“Do you still have people on Kendra and Charlie?” he asked.
Deke swallowed. “They’re fine. Perfectly safe.”
“You’re not answering my question. Does the bureau still have a detail on my wife and son?”
Deke couldn’t lie; he was practically incapable of it. Hardie knew that.
“Listen, Charlie…”
“Goddamn it, how long you been retired?” Hardie asked. “The person who answered the phone said you were gone.”
“It’s been a while, man. Look, back when you went missing…”
After a quiet beat, Deke said: “I look after them.”
“What, do you sleep in your fucking car outside their house and keep constant vigil? Does Ellie join you? You living your life making sure nobody kills my family? Who’s watching your family? You got a detail for that?”
“Hardie…”
Hardie leaned on the cane and turned away from Deke. All this time he could relax with one assumption: that his wife and son were being looked after. Deacon Clark was the fuckin’ Boy Scout of the Philly branch of the FBI; his word was bond, you needed nothing else. He’d never imagine Deke leaving the FBI. Never. No way. The man was one drunken night away from having J. Edgar Hoover tattooed on his dick. Hardie had always comforted himself with knowing that Deke would never fall down on the job. Even if Hardie were to die, Deke would honor his promise.
But his family was wide open, exposed.
And right now in the worst danger of their lives.
Deke couldn’t tell if the man was crying or ready to collapse or laughing from nervous exhaustion or what. All he knew was that it was finally time for Charlie Hardie to come home. He slipped the gun inside his jacket pocket and walked over to Hardie, put his hands on his shoulders, told him everything was going to be okay, even though it probably wasn’t. Right here, in this room, were three men Charlie had killed. Another on a roof just a dozen blocks away. No matter what had happened, you can’t make murder go away. He could feel Hardie trembling a little under his touch.
Look at him. With a cane and everything. If the moment weren’t so horrible Deke would have maybe found a little amusement in the notion of Charlie Hardie, baddest man in Philadelphia, having to get around with a cane.
Didn’t explain where he’d been the past five years.
“Come on, Hardie,” Deke said softly. “It’s going to be all right.”
Deke briefly looked past Hardie to see the interior of the trunk. At first it looked like somebody had shoved a bunch of medical gear back here—oxygen tanks, IV bags, tubing. But then he saw how neatly it was all arranged. “What the hell is that?”
Deke was so mesmerized by the contents of the trunk that he didn’t feel the tip of the cane against his chest until it was too late.
He barely felt the shock.
—Cleavon Little,
HARDIE DROVE THE big bad black Lincoln Coma Car down the Pacific Coast Highway.
If you’re going to check out the gorgeous California coast, might as well do it in style—with someone special on life support in the secret trunk.
They stopped in Big Sur. Hardie had a burger and a beer in a small place called Ripplewood. The beer hit him hard. He used to have a high tolerance, but five-plus years on the secret-hospital-and-prison wagon must have killed it. His head swam. Not good. He couldn’t afford to be drunk for the next twelve hours. Hardie ordered three glasses of ice water. The waitress didn’t even flinch—she brought all three and one straw, as though she knew the deal.
Back outside, and once he was sure nobody was around, Hardie popped the trunk and slapped Doyle until his eyes opened. He hadn’t gotten everything perfect back here in the trunk of the Coma Car—and Hardie was no doctor. But the fucker was securely bound, at the very least. And guaranteed to be super uncomfortable.
“So, which address?”
Doyle tried to spit on Hardie, who jumped back, but caught some of the saliva on his hand anyway. Hardie leaned over and press-wiped it on Doyle’s overalls, which only made Hardie’s hand greasy
“Okay, then,” Hardie said. He punched Doyle in the head twice, then closed the trunk.
The scenery along the Pacific was breathtaking and beautiful, that much was true. But what they didn’t tell you about the Pacific Coast Highway was that it pretty much went on forever. Repeated itself, too, to the point where you could have sworn you’d passed this exact same eye-popping view of a canyon overlooking the perfect blue ocean just a few minutes ago. It was an orgy of supermodels at sixty-five miles per hour, all beauty, no imperfections, and after a while it just made your dick want to shrivel up from all the splendor.
God, that beer had really hit Hardie.
Near the Hearst Castle, Hardie found a place to pull over and stretch his throbbing right leg. He tried to use cruise control, but one near collision convinced him he was better off regulating his own speed. It was tough, though, using his left leg on the brake and accelerator. His right leg just wasn’t trustworthy. Who knows if it ever would be.
There was a lonely stretch of beach not far from where a group of enormous sea lions basked in the sun, rolling around in the wet sand. Hardie once read that sea lions, though cuddly, could be quite ferocious. Maybe having a thousand-pound creature snapping a bite out of his leg would convince Doyle to cough up the address…
Instead Hardie drove farther, to a more secluded spot, pulled over, and decided to try again. He woke Doyle by twisting a crimp in his breathing tube. The man’s eyes popped open, and his face turned a sickly cyanotic color, but he still refused to pinpoint Abrams’s address.
A one-in-five shot; those odds sucked. If he was going to win this, he needed to trap Abrams immediately. A break-in at one of the other addresses would only serve as a tip-off.
Hardie continued down the California coast as the sun dropped down onto the flat gray slate of the Pacific.
Morro Bay at night.
Even in the gloom you could see the BIG FUCKING ROCK right in the middle of the water, as if a killer meteorite had crash-landed on earth. But instead of wiping out the human race, it just decided to kick back off the California coast for a while. With the sun down, it was chilly as hell out here, wet salty air lashing your skin.
Might be mildly romantic, if it were just him and Kendra out here, lounging around the seaport restaurants, maybe even holding hands and looking at the big fucking rock.
Instead, Hardie found himself with Doyle—his new main squeeze. Hardie found a quiet, desolate space behind an abandoned store and opened the trunk again. Hardie wasn’t going to ask this time. He popped the hood and started in with his fists, beating Doyle for a solid minute, not really worried about killing him because, you know—the bastard was already on life support.
“Not asking you again,” Hardie said.
Doyle spat blood. Like, everywhere. But he didn’t say a word.
Well, that went well.
