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Think!

He couldn’t.

Think think think think think.

But nothing came. Nothing.

Amazing to think he’d once used drugs and alcohol to blur his senses, to disorient himself.

And then, from somewhere, it came to him, one tiny word. Freeze.

Freeze . The word Gordon had used against him. Programmed into him: Freeze.

What was the opposite of “Freeze”? Don’t Freeze. He backed it up with another thought. If they tell you to freeze, don’t. Don’t freeze. Move. And move fast.

His lips formed the words. “Freeze, Move.” He made no sound, but he could feel his lips moving. They still belonged to him. He kept moving his lips: Freeze, Move . Over and over. Freeze, Move. Freeze, Move. Freeze, Move!

He started to drift, lassitude spreading to his arms, his legs, his whole body. Had to fight against it, hold on to those two words by the most tenuous thread, as if he were tethered to a balloon.

When they came for him, when they got him out of here, he knew what he would do.

MOVE.

III: THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Chapter Forty-Three

JERRY WAS HAVING a late lunch outside on the deck when Gordon walked up, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

Breaking the mood completely.

“I was thinking,” Jerry said. “There’s that ramp down to the loading dock at the outlet mall, where the big trucks go in. With the high wall? That’s where we can hide the truck, the woman’s car, and Max’s—”

“Shaun’s a no-show.”

“What?”

“She’s still missing. Which means , we don’t have a shooter.”

“Missing? Maybe she’s embarrassed because she couldn’t find Max. I sure hope you’re not going to pay her anything. Some assassin she turned out to be. Hell, I’ll do it,” Jerry added. Right now he felt as if he could do anything.

“You’re not a real assassin.”

“She wasn’t much of one either. What do you think, she decided to go on vacation in the middle of a job?”

“We don’t know what happened.”

“No, we don’t.”

Gordon said, “We need a real shooter. Someone who can drill him from a couple of feet away with a .22, straight through the heart. It sounds easy, but it’s only a .22. You can’t do that. I can’t do that. Most people can’t.”

Jerry understood what Gordon was saying. The .22 was a deal-breaker. They wanted a small, clean wound, not only to avoid copious amounts of blood that would impede their ability to stage the body elsewhere, but also in case the paparazzi managed to pay their way into the morgue and snap photos. A big, bloody hole would ding Max’s market value. “What about Dave Finley?” Jerry said.

“Can he shoot?”

“He’s a stunt man. He can do all that kind of stuff. He certainly would do a better job than we would.”

There was a commotion by the pool.

Jerry shaded his eyes. “What’s going on?”

“Dave’s putting on a show as we speak. We’re keeping the paparazzi back, but they’ve got the telephotos out in force. They think they’re getting some good shots. If I do say so myself, he looks good in that white Speedo. Hale and hearty—healed of his addiction and ready to reunite with his wife.”

“And baby.”

Gordon said, “Don’t remind me.”

“He look different to you?” Jerry asked.

“Max?”

“No, Dave. He looks…I dunno. Almost like he’s had some work done.”

Gordon stared at him. “Work done?”

“You know, a tuck here, a snip there. Work. He looks, I know this is going to sound crazy, but the more I see him, the more he seems to look like Max.”

“He’s his stunt double. Of course he looks like Max.”

“I suppose…” It wasn’t important. “So what happens next?”

“Dave’s going to climb into the Cadillac Max rented and drive off into the sunset.”

Jerry pictured grainy shots of Max behind the wheel of the car, maybe hiding his face a little, not willing to give the paps a good shot.

Perfect. “You think he can pull it off?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

Jerry said, “You know Max screwed Dave’s wife.”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m counting on.”

Chapter Forty-Four

SHAUN HAD BAILED from the truck just as it hit the guardrail. This had been more luck than anything else—she’d shoved the door open, and before it had a chance to slam back on her, managed to dive for the asphalt. She’d caught it exactly right, the guardrail slowing the truck for just an instant.

Luck.

In her stuntwoman days, Shaun had jumped from cars at least ten times, but she’d had a lot of help—wires and such—and most of it was illusion. But she knew to tuck her shoulder in, curl into a ball, and roll. Easier said than done, but the trees and bushes on the edge had caught her fall. She’d kept rolling until she hit something hard and it all went black.

Shaun had been out for hours. Her bloody face had stuck to the rock she’d run into.

Take stock. She moved each leg. Moved each arm. Moved her neck. She was OK. Felt her face and head with her fingers. There were lacerations on her forehead, her cheeks, her lips, her eyelids. A copious scalp wound. Her leg felt as if it had been slashed in two by a razor blade—she guessed it had caught the edge of the guardrail. Heat radiated from the bone, feverish. Possibly there were internal injuries. She felt like glass had broken inside, somewhere in her pelvic region, but ignored it.

Her boy.

It took her two hours to get down to the truck, and it would take her half a day to get back up. She slid down the hill on her cheeks. Turned over and crawled through the dirt and dry, cutting grass. She staggered to her feet, then crawled again.

There had been no police cars. No sirens. No rescue workers. No helicopters. The truck had come to rest against a big juniper. It looked like part of the juniper’s shadow.

Her boy was in there.

Her boy.

He’d been incinerated.

She didn’t recognize the thing strapped into the passenger side. It was mostly soot. If she touched it, it would crumble and flake off on her hands. Tendons in the arms curled up like a boxer’s; there was some red gleam of muscle and the smell of cooked meat.

“My boy,” she whispered. Her voice was harsh; her vocal cords could barely grab purchase.

She reached in to touch what was left of his face. Jellied eyes stared out at her, resentful. “You should have listened to me,” she said. “I tried to look after you.”

She’d told him not to go after Conroy. But he was a boy. Boys were risk-takers. They died.

But this was her son.

And now she couldn’t take him with her anymore. She pressed her fingertip into his chin, the grinning bone, the finger skating through something that might have been soot or might have been flesh. The residue clung to her index finger. Part of her son. Part of him. She streaked it on her lacerated forehead and on her cheeks like war paint. She inhaled him.

Shaun couldn’t take the rest of him with her, so she started back up the slope.

MAX CONCENTRATED ON the one single word, “move,” while he waited for the hallucinations, the paranoia, the blind fear to take hold. He would lose all sense of time and space. Of self . He knew he would lose touch with reality, but more than that, he would lose touch with his core, the thing that made him Max Conroy. He would be reduced to a thin, terrified voice crying in the wilderness.

Max expected this. He kept chanting the word “move” to himself, all the while gearing himself up. Be prepared, he thought. Just try to remember the word “move.”