Charlie Hardie 03: Point and Shoot by Duane Swierczynski

Author:Duane Swierczynski
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Crime
ISBN: 9780316133302
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Published: 2012-03-07T05:00:00+00:00

20

Don’t eat the car! Not the car! Oh, what am I yelling at you for? You’re a dog!

—Tom Hanks, Turner & Hooch

THEY MADE IT as far as halfway through Nebraska before Charlie Hardie was shot and killed.

After his doppelgänger’s big apocalyptic speech on the outskirts of SLC, they settled into a serious driving groove. Nobody said a word. The sun went down, the terrain went from flats to mountains. Hardie tried to nod off but couldn’t. Every so often an ambitious trooper would show an interest in their vehicle traveling at insane speeds, initiate pursuit, then drop off once the license plate was called in. What once was kind of a sick thrill became routine, especially when the troopers apparently called ahead with the word to let this black sedan pass. By the time they entered Wyoming, the pursuits had stopped entirely.

At some point Hardie did fall semi-unconscious, but it wasn’t true sleep. Instead his brain had downshifted a gear or two, leaving one hemisphere in the real world and the other in a phantom zone of his own mistakes. He was at once aware of the hum of the engine and the sound of the tires on asphalt, but he also heard gunshot and cries and screams. His fingers curled his hands into loose fists.

Feels good, doesn’t it, Charlie? Choke that bitch out. Go on. Break her little scrawny neck.

If his clone was looking over at him he would have seen Hardie’s fingers twitch.

We want an actress who was cut down in her prime. Choked to death by a man who lusted after her. Murdered by you.

Would have seen his torso jolt.

And before you do open your mouth, I’d keep Kendra and Charlie Jr. in mind.

All at once he was looking down at Kendra and Seej. Both were lying on the cold concrete floor of a basement, eyes open. The strange thing was that this wasn’t one of the surveillance-style shots Hardie had watched over the past nine months. He didn’t recognize the basement or anything in it. And even though what he saw was a high corner of this mysterious basement, it didn’t feel like he was watching the image on a screen. It felt like he was in the room with them, floating above them. And Kendra’s eyes were blazing with the same kind of familiar hate. Staring right at him, as if she could see him. Could she? Was she wishing him dead right this minute?

Hardie couldn’t look away. He was frozen in place, too, looking down at his family in torment for what seemed like a couple of forevers when he heard his own voice pleading with him—

wakeup

wake up

“Hardie, I think you’d better wake up.”

Hardie sat up with a jolt. “What? What is it?” The car had stopped moving. Hardie squinted through the bandages, looking first out the windshield and then the back window.

The sun was hours away from coming up, but even in the pre-dawn gloom Hardie would have seen them. An unmarked sedan in front; the other sedan in back.

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