The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(91)

His skin turned ashen and taut, his fingers and toes curling, crumpling. Bones cracked as his limbs folded in on themselves and the flesh on his skull stretched taut like a mummified corpse. Jennifer’s death curse slowly crushed his body like a juice box, squeezing every drop of blood from every last ragged vein.

What collapsed to the floor when the spell was done, gray and bloodless and small as a child, didn’t look human anymore.

“That’s what you get for f*ckin’ with a witch,” Jennifer said. “My momma taught me that trick.”

I worked at the ropes binding her wrists, getting her down as the night erupted with the crackle of gunfire. Engines revved in the distance, roaring over the staccato pops and thudding shotgun booms.

“What’s going on out there?” Jennifer asked me, wincing as she rubbed her wrists.

“Your buddy Gabriel and the cavalry are here. That flare wasn’t just a distraction; it was the signal that I had you and they were safe to move in.”

“You telling me they started the party without us?”

Jennifer scooped up Cesar’s fallen pistol. Then, after a moment’s deliberation, she grabbed one of his thugs’ guns too. She checked the loads fast and sighted down each barrel.

“Seriously?” I said. “You don’t want to maybe take a breather or something? You’ve just been through a lot.”

“Hon, this moment is all I’ve been thinking about for days. Not a chance I’m missing the fun.” She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “And thanks for the rescue. Now grab a piece and let’s go already! There’s a whole lot of backstabbers who need lead tombstones out there, and you’re slowin’ me down.”

I sighed, prying a pistol from the other fallen thug’s cold fingers, trying to ignore a sudden twinge in my back.

“I think I’m getting too old for this,” I told her.

Jennifer stood silhouetted in the open bay door, a pistol cocked and ready in each hand.

“Less whinin’, more shootin’,” she said. Then she was gone, charging into the dark.

I followed her into the fight. Of course I did. That’s what friends do.





48.




The Flamenco was one of the older hotels on the Strip, a relic of Old Vegas. They’d remodeled the place a few times over the decades, but you could still imagine Frankie and the Rat Pack strutting through the halls on their way to play the grand showroom.

I walked under the flaming marquee of light, flared and cherry red, shaped to resemble a showgirl’s headdress. The packed bar drew my eye, but the best I could do was grit my teeth as I walked on by. It had been almost a week since the showdown in the desert, which meant five more days before I could finally have a stiff drink. The headaches and nausea were coming less frequently now, but they hadn’t gone away.

Up an escalator, down an access hallway, a meeting room waited behind ivory double doors. It would have fit into a corporate tower anywhere in the world, sporting a long oval table surrounded by high-backed chairs and a crisp hotel notepad and pen placed neatly at each seat. Pixie was already there, wearing bulky headphones and sweeping the room with a gadget that looked like a stage magician’s wand.

“They drafted you too, huh?” she said.

I held up a hand. “Security.”

“Ditto. You think this is gonna work?”

“Maybe. I don’t see an alternative to trying, anyway.”

When Jennifer arrived, I almost didn’t recognize her. She’d traded in her usual T-shirt and jeans for a pressed olive pantsuit, her hair coiffed. She always clipped her nails short, but they didn’t usually show the gleam of a fresh manicure.

“This room is certified bug-free,” Pixie announced, giving Jennifer a wave. “I’m gonna get to work on the hallway.”

Jennifer took my hand and gave it a nervous squeeze.

“Thanks for helping out,” she said. “Means the world to me.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t miss it. You feeling confident?”

“Nope.” She grinned. “Public speakin’ ain’t exactly my forte. And there’s all kinds of ways this could go real, real bad.”

“Then we’ll just have to handle it, won’t we?”

The rest of the security team wasn’t far behind her, a handful of Gabriel’s men. They’d traded in their gang colors for rented suits.

“You two,” I said, divvying up the jobs, “I want on the door. You, cover the hallway entrance on the lobby side. Nobody who’s not on the guest list gets past you, and that includes employees. If the hotel staff make a stink about it, send ’em to me. Now who’s got the sharpest eyes in this bunch? You? Okay, you’re on lobby detail. Just watch the hotel entrance and radio ahead when you see our guests show up, or if you spot anything hinky…”

Somehow, with an effort akin to herding cats, I whipped up a reasonable security detail. Soon the guests started to arrive. Gabriel was first on the scene, and the big man gave me a nod in the hallway.

“Thanks for the assist out there, ese. Anything you need, you just say it.”

“All I ask is that you hear Jennifer out and try to keep the peace today.”

He laughed. “Hell, I won’t blast any fools if they don’t make me blast ’em.”