Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(33)



My next stop was Our Lady of Consolation. If my hunch was right, Sullivan needed two things: the “road map to hell” and Father Alvarez to finish translating it. Alvarez was optional, but people who can read ancient Coptic weren’t exactly a dime a dozen. I was reasonably sure he wouldn’t hurt the priest, at least until his usefulness was at an end. Keeping the manuscript out of Sullivan’s hands would pile a lot of sand into that particular hourglass.

Dusk clung to the city like a wool blanket by the time I got there. The desert night would come soon, bringing some respite from the heat, but for now the streets were a tangle of sweltering shadows. I rolled toward the edge of the church’s lot and backed into a parking spot behind a line of overgrown bushes, keeping the stolen truck as far out of sight as I could. Then I slipped my gun under my shirt and went inside.

The front doors still hung open from yesterday’s invasion, the lock broken under a cambion boot. All the lights in the chapel were dead, though. Fingers of dying light pushed through the tall stained-glass windows, painting the church in shades of ochre and swamp green.

Something rattled in the back office. I pulled my gun.

I inched my way closer, moving between the pews as fast as I dared. My ears perked at the sounds of rustling paper and books thumping to the carpeted floor in Alvarez’s office. I hadn’t gotten here first after all.

A shadow loomed in the office doorway. I ducked behind a pew and took aim, balancing my forearms against the rough wooden seat back.

“Drop the book,” I called out, “and you can walk away.”

The shadow spun, dropped to one knee, and opened fire. I hit the floor as two bullets chewed into the pew to my left, sending splinters flying. I took a deep breath, held it, and jumped up. I ran to my right, squeezing off one, two, three shots that boomed like cannon fire, trying to pin the thief down. He answered with a fusillade of bullets, forcing me to dive for cover. When I dared to poke my head up again, he was long gone, and the back door of the church slowly swung shut in his wake.

Following was suicide. If he was out there, watching the door, he could gun me down in a heartbeat. Instead I ran out the way I’d come in, shoving through the church’s front doors just in time to see a lime-colored Mustang launch down the street with its tires screaming.

I slammed my fist against the door. I’d lost the priest, and now I’d lost the manuscript too. Game, set, and match.





Seventeen

I dumped the pickup and the gun a few blocks away after wiping them both for prints. The pickup I left parked on a side street, where it would be towed by morning. The pistol I stripped to pieces and tossed the bits into three separate Dumpsters. I liked the idea of having a gun, under the circumstances, but I had no idea where that piece had been or what kinds of evil business a forensics expert could tie it to.

I caught looks from the twentysomething hipsters lined up outside Winter, snug behind ropes of black velvet. I wasn’t sure why until I took a good look at myself in the tinted window of a parked car. My hair was a mess, my pants were caked with dirt, my shirt had rips from Sullivan’s cane, and I looked like I hadn’t slept in a week. Not my best moment.

The bouncer gave me the stink eye. I fished Caitlin’s business card out of my wallet and flashed it. He nodded like he’d just met the president and pulled the ropes aside for me. It helped to know people in this town. Inside the door, a vortex of strobing blue neon and eardrum-blasting dubstep swallowed me whole. The icy bar looked inviting. I needed alcohol right now like a man in the Sahara needs water, but my business was down below.

The locked door to the club’s underbelly was right where I remembered it, as was the man in the gas mask and the black leather overalls. I wondered if it was a uniform the guards wore in shifts, or if just this one guy stood here, ominous and ready, night after night. He remembered me, like Caitlin had told him to, and he let out a rattling wheeze as he punched in the door’s combination.

I wasn’t alone down in the catacombs, surrounded by black leather and gold. Candles burned along the corridor, casting flickering shadows into rooms where revelers laughed, whispered, and cried out. I passed a nook where a naked man dangled from a harness of leather straps and buckles. His lover took him from behind, biting his neck as they coupled with quiet, primal urgency. A small semicircle of observers stood around them, cradling wine glasses and commenting in low whispers like patrons at an art gallery.

Deeper into the maze, I found Emma. She was dressed for business, not play, sitting on a bench with her cell phone out and a portfolio on her lap. I guessed she’d come here to escape the musical onslaught in the club upstairs.

“No,” she said, irritated. “If he wants a salary increase, I get to extend his contract. If he gets something, I get something. That’s how this works. You know better—”

She looked up, saw me, and hung up the phone.

“Daniel,” she said, standing. “What happened? You look like a truck hit you.”

“Yeah, and the truck’s got a name. Where’s Caitlin? I need to talk to both—”

Emma got in my way and pressed her hand over my heart.

“No. You don’t. Caitlin is…indisposed.”

“This is important.”

“Daniel,” she said, trying to be delicate, “Caitlin is in a very, very foul mood tonight. I gave her one of my toys to play with. She’s busy, at the moment, breaking him. Please trust that you do not want to walk in on her right now. Come here. Sit down and tell me what’s going on. If it’s that bad, we’ll go interrupt her together.”

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