Fun and Games

16

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality—

the story of an escape.

—A. C. Benson

ANDREW LOWENBRUCK kept a tiny charcoal grill on the side deck. A miniature kettle-shaped thing, big enough for four hamburgers and maybe a couple of hot dogs wedged in here and there. It was damn near useless as a food preparation tool, but to Hardie, it might be their ticket out of here.

There were only a few ways to light charcoal briquettes. Some already came soaked in lighter fluid—which to Hardie’s mind was cheating—but most came without. You either had to use a chimney starter and bunched-up newspaper, or some matches and lighter fluid. Hardie didn’t remember seeing a chimney starter outside. And frankly, Lowenbruck didn’t seem too much like a hard-core griller. So there were probably some lighter fluid and matches around.

Hardie crept upstairs and found both under the kitchen sink, along with an unopened container of cleanser with packaging straight from the 1980s. The lighter fluid was in a small metal box, squeezable. The matches were wooden and long enough to take an eye out.

Now all he needed was something flammable. Something that would go up quickly and send a lot of smoke into the air…

Hardie carried the fluid and matches into the living room and saw them instantly.

Sly.

Arnie.

Bruce.

Mel.

And yes, even Gene.

The cardboard standees.

“Sorry, boys,” Hardie muttered. “You can come find me and beat the shit out of me later.”

Hardie shoved the matches into one pocket, lighter fluid into the other, then walked down a few steps until he was eye level with the bottom of the standees. He fished out the lighter fluid, then soaked the bottoms with multiple squeezes from the tiny metal can. It was like trying to piss up a wall. The fumes were harsh and instantly put him in mind of summertime cook-outs. Something Hardie hadn’t done for years, didn’t think he’d ever have the chance to do again.

He made his way back down the stairs, opened the box of matches, shook one out, flicked the head along the lighting strip on the box. Nothing. He tried again. Nothing. One more time—and the match snapped in half.

“What are you doing?” a voice whispered behind him. Lane.

“Getting us out of here, that’s what.”

“By doing what—setting the house on fire?”

“Exactly.”

“You’re kidding me.”

Hardie looked up and noticed the stream of fluid led right to Stallone. Made sense. If someone’s going to go first, let it be the Philly guy. The guy who embodied that kind of can-do-in-the-face-of-hopeless-odds kind of spirit. Strains of Bill Conti pumped through his head.

“You’re going to kill us,” she said. “Is that your big plan? Make it easy for them?”

“No. We’re going to get some towels wet and seal up the cracks under the door down there. Then we’re going to do the same to the other door, and we’re going to wait in the bedroom on the bottom level.”

“Where we’ll die of smoke inhalation! I’ve worked on action movies, Charlie. I know how this works.”

“No, we won’t. Fire travels up. This is an upside-down house. It’ll burn the roof, then start to come down slowly. Meanwhile, a whole lot of black smoke travels up. And the minute we hear a siren, we’ll be safe. You said these people work in secret, right? They arrange accidents and nobody’s the wiser? They skulk around and take out people on the sly? Well, let’s see them try to kill us in front of a bunch of firefighters. What are they going to do—wipe them out, too, along with the EMTs? No. Fuckers lose this round. They wanted to keep this quiet, so I’m going to make it as loud as possible.”

Lane stared at him for a moment, then turned to throw up.

“I knew you’d like the plan,” Hardie said.

Then he finally got a match to light.

Back in the small house below the Lowenbruck residence, Mann had a new narrative all prepared:

Starlet gets drunk and high, cracks up her car on the 101. She flees the scene, leaving her totaled Lexus behind. She wanders into the hills. She gets lost. Confused. Finally, she collapses. A jogger finds her five days later—four days after she’s been reported missing.

So that meant removing her body from the house and planting it out in the hills. Which was not a big deal; there were plenty of spots they already had mapped out without the slightest risk of discovery. The jogger would be one of their own people, with the requisite bulletproof background. Four days of exposure to the elements and wildlife would leave the body in an ideal state. And finally, Hardie could be left in the house for later discovery. Heart attack. Simple enough to arrange.

First, though, they needed the bodies.

And to do that, they’d gas them.

While Mann kept watch, A.D. crawled and ran a robot pig down the gas line and then restored service.

The pig was a piece of detection equipment that gas companies used to test the integrity of their lines—a cylindrical robot that looked like an unlit light saber from the Star Wars movies. The pig checked for leaks and corrosion and made sure the pipe was performing to standards.

Mann’s pig, however, was modified to perform a few additional tasks. For one, it could force a crack in a gas line. It could also accelerate the delivery of the gas into the house, fill it in about a quarter of the normal time. Finally, the pig was equipped with a filter that could strip away the t-butyl mercaptan—the odorant additive that gives natural gas its distinctive smell. Natural has no scent. An entire room could be filled with natural gas and even those with the keenest of senses wouldn’t know it. Just like nature intended.

Once A.D. deployed the pig, O’Neal sat in the van and used a tablet computer to guide it to the oven near the top floor. This would be the easiest place to fake a leak. The pig could be used to compromise the connector joint. If forensic examiners ever looked at the pipe, faulty workmanship would be to blame.

But that was the worst-case scenario. What would happen was, the gas would overwhelm them—it would only take an hour or so before the fumes completely filled the house—and they’d recover the bodies. Maybe Hardie, a troubled, depressed cop who watched his best friend die, could even be set up as a suicide. Lane, meanwhile, would be transported elsewhere. No connection whatsoever. The windows could be opened; the air exchanged; the crack in the gas pipe connection mended.

The events of this horrible wretched day—erased.

Which was why Mann was completely stunned by the massive explosion that suddenly rocked the top of the house.