Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(85)

“Caitlin,” he said.

“Sullivan.”

“I’ll admit, I’m surprised to see you here.”

“That was the idea,” she said.

“Such a pleasure, to end all my problems and avenge all the wrongs done me, on a single night.”

He lifted his hand. Behind him, the remnants of the Choir climbed out of the SUVs and joined him. Every one of them was packing heat. A lot of angry faces and a lot of guns.

“For someone with a reputation as a trickster,” Sullivan told me, “you certainly did fall for my little ruse. I knew what you were trying to do at the banquet. My goal, on the other hand, was to convince you to meet me somewhere remote. Somewhere I could finish you off without fear of interruption. So I prepared a—”

“I know,” I said. “The book’s a fake, and you let me steal it.”

He blinked.

“This was never about the book,” I said. “And it was never about Alvarez. Hell, it was only peripherally about you, but you dropped a golden opportunity in our laps. We wanted to lure you out here. So you dangled a fake book in my face, and I pretended to fall for it.”

“But, but how—”

“That part’s easy,” Caitlin said. “Daniel organized a meeting to discuss the plan of attack. Except it wasn’t the real plan.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just a little theater, for an audience of one. Ben. Your inside man.”

Ben stumbled back, his eyes wide, shaking his head as he groped for words. Emma turned to watch him. She didn’t look surprised. Just sad. Sad and tired.

“It’s not,” Ben stammered. “It’s not what you think.”

I nodded. “Yeah it is. See, I sussed you out early on. I told you I was going to meet with Alvarez, and not only did the Redemption Choir show up at the church, they knew my name. Someone had tipped them off that I would be there. Only one person in the world knew that. You.”

“I can explain that!” Ben said, taking another halting step back.

“You came late to the planning meeting. Remember those computer problems that kept you at the office?” I said.

Emma wriggled her fingers in a tiny wave. Her voice was soft. “I arranged that.”

“Working with your wife can be a hassle,” I said, “especially when she knows you’re stabbing her in the back. First, we had the real meeting, to give everyone their real instructions. Then we waited for you to show up, and told you exactly what we wanted you to tell Sullivan. That helped ensure he wouldn’t kill me out of hand—dumb move, by the way, Sully—and bringing you along for the operation made it look like I trusted you. Naturally, we expected you’d leave Alvarez at home and bring a fake book to the party.”

“But we knew,” Emma said, a slow current of anger welling up in her voice as she stared her husband down. “We all knew.”

“I don’t understand,” Sullivan said, shaking his head. “So you conducted an elaborate charade and risked your life to steal a manuscript you knew would be worthless? What was the point?”

“What was the point?” Emma asked Ben. “I want to hear your answer first. You lied to me. You turned your back on our marriage, our—”

“I did it for Melanie!” Ben shouted, his fear boiling over into rage. “As for you, you…f*cking abomination, there isn’t a night I don’t regret marrying you or a day I don’t wake up praying for a way out of the nightmare you made my life. The things I’ve done, the things you’ve made me do, Christ…”

“Brother Ben came to me looking for absolution,” Sullivan said calmly.

“I don’t—” Emma said, crossing her arms as her voice hitched. “I mean, we’ve had our problems, but I had no idea—”

Ben sneered at her. “Of course you didn’t. Nothing exists if it isn’t all about you. Emma, I have hated you for years.”

She didn’t have anything to say to that. She stared at him, mouth agape, her eyes glistening.

“I could live with it,” he said, “somehow. But not Melanie. I won’t have you taking my daughter and making her just like you. You never told me the truth, when we decided to have a child. You never told me she’d be tainted. You never told me she’d be half…monster. Sullivan—he can help her, purify her. That was the deal, in exchange for feeding him information about everything you bastards said and did. I’m going to take her and start a new life, far away from here, where she can learn to be human. Sullivan can fix her.”

A small voice spoke up from the darkness at his back.

“Is that what you think, Dad?”

Melanie came out from where she’d been hiding around the corner of the ranch office. Tears streaked her cheeks, leaving muddy black smears of mascara in their wake.

“Do you think I need to be fixed?” she asked.

He turned, shaking his head.

“Oh no,” he said. “Oh no, no honey. No. You—you weren’t supposed to hear that, I mean, that’s not—”

“That I’m tainted? That I’m a monster?”

Ben dropped the book to the dirt and held out his arms to her, desperate. She stared at him in disbelief, not moving an inch.

“Honey,” he said, “you don’t understand. I love you. I love you so much. You know that. We’re going to go away and start over, rebuild our family—”