Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(55)

“The charges will never stick,” I said.

“Oh? There’s other ways of taking down a criminal. Accidents happen all the time.”

“Not around you, they don’t. You don’t even carry a drop piece. You never would.”

“And how do you know that?” she said.

“Because I’m good at reading people. It makes me money. And what I get from you, Agent Black, is that you’re one of the good guys. Last of a dying breed. You do things the right way, or you don’t do them at all.”

Harmony didn’t answer right away.

“I suppose that makes me a sucker, in your book.”

“What it makes you,” I said, “is useful. Because much as it pains me to say it, what I need right now is one of the good guys. What if I said that I could hand you, no strings attached, a means of screwing with Lauren’s plans?”

“I’d say I wasn’t born yesterday, but even so, we should meet. Not at the field office. I don’t trust the locals. Carmichael likes to spread her money around. Where are you now?”

“Out of state, but I’ll be back tonight.”

“You know the underground parking garage at the Metropolitan? Meet me there. Nine A.M.tomorrow, fourth level.”

I leaned back in my seat. “Clandestine meetings in a parking garage? Which one of us is Deep Throat?”

“Like you said. I do things the right way, or I don’t do them.”

“This is between you and me, right? You’ll leave your buddies at home?”

“If you do,” she said.

“Deal.”

I hung up the phone.

I had a good reason for keeping her partners out of the loop. I had to assume Harmony didn’t know Gary was a cambion himself, much less who he was reporting to. He was still my inside man on the task force, whether he wanted to be or not. Even so, I didn’t want him to know about the hand-off. If he thought Lauren could protect him, he might do something reckless to get his hands on that bottle.

The Barracuda barreled down the highway, and I fiddled with the radio until I found a scratchy backwater blues station. B.B. King’s guitar played me across the Nevada state line and howled out over the desert, while the setting sun washed the world in shades of blood and gold.

A couple of hours later, when the sky had gone black and left me navigating by highway reflectors, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Daniel,” Emma said. “I talked to Caitlin. Is it true? Is it over?”

I considered my words carefully. Sitri and I had put a lot of moving pieces into play when we made our little deal, and keeping them all on the table meant I had to lie like a politician.

“Everything happens for a reason. That’s what I’m told, anyhow.”

“That won’t do at all,” she said. “Not one bit. We have to get you two back together again.”

I forced a chuckle. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“Come over for dinner tonight.”

“I’m driving in from out of town. I won’t be back for a while yet.”

“Ben and I are working late, doing quarterly projections. We’ll wait up for you. Please, Daniel. Do us the honor.”

“All right,” I said. “I suppose I could use the company.”

Besides, after enjoying Naavarasi’s hospitality, spending some time with a normal family sounded like a fine way to spend the evening. Okay, relatively normal family.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the calm before the storm.

Cicadas trilled in the dark as I rumbled up to Emma and Ben’s driveway. They lived in a respectable tan stucco house in a respectable suburban tract, the picture of upper-middle-class domestic bliss. They even had a minivan parked in the driveway with a bumper sticker reading “Our Daughter is an Honor Student at Palo Verde High School.”

Ben met me at the front door. He pumped my hand like a salesman and patted me on the back as he led me inside.

“Good to see you, buddy!” he said. “Hope you like pasta. I don’t cook small batches. Italian mom, can’t be helped.”

Emma sat hunched over a spray of documents at a glass dining table, squinting behind a pair of silver-rimmed bifocals. Their living room opened onto a gourmet kitchen with a floating island, white carpet separated from russet tile by an elegant curve of brass trim.

She gave me a tired wave and said, “Just in time to save us. All the numbers are starting to blur.”

“Long day?” I said. Ben walked around the table, leaning in to kiss Emma on the cheek. He slipped into the kitchen and pulled down a clutter of herbs and spices from the cabinets.

“Long day, long night,” Emma said. “Trying to meet our budget quotas for the next quarter. The prince’s earthbound operations don’t fund themselves.”

“Isn’t that what Southern Tropics is for?”

“It’s a shell company. A front. We make money through investments, mostly, and those investments have to stay low-profile.”

“What we need,” Ben said from the kitchen, “is a bigger piece of Silicon Valley. We’re playing too conservatively.”

“Not having that argument again, sweetie,” Emma said with a glance in his direction. “Anyway, the Court of Windswept Razors is eating our lunch in terms of funding, and the prince is unhappy.”