Fun and Games

THEY HAD the actress cornered.

She had nowhere to run. First floor—clear. Second floor—clear. Third floor—everything clear except the bedroom closet. Only place left she could be hiding. So they braced themselves and prepared for her to go totally bugfuck when they opened the door. O’Neal took one side, A.D. the other. A.D. put his hand on the knob, looked over at O’Neal. O’Neal gave it the old one, two… NOW.

A.D. opened the door. O’Neal aimed his Taser at—

Nothing.

O’Neal pushed aside dress shirts, jeans. Kicked a pile of shoes. The closet was one hundred percent devoid of people. Where the fuck was she? She couldn’t just disappear. Unless they were somehow wrong and she had never entered the house in the first place.

No no no. She was hiding somewhere.

A.D. signaled with his hands: an invisible cell phone to his ear. Meaning: Should we contact Mann?

O’Neal shook his head. Not yet.

This didn’t make sense.

O’Neal and A.D. had had the front covered; Mann had had the back. Nobody had left. They had secured the house carefully, methodically. O’Neal replayed the scene in his mind.

The moment the interloper—Charles Hardie—opened the front door, the wasp’s nest did its thing. Both men were down in a matter of seconds. Hardie fell inside. The deliveryman dropped his clipboard, staggered back a few steps like he was on a dance floor, then collapsed. The beauty of the poison spray was that it would finish things off for them. First it stuns, then it kills. All they had to do was bag the bodies, keep them out of sight, then go find the target. O’Neal and A.D. put on their gas masks, grabbed a bunch of plastic body bags, and sprang into action.

Bagged the bodies, the suitcase, the clipboard, anything that belonged to either man. A cleaning team would be sent in later to make sure every stray microbe was removed from the premises, but protocol remained: bag it now.

O’Neal slapped a proximity sensor on the front door. If the girl somehow eluded them and went out the front door, they’d know it instantly.

They split up. Both were equipped with Tasers and jab pens. The former wouldn’t leave a mark; the latter wouldn’t matter, because one jab stick on a body covered in scrapes and bruises wouldn’t be detected. O’Neal scoped out the downstairs, ready to unleash the Taser, then follow through with the pen.

They had checked every inch of the studio. Under the mixing boards, in closets. The bathroom. Tapped the ceilings, the walls. Nothing. It didn’t make sense.

Fatigue was setting in big time; there were too few of them, and they’d been on the job for way too many hours. For fuck’s sake, this was supposed to be over last night. Mann should have rotated another team in here, started fresh. O’Neal knew Mann was injecting a little bit of the personal into the equation. He’d never say that to her face—wasn’t worth it. Still, if he were running things…

In the middle of hazy nothing, Mann heard her earpiece purring. God bless whoever’s calling me. She scrambled through the grass, blinking away blood, and her fingers found the piece. She put it to her ear.

It was Factboy.

“Hey, I found something you should know,” he said.

“Not fucking now,” Mann said.

The plan was to go in all stealth.

Hardie reasoned that they didn’t know he was coming. The topless lady in the sunglasses would be busy digging around the bushes for at least another few minutes, trying to find her stupid hands-free thing. (Good luck with that, honey.) It wasn’t too late. Lane was still alive. Topless had confirmed as much:

You know me. I like constant updates. Keep searching.

And Lane Madden knew who these people were, what they were all about. Hardie didn’t have to stop them. He didn’t have to solve the case. Which was never his strong suit, anyway. He didn’t have to root out corruption at the highest levels of government, or dismantle the nuke, or any of that crazy hero shit. He just needed to find out who these fuckers were, and then dutifully report it to Deacon Clark, who would get the FBI up their asses sideways.

So…

Stealth.

Don’t let them see you coming.

Inflict maximum damage as quickly as possible.

Get the girl.

Get the fuck out.

Of course, Hardie had no idea how many of them there were inside the house. Could be one guy in there or a dozen. There had to be at least two, right? One to steal his Honda Whatever while the other kept watch on the front of the house?

Whatever. Keep it stealth.

Hardie finished his charge up the hill and came around to the front of the house. Nobody in sight. He crouch-walked to the front door and saw the device the crafty fuckers had stuck to the door frame.

Hardie was no mechanic, but even he could see how it worked. Your victim opens the door, a little leg thingy falls, and then a nozzle sprays the knockout shit. Well, the leg thingy was down; payload spent. Hardie grabbed the box by the edges and pulled. It came loose easily. He tossed it in the bushes. Maybe it would come in handy later —at their trial. Exhibit A, Your Honor. The little box of death that almost murdered me!

Hardie put his hand on the doorknob and took a mind-clearing breath. This was it. Remember: stealth.

He twisted the knob and pushed open the door and—

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

A.D. looked at O’Neal.

O’Neal signaled.

Check it out.

A.D. hit the stairs.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, Hardie thought, looking for a place to hide, some kind of weapon… anything.

Up on the first floor in record time, silent the whole way. The actress might be up here, waiting to ambush them. Then A.D. saw the front door, still cracked open. The empty body bag on the floor.

Goddamnit. The house sitter.

Charlie Hardie.

If Hardie had run for the literal hills, that meant someone (probably A.D.) would have to waste even more time chasing him down. A.D.’s first impulse was to go through the front door and see if he was still within view— after all, the alarm had only been triggered a few seconds ago. Then he wised up. The road ran down behind the house. He could just go to the back deck and see if Hardie was headed down toward Belden. If so, then he could back out and run down his stupid ass with the van.

A.D. darted through the media room and was two steps onto the deck before he realized he’d stepped in animal shit. Great. O’Neal would never let him live this down. He scraped his shoes on the wooden planks.

And somebody grabbed him from behind.

Number of accidental falls per year: 14,900.

There wasn’t time for Hardie to take a good look at his attacker, but at least this one was fully dressed. Looked young, too, with one of those shaggy haircuts all the teenagers seemed to have these days.