Braininjury.
Ernest Harper was intending to kill Emily but keep Mick alive the way he’d kept his father alive—unable to communicate and trapped in a hospital bed.
They weren’t going to kill him until after they knew who wasin his life—as in who, if anyone, would show up at the estate to visit him. Who would miss him after whatever tragic accident was about to befall him.
Truth was, Mickdidn’thave a lot of people in his life.
The producers on the movie he was currently working on would miss him, though. Carol Franklin, the post-production supervisor was a friendly woman who checked in on him regularly via email. She’d be pissed to find out he was unable to finish the project. And she might even come to see him because she was nice, but mostly to try to pick up his unfinished audio files.
Really, in his life, there was only Emily, whom Harper and whoever he’d been talking to were planning to kill.
Please God, let Cassidy and Starrett keep her safe... Theywould, he knew they would. What was it that Emily had told him?
You really want to fix this? she’d asked.Then you start by trusting the extremely competent people you hired to help us figure this out.
Mickdidtrust them. They weren’t his friends—Cassidy and Starrett—he’d messed that up by withholding information from them. By not being completely honest with the situation in which he’d found himself.
But despite that, because of who they were, they were, absolutely, in his life.
They were coming to save him, he believed that with every cell in his battered body.
Mick listened hard, but he heard nothing more from Harper, whom he hoped had gone back inside of the house after getting whatever it was he’d grabbed from the backseat of the car—which was about to be driven to LA by two of the thugs from the SUV.
Brain injury.
Over his dead body.
Mick turned himself around in the cramped space so that he could use his legs to kick at the area that separated the trunk from the car’s back seat. It was solid and he met resistance—he wasn’t getting out that way. So he turned again so he could kick the trunk’s metal side.
At the very least he was going to make some noise, and maybe someone, please God, would hear him.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Present Day
Palm Desert, California
Mission Day Three
“It’s this next left,” Jules instructed Sam. They were deep in country club territory, where the McMansions abutted the rolling green hills of whichever golf course this was. The speed limit was fifteen miles an hour with traffic calming humps built into the roadway. “Red Sage Lane. Let’s drive past, don’t slow down.”
Sam nodded. “What number?” he asked.
“72438,” Jules told him. “It’s up here on the right and...”
Way up ahead was the house, with its southwestern style architecture and barrel tile roof. The outside lights were blazing, lighting up not only the fancy arched front door, but the front path andthe driveway, too.
Where a car was parked, backed in, nose out. The garage door was open—the interior was empty and almost ridiculously clean.
But it was the three men arguing in the driveway, right next to the trunk of that car, that took Jules by surprise. Holy shit, it was the lawyer, Ernest Harper himself, standing there with two large men. Jules hadn’t recognized him at first, dressed down as he was in jeans, with a sweater on to combat the nip in the air, but it absolutely was him.
“Shit,” Sam said concisely and Jules absolutely agreed. Shit, indeed.
Mick’s kicking had brought Harper and a small handful of his gunmen out into the driveway.
“You need to leave!” Harper was insistent. “Immediately. My neighbors have dogs. If they walk by, they’ll hear the noise, even from down by the street! The last thing we need is?—”
“Yo.” Someone thumped on the trunk lid. “Stop that!” a gruff voice ordered. “Or I’ll fucking shoot you right now.”
