Hell and Gone Read Free Page A

his index and middle fingers could touch the strap. It was thick, almost rubbery. He curled even more and was able to press the pads of two fingers into the strap and push. The strap slid a tiny bit. It was something. It was a start.
    “Shit, I told you. Look how jammed it is up there!”
    “Don’t worry. It’ll move. We’ll get there.”
    The strap gave another inch. If he could just get it to clear the loop, maybe he could pull it enough to slip the prong out of the metal-ringed hole…
    “Oh, man.”
    “Will you relax? Do you ever drive in L.A.? I mean, except around Sherman Oaks, or wherever the hell you live?”
    “Hey, now. No personal stuff, remember?”
    “Well, you’re getting on my personal nerves with your driving advice.”
    …and then if he could get his right arm free, well, then, Hardie was in business. Because he was jammed up against the cabinets and supply shelves on the right side, and he could stick his hand up there and maybe dig out a needle or scalpel or something else sharp. EMT turns around, Hardie could nail him in the thigh—or no, better yet, point it at a testicle, either one, didn’t matter—and order his driver buddy to put the ambulance to the side of the road and hand him a cell phone. Otherwise, Hardie would be serving up some shish-ke-ball…
    And right at that moment, as if some kind of extrasensory perception had kicked in, the EMT with the dark blond hair glanced down at Hardie and did a little involuntary jolt.
    “Fuck, his eyes are open!”
    “What?”
    “He’s moving his hand and shit, he’s trying to undo a strap.”
    Who? Me? Undo a strap? Hardie let his hand drop and prepared to feign ignorance or incoherence…whatever would work best. He rolled his eyes around in a faux daze, swallowed, asked, “What time is it?” Everything depended on getting his wrist free…
    “He’s doing what?” the driver asked.
    “Oh, he’s definitely awake.” The EMT snapped his fingers in front of Hardie’s eyes. “Can you, like…see me doing this?”
    “Please,” Hardie said. “What time is it?”
    When the EMT leaned in close, Hardie started in with his right fingers again and he was overcome with a wave of dizziness. His head pounded and his vision went all blurry. Maybe he was strapped down for a reason. Like, he shouldn’t be moving his head or something. Screw it. He didn’t want to hang here in the back of an ambulance with these idiots. He may be at death’s door, but there was no reason to die in the company of assholes. He tried pushing the strap again, curving his hand around until it felt like his tendons were going to pop…
    Above him, the EMT rummaged in a box and came out with a syringe, then rummaged around in another box until he found a vial.
    “Let’s try a few more cc’s,” he said, glancing down at Hardie. “Believe me, buddy, you’re not going to want to be awake for any of this.”
    “Please, listen to me…”
    “Shh now.”
    “Listen to me, you fucking fu—”
    The cc’s blasted down the central line; something cool and wet ran over the top of his brain.
    Hardie heard one last exchange before fading into black:
    “Christ, he shouldn’t have woken up. Like, not at all. Not with the amount of shit I shot into him.”
    “You see strange things all the time in this business.”
     
    The next time Hardie woke up he saw a shotgun-blast pattern of lights. No, not lights—stars. Lots of them. Moving. Which meant he was moving. Being wheeled somewhere. Hot wind brushed his face. Hardie tried to turn his head to the left and only made it a millimeter before something went squish, which was not exactly reassuring. They’d put a stabilizer on his neck. He tried his wrists. He was still strapped to the goddamned gurney. Wrists and ankles, too. He felt pains in his chest and his heart racing until he remembered Deke.
    His old pal Deacon “Deke” Clark, FBI superstar. He’d called him what…hours ago, from that hotel on the fringes of Los