Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(2)

“Brand,” I gasped, catching my breath. I didn’t need to explain. Jennifer had been there with me, facing Meadow’s creations in a derelict hotel littered with deathtraps.

“Where?”

I looked across the room at an empty doorway. The back door slammed. My stomach clenched like a fist.

We ran outside in time to see Meadow pulling out of the neighboring driveway in a black Mercedes. She paused just long enough to look in the rearview mirror and give me a wink.

“Not this time,” I said, jumping into Jennifer’s car. She tossed me her pistol and gunned the engine. “She’s not getting away. Not this time.”

Jennifer gripped the wheel and stared dead ahead like a falcon zeroing in on its dinner.

Meadow hit the on-ramp for Interstate 15 at fifty miles an hour, the heavy Mercedes bottoming out and scattering sparks across the asphalt. We followed, close on her tail, weaving through the morning traffic. Meadow hit the gas, and Jennifer’s little car shook as it struggled to keep up the pace.

“Plan?” Jennifer’s voice was as strained as the engine. She blamed herself for letting Meadow slip away the last time, and now another innocent victim was dead because of it. I knew how she felt, because I felt the same way.

I clutched the pistol, feeling its weight, and rolled down my window.

“You pull up alongside her, I shoot her in the goddamn face.”

“Good plan.”

We almost made it, zooming up on the left while she got stuck behind a slow semi in the middle lane, but she slipped right and stomped the accelerator again. I watched, gritting my teeth, as the black Mercedes inched farther and farther away.

“She must have bushwhacked Sophia,” I said. “Made her call us, then killed her.”

“And laid a trap with her little puppet critters,” Jennifer drawled, her voice smooth as Kentucky syrup. “Doesn’t make sense, though. We took on dozens of those things at the Silverlode. Why’d she think she could beat us with just two?”

Up ahead, the Mercedes held its speed steady, lazily gliding between lanes. It slowed down, just a little, then sped up again.

She’s playing with us, I thought, and my heart sped up as I figured out her game.

“Jen, don’t follow her! Get off the highway!”

“What? Why?”

“That wasn’t the trap!” I shouted. “This is the trap!”

Red and blue lights blazed in the rearview mirror as two Nevada highway patrol cruisers flew up the on-ramp and slid in behind us. Moments later, a third chase car, an unmarked SUV with its flashers mounted behind the front grill, joined the fun. I looked down at the gun in my hands.

“Can we outrun them?” I asked, feeling stupid as the words left my lips.

“It’s a Prius,” Jennifer said through gritted teeth.

It was a setup, and we had walked right into it like a cow guided down the killing chute. We weren’t going to get away. All we could do now was minimize the damage. Jennifer moved into the slow lane, making as if to pull over, while I grabbed the tail of my shirt and wiped the gun down as best I could. I tossed the piece out the window. No chance they didn’t see it drop, but at least with my hands empty I wouldn’t be committing suicide by cop.

We drove another quarter mile and pulled over. Jennifer killed the engine. The squad cars boxed us in. Next thing I knew, there was a uniform and an unholstered pistol in every direction, and a loudspeaker bellowed for us to stick our hands out the windows.

They hauled me out of the car and slammed me against the hood, pinning my hands behind my back. As the cuffs clicked around my wrists, I looked over my shoulder and smiled politely.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?”

The cop stared at me from behind mirrored shades as he patted me down.

“Let’s see,” he said, “reckless driving, endangerment, speeding thirty miles an hour over the limit, and a lady called in and said you were chasing her and threatening her with a firearm.”

“Must be a mistake, officer. We’re both unarmed.”

A young cop ran up, breathless, wagging his thumb over his shoulder. “Found the weapon, Sergeant. Retrieved it about a quarter mile back.”

“Ooooh,” I said, snapping my fingers. “That firearm. Sorry, I forgot.”

State cops, for the record, have no senses of humor.

They shoved me in the back of one cruiser, Jennifer in another, and called a tow truck from the impound yard for the Prius. The command station was nice, as command stations go, and they wasted no time getting me fingerprinted and photographed. I knew the routine.

What happened next, though, I didn’t expect. They uncuffed me and sat me down in an interview room, a dank little cinder-block chamber with a one-way mirror and an overhead light covered in wire mesh. Then they left me there. The minutes stretched into a long, slow hour.

I had a record. All misdemeanors, though, nothing that would raise a red flag or lead to inquiries across state lines. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’d committed plenty of felonies. I’d just never gotten caught. By all accounts, I should have been booked and tossed in a holding cell. Instead, I sat and waited, listening to the faint hum and pop of the overhead fluorescents.

None of this made sense. If the idea was to frame us for Sophia’s murder, forget about it. Sophia was stabbed, not shot, and I guarantee Meadow would have gone back to pull her mannequins out of the wreckage before the cops showed up. The most anyone could do was place Jennifer and me at the scene. We’d walk on that.