“I’ll be right up.”
“No time. I’m already on my way.”
As Hardie chugged up past the intersection of Durand and Heather, he noticed someone had mounted three signs—bright yellow triangles, each with the image of a stick figure falling. He asked Lane to hang on for a minute. They paused in front of the signs to give Hardie a chance to catch his breath. He leaned forward, pressed down on the tops of his thighs, then straightened up again.
“Is that a joke?” Hardie asked. “Do people actually fall off the road enough to warrant a goddamned traffic sign?”
“No, it’s real,” Lane said. “I read about these. A while back a guy on a bike took a spill. Ended up paralyzed and filed a lawsuit against the homeowners in the area. So they put up these signs.”
After a few seconds of frenzied rest, they continued their ascent, up the winding road. Dirt spilled out from the cracked and broken sides of the road, as if the hills were slowly trying to shuck themselves of the asphalt.
Each time Hardie felt like they’d finally reached the peak, there would be another bend in the road, and he’d see more of Durand curving up into the sky. There were no other pedestrians. Just houses, with no signs of life inside them, and cars wedged in every available space.
“We’re almost at the reservoir.”
Finally, across a valley and through the haze, he could see the ghostly letters of the Hollywood sign. Durand’s name changed at some point. Hardie missed the sign, if there even was one. But now he felt like he was at the top of all of creation. Behind him, Mt. Lee and the sign. In front of him, shimmering in the woozy afternoon, was downtown Los Angeles, so faint as to almost seem like a matte painting or a special effect. And in front of it was the promised reservoir—big and blue and looking like the only refreshing thing for miles.
Hardie followed Lane to a strip of honest-to-god sidewalk, which ran along the rim of an overgrown canyon. That said, it barely qualified as a place for pedestrians to walk. The paving was so narrow and so close to the road, Hardie found himself turning his head every ten seconds, to avoid being sideswiped by the cars that would appear out of nowhere. Where the fuck were they coming from? A parking garage behind the
You had to be careful, too. One good slip and down you would go, all the way to… Hardie glanced down and saw a little park where people walked dogs, and little blobs that must be children raced around. So random. Just like the rest of this city.
“All we have to do is make our way down there,” Lane said. “There’s gotta be someone with a phone. We find a phone, we call my manager, and we’ll be okay.”
“Right.”
“I’m serious. This is almost over.”
Yeah, Hardie thought, just like my house-sitting career. This is the second house I’ve let burn. Got a free pass on the first one. This one—with all the fancy studio equipment inside? He doubted that Andrew Lowenbruck would be all that understanding.
Of course, it was kind of absurd to be worried about a career when you were being hunted by a group of secret killers.
Hardie must have been slowing down, because Lane prodded him:
“Come on, keep moving.”
“I’m right behind you.”
Hardie threw a glance over his shoulder, then took another step, and then…
Wait, what?
There was a white van rushing down the road. Fast. Right at them.
“Fuck!”
“What?”
In that instant there was nothing Hardie could do but push Lane and send her over the edge and then send himself right after her.
O’Neal hit the tiny curb and bounced and cut the wheel hard to the left. He had to fight to keep the van from bouncing right over the edge of the road into the canyon. What had seemed like a flash of brilliance—gunning it and spooking the actress and Hardie right over the edge—now seemed like the stupidest damn thing he’d ever done, because it would do his career no good to end up dead and upside down in the middle of a fucking park.
The van clung to the road, though. O’Neal stomped down on the brakes and brought it to a shuddering halt and immediately, without much thought, jumped into the back to grab a wasp pistol. Same principle as the wasp’s nest, only in portable form, with a spray range of about fifteen feet. He pulled a box of vials from a cubby, then loaded the pistol with four shots. Then he stepped out of the van. Time to end this.
And then something slammed into his face.
Which would be Hardie’s fist.
Which happened to be studded with cacti spines, and Hardie hoped it hurt like fuck. Because it had hurt like fuck to reach out and grab hold of something,
So this tall guy had nothing to complain about.
Hardie threw another punch, which made his chest, and fist, throb with agony all over again, but he really didn’t care. Something dropped out of Tallboy’s hands and shattered on the ground. Hardie grabbed two fistfuls of Tallboy’s fake landscaping uniform and slammed him into the side of the van, and again, and again, watching the guy’s neck seem to loosen with every blow.
Hardie knew he should put him in some kind of hold now, or cut off his air, something. Slap him around to revive him, then start in with the questions. Who are you. How many of you. Why do you want to kill Lane Madden. Who’s in charge. But Hardie’s blood was up. It didn’t feel right to stop and ask questions. Fuck questions. This guy tried to run them off a road, make them fall to their deaths.
So Hardie adjusted his grip, ran Tallboy over the edge of the canyon, then launched him outward. Tallboy yelled and waved his arms and legs, and that was the last thing Hardie saw before he disappeared.
Hardie took a step back, breathed out, put his palms on his knees. Thought about the events of the day.
Women punched in the face: 2.
Men thrown off something high: 2.
Hardie was nothing if not consistent.
For an instant O’Neal felt his stomach go all giddy. The air blasted across the back of his neck, and it reminded him of a million dreams he used to have about falling to his death. He didn’t want to die. Not when there was still work to be done. O’Neal threw out his hands to grab whatever he could to break his fall.
His body made impact and he instantly felt hundreds of spines stab his palms, his arms, his back, crushing the plant that held him before he started sliding backward down the hill. O’Neal pounded his heels into the ground and he clawed at the earth, fingers bent like the teeth of a rake, his brain screaming, stop STOP
For the third—fourth?—time in the past twelve hours, Lane Madden had saved her own life thanks to something she learned appearing in stupid action movies.
She was stunned by how many of these moves had become reflex. For instance: falling.
When you fall, you should go loose and push the air out of your lungs. Basic stunt lesson, straight from Enrico. A tense body is a hurt body.
So, when Hardie shoved her onto her back, she instinctively went loose and pushed the air out of her lungs. She also kept her head up—that is key because, of all the body parts you don’t want to damage, your head is at the top of the list. As you go down, you fold yourself like an accordion, collapsing every bendable part of your body one at a time:
