Chris reached the airpark first. His pickup made a screeching swing across the hangar doors and he leapt out of the cab to the tarmac. His boots cracked on the concrete hangar floor as he strode to the twin-engine Aero Commander parked inside.
Ray Grambling was standing by the plane in his overalls, bent into the open cowling with a wrench. Another mechanic, Wilson Tubbs, was lying down inside the cockpit, his feet sticking out the door.
Chris was on them fast. Ray was just starting to look up when Chris grabbed him. He grabbed the front of Ray’s overalls, forced him back hard against the tool chest behind him. The chest’s wheels were locked. Ray winced and grunted as the chest’s open drawer hit him in the spine. He stumbled back as the drawer rattled shut. Before he really knew what was happening, Chris snapped the wrench out of his hand and raised it over his head. Then Ray—the bald, craggy older man—was goggling helplessly up at the angry young face, twisted and bruised and terrible, hovering above him.
“Where’s Hirschorn?” Chris said.
“Jesus, Chris, Jesus, Jesus…” Ray said quickly.
“Come on, you piece of shit! You brought him in, didn’t you? Kennedy. You set him on my wife. I oughta kill you where you stand. C’mon!” Chris raised the wrench higher as if to strike.
“I didn’t…”
“You brought Kennedy in. Right? You did this whole thing.”
Tubbs—the mechanic in the plane—had only just now figured out that something was going on. He was trying to wriggle backwards out of the cockpit.
Ray had his hands up uselessly at his chest. “I swear to God,” he babbled. “I swear to God…”
“Where the hell is he?” Chris shouted. “Where’s Hirschorn? Which plane are they taking?”
“Please, Chris, I swear to God…”
“Hey!” It was Tubbs. A little guy in his thirties, quick and scrappy. Out of the cockpit now, at Chris’s shoulder. He grabbed Chris’s wrist, tried to wrestle down the wrench. “Hey, what the hell are you…?”
Chris yanked his wrist away, pistoned his elbow into Tubbs’s nose. Tubbs flew back against the plane. He sat down hard on the hangar floor and then tipped over onto his side, clutching his bloody face.
Chris brandished the wrench over Ray Grambling’s head. “You tell me which plane they’re taking now or I’m gonna split your skull like a fucking walnut, you…”
“Chris, I…”
Behind them: another screech of tires. Chris’s head snapped round. He looked back over his shoulder through the hangar doors.
And now it was his—Chris’s—eyes that went wide with terror. Out in the parking lot, the sleek, dark BMW had just pulled in. It had followed him. Waited near the house for his truck and then followed him here. Goldmundsen and Flake—Hirschorn’s goons—were already pouring out the doors. In an instant, Chris’s face changed from scowling threat to fearful quiver. His bark became a squeak down in his throat.
“Oh God,” he said.
Ray Grambling fell back against the tool chest as Chris released him. The wrench Chris had been holding clanged as it dropped to the floor. And just like that, Chris was gone. He’d bolted. He was running for his pickup.
Out in the parking lot, the big goon, Goldmunsen, spotted him, shouted. Flake, the little electric goon, froze like a pointer dog, then darted for the pickup too.
Chris reached the truck, the passenger side. He grabbed hold of the door. He looked up through the window. He saw Flake running at him, Goldmunsen running behind Flake. They were five steps away. They were going into their jackets, going for their guns.
Chris had no time. No time to get into the truck. He stopped on his heels. He pushed off the pickup door. Spun full around. Darted back into the hangar.
Ray Grambling in the hangar was frozen where he stood. He saw Chris coming right at him, coming at him like a speeding bus. He rolled away from the tool chest, pinned himself against the Commander’s cowling.
Chris sped past him, looking back over his shoulder, back at the goons racing around the pickup to come after him.
Chris faced forward just in time to see the tool chest. Then he plowed into it. He hit it hard. The top of it went into his gut. The breath coughed up out of his diaphragm. Even with its wheels locked the chest gave way, tipped up, went over. It smashed into the hangar floor with a hellacious, rattling bang. Chris, winded, tumbled in the other direction. Staggered and fell, his shoulder bouncing off the concrete.
From down there, Chris twisted around to see the wired Flake charging at him. Chris screamed, a high-pitched scream like a woman’s. He scrabbled for purchase like a bug on its back. In another second, he was on his feet. He was running, frantic, for the small door on the hangar’s opposite wall.
The door was shut. There was a window in the top of it. Chris could see through the window out to the airpark apron. He could see the blue sky and the heat rising off the black tarmac, waves of heat rising past the wings of the parked planes.
Chris knew the door would be unlocked and flung himself against it. For one second, his face was pressed to the window. He saw the sky, the apron, the planes, the heat, all wild and tumbling to his panicked mind. And then, in that one second, there was one thing, one image he saw that mattered, that counted for everything.
Hirschorn. He saw Hirschorn through the waves of heat. The silver-haired man was standing by five-zero-four, the twin-engine Cessna. Standing casual, with his hands in his pockets. Just looking off absently toward the mansions gleaming in the far-off hills.
Even in his fear, Chris’s heart rose up. He’d made it. He would get to Hirschorn. He would tell Hirschorn about Kennedy, that Kennedy was a PI. He would save the day—and Hirschorn would keep him alive and kill Kennedy instead.
Chris did not look back—there was no time. But he knew that Flake was several steps behind him. He would not catch him now. He had made it. He shoved against the hangar door. It started to swing out.
And then the window went black as Goldmunsen stepped up to the other side and slammed the door shut in Chris’s face.
Chris gaped through the glass at the hatchet-faced thug who had come round the outside of the hangar to block his way. The hatchet-faced thug grinned.
Then Flake had him, had Chris, had the cold muzzle of a Glock pressed hard against Chris’s neck. Chris could hear Flake panting in his ear, could feel his hot, wet breath against his neck.
“Tag you’re it, motherfucker,” said Flake. He dragged Chris back away from the door.
Ray Grambling watched in fear as Goldmunsen pulled the door open and stepped into the hangar.
“Wait,” said Chris, his voice high and breathless. “I gotta talk to Mr. Hirschorn, I gotta tell him…”
Goldmunsen drove that wrecking ball fist of his into Chris’s stomach. All the way across the hangar, Ray Grambling heard Chris grunt. Then, groaning, Chris sank down on buckled knees.
Goldmunsen grinned at the crumpled man. Then he looked up. He grinned at Ray Grambling. Ray looked away quickly.
Chris knelt there, swaying. He was trying to talk. He was trying to tell them what he had found out. But all he could do was gasp and drool.
Still grinning, Goldmunsen lifted his fist high, up by his ear. He swung it around like some great hammer. It drove into the side of Chris’s head with a thud. Chris’s eyes rolled crazily. He pitched forward onto his face, unconscious.
Goldmunsen took hold of Chris by one arm, wrapping his big hand around the Born To Raise Hell tattoo. Flake took hold of Chris by the other arm. Chris’s feet scraped over the concrete floor as the two goons dragged him back through the hangar.
Ray Grambling kept his eyes down the whole time. Wilson Tubbs had pushed himself up on one elbow. He looked around and saw what was happening and then he turned his eyes down too. He watched the blood falling from his broken nose onto the concrete.
Neither Tubbs nor Ray Grambling looked up again as Goldmunsen and Flake hauled Chris out into the parking lot. Neither of them looked up at all until the two thugs had driven Chris away with them in their sleek, black car.