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Women punched in the face: 2.

Men thrown off something high: 2.

Hardie was nothing if not consistent.

For an instant O’Neal felt his stomach go all giddy. The air blasted across the back of his neck, and it reminded him of a million dreams he used to have about falling to his death. He didn’t want to die. Not when there was still work to be done. O’Neal threw out his hands to grab whatever he could to break his fall.

His body made impact and he instantly felt hundreds of spines stab his palms, his arms, his back, crushing the plant that held him before he started sliding backward down the hill. O’Neal pounded his heels into the ground and he clawed at the earth, fingers bent like the teeth of a rake, his brain screaming, stop STOP STOP!!!

For the third—fourth?—time in the past twelve hours, Lane Madden had saved her own life thanks to something she learned appearing in stupid action movies.

She was stunned by how many of these moves had become reflex. For instance: falling.

When you fall, you should go loose and push the air out of your lungs. Basic stunt lesson, straight from Enrico. A tense body is a hurt body.

So, when Hardie shoved her onto her back, she instinctively went loose and pushed the air out of her lungs. She also kept her head up—that is key because, of all the body parts you don’t want to damage, your head is at the top of the list. As you go down, you fold yourself like an accordion, collapsing every bendable part of your body one at a time:

ankles

sknees

hips

elbows

Finally—if you can remember to do this—Enrico taught her to slap the ground with her palms to help break the fall. Lane ran through these steps countless times while training for Your Kiss Might Kill Me—hours of nothing but falls on an exercise mat. Then Enrico took away the mat. If Lane could do anything, it was fall.

There was no mat here. No flat surface either. And her bendable parts were already sore beyond reason. But the technique still worked, and after Lane slapped the ground, she reached out for the fat stubby trunk of a bush. She rolled over onto her back just in time to see Charlie sliding past. Lane reached out and grabbed a handful of his T-shirt. Which ripped six inches and then… held, preventing him from sliding the rest of the way down into the canyon.

At the end of her arm, Charlie wriggled like an insect caught until he found some handholds, some footing. One he’d stabilized himself, she heard him hiss:

“I’m going to fuck up that motherfucker.”

And then up Charlie went, scrambling through the brush and cacti. He’d just cleared the top when Lane heard a door creaking open.

Lane made it up just in time to see Hardie launching their tormentor over the edge.

The craziest thing was the absolute exhilaration Hardie felt watching Tallboy’s body disappear. It was a sensation he thought had been lost to him. Strange that the one thing that made him feel alive for the first time in three years was killing somebody.

20

Listen, Charlie, before we go in,

there’s something I have to tell you. It’s been on my conscience,

and you can punch me if you want to.

—Oliver Platt, The Ice Harvest

THE KEYS were still in the van, hanging from the steering column. They climbed inside. Lane eased back into the passenger seat, not offering to drive, not saying a word. Hardie was about to give her shit about being Miss Daisy but then remembered the accident. She’d probably done enough driving for one day.

He craned his neck around to make sure there were no hidden surprises in the back of the van.

Now he saw that the back was loaded.

Lane heard him move and cracked open an eye.

“Where are you going?”

“Hang on.”

The cargo area was packed neatly, efficiently. Row upon row of plastic containers assembled on metal racks. Some of the stuff he recognized. Hardie popped open the top of one container. Syringes, sterile and sealed in plastic. Hardie checked another. Rubber tubing, the kind nurses use when they