“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.
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 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.”
Siege laughed. He couldn’t help it. A nervous twitch bubbling out of God knew where.
“You’re going to be okay, Dad. You’ve been shot before and it turned out okay. You’re going to be okay. Can you hear me? You’re going to be okay.”
You look up into the face of your son, your beautiful boy, and when you take a breath you realize …
You are not going to be okay.
31
How do I look? I mean, do I look Amish?
—Harrison Ford, Witness
THE SHOT WAS clean and good. Your son has skills, you have to admit that. Perfect center-of-gravity hit, just like they teach you at the police academy. And from the floor in a dark basement.
Probably not a good idea to tell CJ that now, though. Not with him looking at you with immeasurable grief and despair in his eyes.
You can hear your wife, Kendra, crying elsewhere in the basement. You can’t see her; it’s too dark. Which is kind of a cruel joke. Why hasn’t she come over to you? Is she too grief-stricken to move? If you’re going to die, the very least you can hope for is to look into the eyes of the woman you love as you slip away. Her real eyes. Not video images of eyes, eyes that can never look back at you. Her real eyes.
Then you understood what Mann meant when she said that Kendra and CJ’s bodies were in the basement. She’d obviously given them some kind of paralyzing agent, keeping them alive but immobile, awaiting to be arranged in some sort of multiple-homicide-suicide narrative.
Which is all great, because they’re alive, and the paralysis agent will likely wear off with no ill effects. But that does you no good, because you need an ambulance pretty much right now or it’s all over.
Where did this all go so wrong? You’ve thought it before and can’t help but think it again: Maybe you’ve inherited the previous Hardie’s godawful luck along with his body and soul. Maybe that’s just in the job description under the listing HARDIE, CHARLES D.
Still, part of you can’t help but plot it out a little. If Siege can call an ambulance in time, there’s a chance you can be saved. The bullet savaged your chest, but you’ve heard of people bouncing back from worse, right?
The narrative’s easy: You came home to save your family from all of the creepy-crawlies who were trying to kill them. You took them out one by one. In the confusion you were shot. Simple, right?
You’ll just have to pray that no one decided to look in the trunk of the black Lincoln Town Car parked up Fox Chase Road, near Roseland …
“Dad, I’m going to get you help. I promise. Just hang on, okay?
The phone was upstairs. No cell phone—the one-eyed bitch had taken it from him. Siege still couldn’t move his legs. To get to the phone mounted on the kitchen wall, Siege would have to climb over his father. Which was something that could easily kill him. But without calling for help, he could die anyway …
No, that’s just a fool’s dream; you’re going to die in this basement. The realization is settling in now. You can feel your damaged and rapidly failing internal organs all telling you the same thing: Yer number’s up, buddy.
The look on your face must be obvious, because your boy is looking like he’s starting to realize it, too. And, fuck, does that hurt worse than the slug that ripped you apart.
You look into your boy’s eyes and for the first time you truly know what it is to be a parent. To suffer a parent’s grief of watching your child fall apart. All of this time you’ve been play-acting. Assuming the role. Assuming the emotions. Now you feel it for real. It is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. As if a surgeon had sawed into your skull and connected a few neurons and announced that you had an entire new set of senses to enjoy and experience. Now you get it. Goddamn it, you get it.
“There’s … keys in my pocket,” his father said.
“Don’t talk, Dad,” Siege said. “I’m going to figure this out.” And he was. Siege saw that if he could pull himself up the banister, and if the banister would hold his body weight, he could somehow flip over the top and land in the middle of the staircase, then use his arms to crawl the rest of the way up to the kitchen. How would he reach the phone on the wall? Whatever, figure it out then. Go for the banister now …
“Seeeeeeej, please.”
His father, pleading.
“Take the keys out of my pocket … trust me … just take the keys and go to a black Lincoln parked on Fox Chase Road … near Roseland, you know where that is?”
“Dad, no, I’m going to get you help.”
“Looking in that trunk will help me. It’ll fix everything, you’ve gotta trust me on this. What’s in that trunk will save my life.”
The boy—who you understand is not your own, though you wish it could be another way—finally agrees to your dying wish. There’s a part of you that wants to explain more, but how can you? What would you say? You’ve said and done enough. For a while there, you were Charlie Hardie, and you came home to save your family.
Charlie Jr. reaches into your pocket, finds the keys, shoots you a quizzical look, as if he’s waiting for you to reveal the punch line. When you don’t, he gives you one last smile then tells his mother he’ll be right back, he promises. You know why he says this. You would have said the same thing.
Then you watch with sorrow
and pride as he struggles to crawl up the banister, up and over it, and lands hard on the staircase. You hear his mother gasp. But by the time he’s crawled to the top of the staircase, he has his legs back under him. It’s amazing. The paralysis has almost completely worn off. Then again, Charlie Jr. is his father’s child, born after the Project Viking therapies. He most likely inherited the ability to bounce back from practically anything.
Unlike you.
The pain’s gone now, which has you convinced that this is for real. Time seems to slow down and speed up at random. It’s all happening so fast, yet you’ve been here a thousand years. You can hear something scuttling across the bare cement basement floor. Maybe it’s creatures from hell come up to drag you down. You’ve lived a selfish, bad life. You’ve killed people. This is what happens to people like you. This is what you deserve.
Instead you feel warmth on your right hand. Something squeezing it …
Steady on.
Just steady on, man.
That was your mantra, wasn’t it?
You’re just a man who for a short while called himself Charlie Hardie. A man who used to call himself O’Neal, when you were a killer for hire. But you were actually born with the name Peter Jonathan Jordan in Muskego, Wisconsin. You die as your hopelessly damaged heart finally fails. You’re not Unkillable Chuck, after all.
All of the hate, all of the rage, all of the questions, all of the lies, all of the distance, it all disappears. All is forgiven.
Kendra Hardie held her dying husband’s hand because it was important for him to know this.
Life is cruel in that it underlines things for you this way, she thought. Kendra remembered visiting him in the hospital after the shooting ten years ago and holding his hand just like this, worried about their future, thinking things couldn’t get any worse than that endless moment. Life showed her, didn’t it?
Some part of her is relieved, though, because at least now she knew. She wouldn’t go to her grave wondering why he’d disappeared, or if he thought about them at all. In the end, he’d come back home for them.
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