The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(68)

“You know how Brand operates,” I told him. In fact, I was counting on him knowing it. “She always goes for the overkill, and she doesn’t send two puppets when she can send ten. If she had more to throw at us, she already would have.”

Roth nodded, getting it. We ran out to the driveway just in time to see the Wardriver speeding away with a screech of tires.

“There she is!” I shouted. I dropped to one knee, brought my gun up in both hands, and shot at the van, pulling the trigger until the hammer clicked down on an empty chamber. I cursed and stood back up, shoving the worthless gun back under my jacket.

Roth watched me, eyes wide as his brain tried to catch up with his eyes and ears.

“You…you saved my life,” he said.

“Told you I would.” I nodded at his rental car. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before she sends reinforcements. We need to talk.”

The key to stage magic is playing on assumptions. You don’t need elaborate stages and thousand-dollar props to perform a good trick—you just need an audience ready and primed to be fooled. I had figured that Roth knew all about Meadow Brand through his partnership with Lauren, and that he’d have seen her mannequins in action along with how she used illusions to disguise them—for a little while, at least—as dead-eyed human beings.

That was all I needed.

My gun? Loaded with blanks. Made for a nice loud bang and a smoky sizzle, but the “blood” from Bentley’s and Corman’s wounds came courtesy of squibs and dye packs hidden under their shirts. Back in the Wardriver, Caitlin and Pixie used the hidden cameras we’d placed to keep track of the action, setting off the squibs in time with my shots.

We’d placed the “dead” puppets in the guest bedroom and the basement before Roth even arrived. Meanwhile, Bentley hid in a side closet, and Corman—dragging a garbage bag of junk down the stairs to simulate the sound of a tumbling body—just ducked around the corner and out of sight. It was so simple it was almost complicated.

Roth was so rattled he didn’t even notice the one giveaway: the broken windows were both smashed open from inside the house.

As we pulled out of the development and onto the main road, I saw the van parked on an unlit cross street. Once we were out of sight, they’d double back to pick up Bentley and Corman and yank out the cameras. As for the broken glass, the red-dye-stained carpet, and the bullets in the walls, I figured Nicky could send me a bill. I’d be sure to get right on that.

We drove for ten minutes in a direction close to random. I wasn’t sure if Roth kept turning to throw off an imagined tail, or if he was just too scared to plot a course, and I didn’t care either way. I owned him now. I spotted an all-night diner and pointed for him to pull in under the yellow neon sign.

“Here’s good,” I said. “Time for us to have a little chat about your former partners, and what we’re going to do about them.”





Thirty-Three



Waylon Jennings crooned from the speakers of a jukebox as we slipped into a booth lined with yellow vinyl and hard plastic. The diner smelled like fresh hash browns and black coffee from a day-old pot.

“Two eggs, scrambled,” I told the sleepy-eyed waitress. “Side of white toast, and a Coke.”

“Nothing for me,” Roth said.

I slid the laminated menu in front of him.

“Eat something,” I said. “It’ll help your stomach settle.”

“Really,” he said, “I can’t.”

I sighed, picked up both menus, and handed them to the waitress. “He’ll have what I’m having, but a cup of decaf instead of the soda.”

Once she disappeared, I studied Roth from across the Formica table.

“How long did you think it’d be, before Calypso noticed you were trying to live forever?” I said.

Roth looked pained. He shook his head. “It’s not a violation of my contract. I checked. I read it a hundred times. I’m not in default, he can’t collect.”

“If he could,” I said, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. Relax. He’s not mad. Thinks it’s kinda funny, truth be told.”

Roth slumped back in the booth and closed his eyes. “Funny? None of this is funny. I never should have signed that damn contract, never should have heard him out—”

“But you did,” I told him, “and that’s ancient history now. Done. Writ in stone. All you can change is how long you get to live now, and how much luxury you get to ride in. See, we’ve got a bigger problem.”

“Lauren wants to kill me.”

“Bigger than that. You’re not in violation now, but you’re going to be. Real soon.”

He sat up straight. “How do you figure?”

“Lauren. She’s becoming a goddess, with your help. Once she does, once she starts flexing her muscle over the entire planet, do you really think there’s going to be a United States for you to lead? That means you’ve deliberately made a clause of the contract unfulfillable, which means you broke the deal, which means your soul is forfeit, and you go straight to hell.”

I didn’t know if that was true, based on what little time I’d had to skim the fine print. It didn’t matter, though. All that mattered was that he believed me. From the fresh panic in his eyes, I’d hit a home run.