapers had called his father unkillable. It was the source of much teasing and much mental anguish over the years, but now Siege hoped—prayed—there was a glimmer of truth to that.

Across the room, Mom found her voice.

“Charlie.”

And his father replied, with a slight gurgle in his voice:

“Hi, Kendra.”