The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(70)

“The Enclave, behind more defenses than Fort Knox. You won’t get to her. You wouldn’t want to, even if you could.”

“You let me worry about that,” I said. “Nedry and Clark are there with her?”

“At all times.”

“What about Meadow Brand?”

He shook his head. “I thought she was out hunting you. Lauren was furious—I guess you set a demon loose in her house or something? She said that killing you is now Brand’s full-time job. I haven’t seen Brand since, but she’s supposed to have a part to play in the big ceremony. If you ask me? Before tonight, if I believed Lauren was going to stab anybody in the back, it’d be her. The woman is a raging psychopath. I think Lauren invited her to the final ritual just to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn’t ruin anything.”

“That might still be on the agenda.”

“She’ll be impossible to find now,” Roth said. “She took a shot at both of us, and we’re still alive. Brand isn’t stupid. She’ll hide.”

“Even so, I have to try and track her down. You don’t have any way of getting in touch?”

He took out his Blackberry and scrolled through his contacts list.

“Just an emergency phone number,” he said. “She screens her calls, though. Won’t pick up for anyone but me or Lauren.”

Meadow’s number was the same one we’d taken off her invoices from Y&M Woodworking. I pretended to copy it down anyway. It was Roth’s number I was saving.

“Last question,” I said. “Xerxes. Who do they answer to?”

“Angus Caine is my man. I write the paychecks, I give the orders. Don’t ask me to send them up against Lauren, though. I’d be throwing their lives away.”

“I’ve fought Lauren before,” I said.

“That’s right. Before. Before the treatments. You haven’t seen her lately. No, even if I asked, Caine’s too protective of his troops. He’d never allow it.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I don’t need them to. I am going to ask you to do one more thing for me, but not just yet.”

This was the hard part. Cutting him loose. I had to get rid of Roth in a way that would take him out of the fight, keep him loyal, and guarantee he kept believing his former partners were trying to murder him. I bit off a chunk of toast and chewed it over.





Thirty-Four



“You’ve got to leave town,” I told Roth. “Tonight. By now, Lauren knows that you know she’s gunning for you. She’ll take steps to defend herself, and that includes sending Meadow out for another go. Next time I won’t be there to save you.”

“I should confront her,” Roth said. “Not in person, I’m not stupid. I mean I should call her. Demand some answers.”

“What, because your pride is stinging? Fuck pride. You survived the attack, and that’s all that matters. Calling Lauren is the last thing you should do. She’ll deny everything, blame it all on Meadow going rogue, and do everything in her power to track you down and finish you off. Don’t give her an inch.”

The best kind of lie, as always, is the one nestled inside a wrapper of truth. If he did make the mistake of calling her, Lauren would definitely deny everything. She’d deny it because she was innocent. Either way, the story would hold.

“What if she calls me?” Roth asked.

“Let it go to voicemail, and that goes double for Meadow Brand. You won’t be waiting long. If I can’t shut Lauren down in the next couple of days, this’ll all be a moot point. Right now I want you to go home, get your family, and take off. Is there a place you can go, somewhere Lauren doesn’t know about?”

His fingers rapped the edge of his coffee mug as he tried to think.

“The ranch outside Dallas. Belongs to my wife’s family. We go there every summer. It’s secluded.”

“Good,” I said. “The farther off the grid you are, the better. Just be ready. Like I said, I’m going to need one last thing from you before this is done.”

He left me with the tab and a half-eaten plate of scrambled eggs. I watched him leave, staring listlessly out the window until his taillights turned a corner and slipped out of sight. If he didn’t realize he’d been played, if he didn’t talk to Lauren or Meadow and find out the truth, if this whole scam held together just a little bit longer, we might be all right.

That was too many ifs for me. I needed to work faster. What I really needed right now, though, was at least six hours of sleep somewhere besides a plane or a car seat. Lethargy was catching up fast. I couldn’t afford that.

I called Caitlin. “How did it go? Everybody make it home okay?”

“Fine,” she said. “Everyone’s fine. Did you get what you needed?”

She sounded more tired than I felt. There was something off in her voice, something distracted and moody.

“I think so. He’ll back our play, if he doesn’t wise up. You okay? What’s wrong?”

“Emma’s here…we should talk, Daniel. Can you come over? I can’t leave right now.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. I tossed a twenty on the table and called for a taxi.

The glass doors of the Taipei Tower slid open at my approach. I crossed the expanse of cherry chrysanthemum carpet to the chromed doors of the VIP elevator. As usual, it was already keyed for the penthouse level and waiting to sweep me to the top.