Back in 1917 a Philadelphian named Gustav Weber brought his new bride to Los Angeles on their honeymoon, fell in love with the place and its Spanish missionstyle architecture. When he returned to Philly, he bought a triangle of land just outside the city and decided to re-create a little L.A. back at home, with street names like Los Angeles Avenue and San Gabriel Road. Along these streets, he built a bunch of stucco bungalows with red-tiled roofs. Later, others built two-story homes, also in the Southern California style, and filled out the new town, dubbed Hollywood, nicely.

Of course it would have been completely insane if Ms. Hardie's rental house was on Alta Brea Drive ... alas, there was no such road in this faux Hollywood. Instead, she was at the rather boring intersection of Fox Chase and Cedar roads.

Factboy's a.s.signment was to dig up every last logistical detail that could help Mann lay siege to the home. Utilities, security, neighbors, neighbors' utilities and security ... everything. Because at any given moment Mann might be given the green light to breach that home and slaughter everyone inside (whoops, sorry, Ms. Hardie! Sorry, unfortunately named Charlie Jr.!). No sc.r.a.p of intel was too small, especially if Mann needed it in the clutch.

So Factboy locked himself away in the downstairs bathroom and began pulling everything he could.

As he tried to work, he heard a sudden loud thud. Probably his kids horsing around, with one tackling the other to the ground. They were full-fledged teenagers now but they still acted like idiot toddlers. Any second now Ms. Factboy would enter, yelling, which would be more of a distraction than the original thud.

Factboy went back to the task at hand. Maybe after this a.s.signment, if there was enough money after paying down their cards and catching up on the mortgage, maybe he'd suggest a trip to the wife. Nowhere fancy, just somewhere to a.s.sure her that her husband still had earning potential. That the past few years were simply a road b.u.mp, not the new status q- THUD.

What the h.e.l.l were they doing up there?

Factboy coughed into his fist, then listened. Where the h.e.l.l was the wife? She was supposed to have come out and tamed these kids by now.

"Hey!" Factboy shouted. "What's going on up there?"

Nothing but silence. Then, at the bathroom door, a small series of knocks.

"I'm in here! What the h.e.l.l are you and your brother doing up there, anyway? It sounds like you're about to come through the G.o.dd.a.m.ned ceiling!"

Then a voice, unfamiliar and creepy, whispered through the crack between the door and frame: "We're coming through all right, but not through the ceiling."

The door burst open, wood splintering, and Factboy tried to lift his laptop to serve as a kind of shield against the knife in the guy's hand that was already-oh G.o.d, it was already stained with blood ...

"Families are fun," Phil said. Jane nodded appreciatively. She was raiding the dead family's freezer. Phil was thinking about the storyline to go with this Flagstaff slaughter.

To think they wasted all of those years copying other people's stories. They could have been making up their own fun, crazy stories this whole time.

Jane pulled out ice cream, but Phil had to be the one to break it to her: There probably wouldn't be enough time. They had a private jet to catch and a bigger, even better story to write on the way.

22.

I would appreciate it if you would not act like a walking hard-on while we're on the job.

-Emilio Estevez, Stakeout.

SO THIS IS where you are, at this exact moment in time: You've got a dying body in the trunk, barely kept alive by life support-and thank Christ for the handy life support system in the trunk.

You're speeding across the rest of the country, trying like h.e.l.l to make it to Philadelphia before another death squad tries to cut you down.

Everything is hanging in the balance, an anvil on the head of a pin, teetering between your old life and the new one ...

And you can't help but be giddy.

Because your name is Charlie Hardie, and you're about to save your family. This is what you were born to do. This is what the military trained you for, spending untold millions molding you into an unkillable specimen of human being. This is the sum of all of your life's tough experiences, to do this one thing.

Save Kendra.

Save your boy, Seej.

You start to imagine what it'll feel like when you hold her in your arms. Your lips against hers, soft and full. Her breath, hot in your ear. The texture and scent of her hair. You've been imagining it for a year now, ever since they started feeding you information about her. At first it was an academic game. To become Charlie Hardie, you must hate what he hates, love what he loves. His motivations must be hardwired into your nervous system. You relied on your imagination. At a certain point, your imagined encounters started to feel real.

