The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(16)

“Oh?” I didn’t buy it. “And how will you do that?”

“By saving your life.”

She leaned as close as she dared, pitching her voice in a low whisper.

“This morning, one of my operatives was approached in hopes of hiring him for an assassination. You were the target.”

“Me?” I touched my chest. “Did they know I’m in prison?”

“Absolutely. He was supposed to infiltrate, as a prisoner or a guard, and take you out from inside the walls. The one absolute criteria of your death was pain. You were meant to suffer, as grievously as possible, before you died.”

I drummed my fingers on the table, thinking. That kind of hit had revenge written all over it. I could see the Chicago Outfit ordering up a kill like that, but why bother? They’d already gotten me thrown in prison. It’d be crueler to make me live out a life sentence.

Damien Ecko maybe? I’d ruined his business and run him out of Chicago with a bounty from two infernal courts on his head. He wanted me dead in the worst way, I had no doubt, but hiring a living hit man wasn’t the necromancer’s style. Besides, he’d never reach out to the Dead Roses for help. Nadine’s crew were among the demons competing to hunt him down.

What about Angus Caine, Lauren Carmichael’s mercenary captain? He’d gone into hiding along with what was left of Xerxes Security Solutions after Carmichael died. So had those two mad-scientist whackjobs on her payroll.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Nadine said.

“Just realizing,” I told her, “that I really need to stop letting my enemies live. The second I get out of here, fixing that becomes priority one.”

“Speaking of which—” She fell silent. A guard lazily patrolled past our table, taking the time to look her up and down like a butcher eyeing a prime slab of meat. She puffed her hair and smiled at him until he walked out of earshot. “Speaking of which, only say the word. We have a plan.”

“We?”

“The Flowers, Daniel. Your new court. Join us. Swear fealty to Prince Malphas, and Royce and I will have you out of here before midnight. It’s that simple.”

“Caitlin might have something to say about that.”

Nadine shook her head, putting on a wistfully sad face for me. I almost believed she felt bad.

“Oh, Daniel. Isn’t it time to face the truth? She abandoned you. She went home to Prince Sitri’s court the night you were arrested, and she never looked back. She never will. Your usefulness was at an end. She’s probably already forgotten your name.”

I had to fight to keep the smile off my face. I knew something Nadine didn’t.

When I was in Chicago, getting ready to break into Damien Ecko’s jewelry store, Caitlin was making preparations of her own. Prince Sitri had a gala planned. That meant Caitlin’s job, as his right-hand woman, was going back to hell so she could stand next to his throne and look menacing while the nobles partied it up.

“I’m leaving Emma in charge while I’m gone,” she had told me on the phone. “She should be able to keep the wolves at bay for a few days.”

I never actually got in touch with Caitlin the night I came back to Vegas and got busted. If she’d had to leave early…that had to be it. Caitlin had left town all right, but only for the party. A party that, since only a day had really passed, was still in full swing.

That meant as soon as it was over, she’d be coming home to Vegas. And she’d be looking for me.

“That’s a generous offer,” I told Nadine, “but I have faith.”

She frowned. “You don’t get it. As long as you’re in this prison, you’re defenseless. My operative turned down the contract, but the client will keep looking until she finds someone who will kill you, and then what good will your ‘faith’ do you?”

“She?”

“A human.” Nadine wrinkled her nose. “Possibly a sorcerer of some pedigree. My operative was…unnerved by her presence. She called herself Mater Tantibus.”

I scraped the rust off my Latin. “Mother of Nightmares?”

“Pretentious, right?”

Said the Grand Matriarch of the House of Dead Roses, I thought, but I was smart enough not to say that out loud. Instead I asked, “Anything else to go on? I’ve pissed off a lot of people, but this ‘Mater Tantibus’ isn’t jogging my memory.”

Nadine shrugged. “Curly black hair pinned in a bun, dark skin, tailored suits and mirrored sunglasses—she had money. British accent, very clipped.”

I leaned back in my chair and sighed. I knew exactly who wanted me dead.

“Fleiss.”

“Hm?”

“Her real name, at least the name she gave me. ‘Ms. Fleiss.’ Her ‘boss’ commissioned me for a heist. Except, as far as I can tell, she was the one pulling his strings.”

Normally, answers were a relief. This one just sprouted more questions. My business with Fleiss was over, and if she’d wanted to kill me, she—and Pachenko, her slab of imported muscle—had plenty of chances to do it before we parted ways. Kill me? Hell, she’d paid me and flown me home on her private jet. If I’d put together a list of all the people with a motive to send a hit man after me, she wouldn’t have even made the top fifty.