Fun and Games

He racked his brain for some escape route, some ruse, some way of communicating with the outside world.

“Who will report you missing?” Hardie asked.

“Huh?”

“When you don’t show up at home, who will miss you?”

“Sad to say, the only person who will notice will probably be my manager, Haley. I told her we’d talk sometime today about future projects. But I’ve flaked out before and not returned calls. Sometimes for days. She won’t think anything of this at first.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling.”

“What about you? Who will miss you?”

“Absolutely nobody. Not for at least a month.”

“We won’t be able to survive here for a month.”

“So I guess it’s up to you. You’re the famous one. Somebody will eventually come looking for you. Maybe they’ll retrace your steps.”

But Hardie knew that was bullshit the moment he spoke the words. If these guys wanted the death to look like an accident, they would have already scooped the car and all traces of Lane Madden.

Sometime during the second hour Hardie went to splash some water on his face. He was feeling sick to his stomach. Probably because the last thing he ate was that stupid dry bagel in the airport. Hardie turned the cold- water knob. The faucet ran for a few seconds before the pipes rumbled. The faucet spat at his fingers, then went dry. Fuck, come on! Not the water, too.

No food. No power. No way to call for help. No nothing.

It drove him mad.

In the hallway, Lane was throwing up.

Hardie gathered up the remaining towels from the bathroom and helped her clean up her face, then wiped the floor. But the odor of gastric bile was making him sick, too. He had to choke it back, swallow, keep his head clear. Try to, anyway. His head was really starting to pound.

Of course, this was to be expected—they had both been through an absurd number of shocks and traumas this morning. Lane had been in a car crash and hunted up and down the Hollywood Hills in the dark. Hardie had been beaten, impaled, poisoned, suffocated, and Tasered. Adrenaline kicks in during these kinds of situations, but adrenaline doesn’t last forever. Human bodies need time to recover. They need water and food and rest and sleep —all things they didn’t have or couldn’t afford.

So of course, they were feeling like shit, throwing up, and ready to lose their minds.

But…

Some ultraparanoid part of Hardie’s mind thought it could be something else.

These fuckers didn’t use conventional weapons. They went in for poisons. Cars. Electricity. What if they had managed to pump some kind of toxic fumes into the house? And after making them puke like a freshman at a kegger, it would kill them.

Hardie tried to discern if anything smelled strange or left a weird taste in his mouth. Nothing, of course… and why would it? Only gas companies helpfully laced their natural gas supply with a delightful rotten-egg odor so you’d know when your pilot light had blown out. If you wanted to kill someone with some powerful, exotic, untraceable poison, you wouldn’t go advertising it. You’d just pump it in.

Should he try to go around the house, sealing off all the vents?

Hardie rubbed his eyes. Lane had rested her head against his shoulder and shut her eyes. It would have been a tender moment, quite possibly even a mildly erotic one, had she not been trembling and smelling faintly of vomit.

Hardie thought more about Them. Tried to climb inside their minds and guess what they’d be doing next.

Then he remembered what one of them had said.

“Lane.”

“Uhhhh.”

“Lane, you still with me?”

“Just want to sleep.”

“I need you to tell me who we’re really up against.”

Lane’s eyelids slowly lifted.

“I told you. I don’t know.”

“I told you I met the lady with the one eye, right? Topless Cyclops?”

“Yeah.”

“She told me that you deserved this. That I should ask you why.”

Lane blinked as if she’d been slapped. She made a show of recovering. Huffing, shaking her head.

“Of course she’d say that.”

“Yeah, I understand that. But I still don’t think you’re telling me everything. And while I’m sure you have your reasons, we might die in here. Because of something you didn’t tell me. You tell me that you have no idea why they’re trying to kill you, yet you seem to know an awful lot about them.”

Lane stared at the wall.

“What, is it that you still think I’m one of them?” Hardie asked. “If that’s the case, then—”

“No, it’s not that…. It’s…”

“What?”

Lane started to rub her eyes to wake up a little and remembered that it really hurt. She tasted the inside of her mouth and found that it was absolutely foul. She stretched and then looked at Hardie.

“Okay, listen, this might sound a little insane. Like I’m telling you about the boogeyman. But an ex-boyfriend was the one who told me about these people. I thought he was full of shit and he was just teasing me. I didn’t believe they were real until this morning…. God, this is going to sound stupid.”

“Highly doubtful.”

She hesitated again.

“In L.A. you hear stories. Rumors about killers who go after famous people and make it look like accidents. You joke about these killers like kids joke around about the boogeyman—but inside, you’re scared to death the rumors are true. Some drunk guy at a party will tell you he knows how Marilyn Monroe really died, or how John Belushi’s OD wasn’t really an OD. And then everybody will get quiet, because everyone else will have heard the same things.”

Hardie felt himself easing back into cop mode. Commenting as little as possible, listening to everything. Evaluating.

“Anyway, my ex once told me—swore to me—these people were real. Said they had protection at the highest levels, that they were bankrolled by the richest people on earth. They clean up the messes. That’s how he put it. After a while he’d start joking around with me. Don’t make me call the Accident People.”

“So you think he called them for real.”

Lane was stunned.

“No! Not my ex. Point is, I believe what he said. He’d be in a position to know.”

“So, he’s what—an actor?”

Lane nodded, said his name.

It was the BLOND VIKING GOD.

Everybody knew the BLOND VIKING GOD.

The entertainment press gave this particular actor the sobriquet after his first gig—a supporting role in an Oscar-nominated war flick. From there, it was indie thrillers, then a big-budget superhero role, and then finally his own producing arm. Everything he touched turned into golden celluloid. He was as famous as famous could get. A