You know the difference between reality and fantasy; you're not that deluded. The difference is, you don't care anymore.

After many frenzied miles on the road, where the country around you faded into a blur of mile markers and billboards and road signs and trees and cars, you finally pull over near the finish line. You can't wait any longer; you want to hear her voice. And try your soon-to-be-new life on for size.

You pick up the pay phone, dial the number you've memorized so much that part of you truly believes it's your home number. A voice answers. You've heard this voice a million times in surveillance footage. Her voice. Kendra. A voice so familiar now it's almost as if you truly were married.

You tell her, "It's me."

She says nothing.

For a moment you wonder if the surgery, paired with endless hours of vocal coaching, wasn't successful. Maybe something about your voice is off, and maybe Kendra can tell.

"Are you there? Listen to me, Kendra, I know this is going to sound crazy, but you have to listen to me. You and the boy are in serious danger. You need to get out of the house now and just start driving. Drive anywhere. Don't tell me where, because they're definitely listening, but just go, go as fast as you can. I'll find you guys when it's safe."

Still nothing.

"Kendra? Are you there? Can you hear me?"

"I'm here, Charlie. But I can't leave."

"You have to leave, Kendra, please just trust me on this ..."

"I can't leave because they've already called, and told me I can't leave."

You realize that things are already in motion. This is bad.

"They called me and said if I left the house I was dead."

"Who told you that? Who told you that you were dead?"

"A woman. She didn't give her name."

"Did you call the police? Anyone at all?"

"They told me not to call anyone, or do anything else except wait."

"Wait for what?"

A burst of static. Then: Another voice.

"Hey, Charlie! It's your old pal Mann here."

This voice is familiar, too, but not in the same way that Kendra's is familiar. This is a voice from your own past, back when you were living under a different ident.i.ty.

Mann.

Your ex-boss.

She continues: "So good to hear your voice after all this time. Well, that magical day has finally arrived. In about thirty seconds we're going to kill the phones, and the power, and everything else in your wife's house. We've got her surrounded; I know every square inch of every house in a five-block radius. You, of all people, know how thorough we are."

"Kendra, where's the boy? Where's Seej?"

Mann continued: "Shhhh, now, Charlie, it's rude to interrupt. You're wasting precious seconds. Now I know what you're going to say. You're going to tell me that if I touch one hair on your family's head, you'll rip me apart one limb at a time ... or maybe some other colorful metaphor? Well, you know, that's just not gonna happen. Because you lost this one, Chuck. There's not going to be any cavalry rushing in, no last-minute saves, no magic escapes. And you know what's going to happen next? What's going to happen next is, your family's going to die. And there's not a f.u.c.king thing you can do to stop me."

You tell Mann, "I can stop you."

What you don't tell her is: Because I'm much closer than you think.

23.

You better be sure you wanna know what you wanna know.

-Meagan Good, Brick.

Hollywood, Pennsylvania.

UPON HIS RETURN home from another wasted night, seventeen-year-old Siege Hardie slid his key in the front door, twisted. The door wouldn't open. Granted, he was pretty drunk. Just like he should be on a Tuesday night. Too many pounder cans of Yuengling behind the Hollywood Cantina on Huntingdon Pike. A wasteoid named Eddie P. bought six-packs for him on a regular basis in exchange for a five-dollar surcharge or a pack of smokes, which was more or less the same thing. The Cantina owners didn't seem to care. They'd caught Siege drinking behind the place plenty of times and hadn't done anything about it. If the weather was nice, Siege would sometimes take his six to nearby Pennypack Park and sit in the stone foundation of a long-lost colonial-era mill house and get blitzed in the ruins.

Thing was, Siege wasn't being rebellious. When he drank, he was able to forget that creepy feeling of someone watching him.

The feeling was hard to shake, and it had only intensified over the past year. Worst of all was when he was in the rental house. (Siege didn't-couldn't-think of the goofy house they rented as "home," because to him, he hadn't had a real home since his father walked out.) Inside that weird fake-a.s.s Hollywood house it felt like eyes were on him all the time. In the kitchen, raiding the lunch-meat drawer. In the living room, playing the Xbox. In his bed, in the middle of the night, when the beer would wear off and he would pop awake for no reason.

And just feel these eyes on him.

