The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(86)

Everything comes full circle eventually.

I looked up as Jennifer walked into the restaurant. I’d asked her to meet me here. She dropped into the booth, sitting across from me and looking philosophical. She wore a light linen jacket, a little more stylish than her usual look, and as she settled in I caught the bulge of her shoulder holster underneath.

“How’s the food here?” she said.

“Edible.”

The waitress brought my cocktail. Jennifer gave me a look.

“Just one before a job,” I said. “Something to unwind my nerves a little.”

She ordered a Manhattan for herself.

“You see Caitlin today?” she asked.

“Talked to her. I’ll see her after. When we come home safe and sound.”

“Well, your words are confident,” she said, looking at me over her menu. “The voice saying ’em, though? Not so much.”

“I don’t know, Jen. Lot of moving parts in play, lots of plates to keep spinning. I keep feeling like we’re missing something, like we’re headed right off the rails and I can’t see the crash coming.”

“Reckon that’s better than thinking everything is hunky-dory and getting spanked by surprise,” she said. “So we’ll have to think on our feet, so what? We’re good at that.”

“We’re okay at that.”

“You’re okay at that,” she said, quirking a smile, “I’m great at it. Just talked to Mama Margaux, by the way. She’s taking Bentley and Corman to the Tiger’s Garden. They aren’t happy about it, but they understand.”

I didn’t want them on the scene for this job, not when Meadow Brand was the key to my entire plan. I knew she’d antagonize them until somebody snapped. Couldn’t risk it.

I also couldn’t risk them. Not with so much at stake tonight. Knowing they were someplace safe—in the case of the Tiger’s Garden, a place only vaguely connected to the world, with a chance of escaping Lauren’s attention if she beat us—was one tiny bit of weight off my shoulders.

The waitress came back, and I had to make up my mind. Last meal for a potentially condemned man.

“Pineapple chicken,” I said. “And shrimp toast for an appetizer, please.”

“Beef lo mein and an order of crab rangoon,” Jennifer said.

I sipped my mai tai while the sun slid down behind the plate-glass window, slipping out of sight and staining the sky neon pink. The food came out fast. It was a little too soggy, a little too greasy, like something you might reheat in a microwave. But it filled me up and kept me from getting too much of a buzz off the cocktail, so that was something.

“Proof that we’re gonna survive tonight,” I said.

“Hmm?” She tilted her head.

I speared a triangle of shrimp toast with my fork and held it up. “We’re in one of the biggest food capitals of the world. Gourmet restaurants, celebrity chefs…what I’m saying is, this cannot be our last meal. That’d just be embarrassing.”

“It does have a certain death-row, Styrofoam-carryout ambiance to it, though, don’t it?”

“Crap,” I said. “Good point.”

I ate my fill and left the rest. My watch said 6:51.

“Meadow should be on the move right about now,” I said. “Getting ready for her part.”

“You think we can trust her?”

“I think we can trust her greed,” I said. “She’ll feel safe with that blackmail material to hold over my head, and we know she’s been expecting a double cross from Lauren, so she’s got no reason to betray us. Basically, doing exactly what we tell her is the smartest move she can make tonight.”

“She is nuts, though,” Jennifer said.

“There is that.”

The minutes dragged on. 7:04. 7:07. We could linger a little bit longer, but we really didn’t have an excuse.

“All right,” I said, tossing some cash on the table. “Feel like fighting a goddess?”

“Goddess, nothin’,” Jennifer said. “Strictly a wannabe in my book.”

We took a taxi almost to the far end of the Strip, got off two casinos down, and walked the rest of the way. The chain-link construction fence still ringed the Enclave’s lot. Last time I was here, the Enclave had been a skeleton of drywall and steel bones. Now it was a black, mirrored monolith. It made me think of a giant basalt tombstone.

“Roth told me there’s normally about thirty mercenaries in there,” I said. “All Xerxes vets, trained and blooded. They’ve got assault rifles, flashbangs, and there’s usually a sniper with a fifty-caliber rifle perched on top of the foreman’s trailer to get a perfect view of the lot.”

“Sounds scary,” Jennifer said.

“Yeah,” I told her, “but they haven’t met us yet. Let’s go say hi.”

A gate blocked the entrance to the lot. Normally at night, once the construction crews had all gone home, it’d be sealed with a length of chain and a padlock. Not tonight, though. I swung open the gate. Jennifer and I walked in together, side by side.





Forty-Two



The lot outside the Enclave was silent, strewn with construction equipment dozing in the dark. I’d gotten about ten feet from the gate when I saw the glowing dot blossom on my chest.