So he got s.h.i.tfaced on beer, never the hard stuff, because his dad used to drink the hard stuff, so f.u.c.k him. He'd come home late, but not so late that his mom would call the police. Siege felt they had an unspoken agreement.

Tonight, though, the unease-Siege called it his Spidey Sense from h.e.l.l-was worse than ever. He couldn't shake the feeling that something was very, very wrong. The roiling in his guts was so bad even the beer didn't calm it down. He couldn't stay still and wandered from the bar to the park and back up around to the bar again. When he couldn't take it anymore, Siege did something extremely unusual: He called his mother. He could tell she was out at a restaurant. Probably with that a.s.shole Chris. Still: He needed to check on her, rea.s.sure himself that his Spidey Sense from h.e.l.l was just as useless as ever.

"Everything okay at home?"

"Cut the s.h.i.t, CJ," his mom said. "What happened?"

Siege should have expected this reaction. Why would he just call? He never called. Still, Siege hated how his mother could go from annoyed to flat-out p.i.s.sed in two seconds flat, but he supposed he couldn't blame her.

"Nothing, Mom. I just ..."

"Where are you?"

Siege decided to lie. Easier that way.

"I'm at home, everything's fine. Look, Mom, I know this is going to sound weird, but ... what did you do with Dad's old stuff?"

"What? Why are you asking me about that?'

Siege grappled with the truth. Ever since his dad had left home there'd been this mythical steamer trunk full of his police stuff. Not that he was ever a real cop-no, Siege couldn't even take solace in that. But close enough. When Dad was still wasting his days as a drunk house sitter-and not a fugitive wanted for the murder of some junkie actress-Siege would sneak down to the bas.e.m.e.nt, crack open the steamer trunk, and look through the stuff. Most of it was of no interest to a boy. Manila file folders. Mug shots. But then he saw the baggie full of bullet casings and an idea bloomed in his mind and he started digging more furiously until his fingertips brushed it: his father's gun. Siege had taken it and hidden it in his room and honestly sort of forgot about it until Mom found it and went NUCLEAR. There were talks, there were loud screaming arguments with Dad over the phone, which, come to think of it, may have been the last conversations before Dad snuffed that actress and went on the lam. Oh, happy times. All Siege knew was that the gun went back into the steamer trunk and the trunk suddenly had a padlock on it. Which told Siege that Mom hadn't disposed of the gun; that it was still locked away under all of those files ...

But how could Siege tell his mom that he wanted to know where Dad's gun was because his general feeling of unease and being watched was at an all-time high?

"I just wanted to," he said. Then the line went dead.

Now that was weird. Did she actually hang up on him? Was she that p.i.s.sed off that the very mention of his dad sent her off into a tailspin of rage?

Whatever. f.u.c.k it.

Siege had more beers and wandered the park, but neither activity did anything to ease his lunatic, annoying Spidey Sense. If anything, the alcohol made it worse. He'd never felt it this intensely before. He felt faint. His heart raced. He was too young to be having a heart attack, right? Maybe he should just go home. It might be worse at home-the feeling always was-but he couldn't stay out forever.

That's the one thing he swore to himself, no matter what. Don't be your a.s.shole father. Always. Go. Home.

The walk from the Cantina to his front door was two short blocks up Fox Chase Road. Siege paused to look out at the intersection.

Three of the corners were suburban housing, but the fourth corner was a field. Populated by horses.

Yeah, G.o.dd.a.m.ned horses. Barely a mile from the border of Filthy-delphia.

Siege liked to look at them from the upstairs window. Mostly they ate. Sometimes they ran. Once in a while, they mounted each other, which would have been amusing to him when he was a preteen, but now it was just a bitter reminder of how f.u.c.king lonely he was.

Right now, the horses were just standing there, giving Siege sidelong glances.

"Hey."

Which was for horses.

Enough of this.

Time to slip inside, hope that his mom wasn't awake or at least would ignore the question about his dad's stuff. Otherwise he had an hour-long monologue ahead of him. All he wanted to do was kick off his shoes and pa.s.s out in bed. The beers he'd knocked back-ten? eleven?-should kick in at some point.

As he slipped his key inside the lock, Siege could smell woodsmoke. Somebody was burning a fire on this freezing night. Lucky them.

The key refused to turn.