The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(63)

“You murdered your daughter,” I said. “You drowned her in a bathtub—”

“I made hard decisions!” he roared. He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head. When he spoke again, his voice was faint. Broken. “The things we’ve done, Faust. Christ, the things we’re going to do. If you knew the entire plan, the scope of it, you’d never sleep again. It’s all for the greater good, though. When our work is done, we’ll be heroes. Legends. We’re going to save the world.”

He offered me the bottle. I just stared at him and imagined what my fingers might feel like clenched around his throat. He shrugged and drank some more.

“It’s only right,” he said. “All the sacrifice we’re demanding of others, how could I not bear part of the pain? What I did tonight…it was monstrous. I know that. Unforgivable. But it was necessary.”

“And what happens when Amber’s grandparents wake up? Do you really think you’re going to get away with this?”

“They’re in a Rohypnol dreamland. Good chance of memory loss. Might not even remember I was there. If they do, well, worst-case scenario is I get picked up for questioning. New moon’s in two days. After that, nothing matters. That’s why we had Holt running interference for us with the police. We didn’t need to bury the murder investigations forever. We just needed to stall them until our work is done.”

Tony leaned his head back and tilted the champagne bottle, draining the last drops like it was a can of cheap beer. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

“You don’t get it,” he said. “You can’t stop Lauren Carmichael. Anything you might do, anything you might throw at her, she already prepared for years ago. Back in college, she went on this expedition to India. Came back with a plan to save the world.”

I remembered what Nicky’s fear-deranged seer had babbled, right before the gunshot. She went to India. She went to India, but it wasn’t her who came back.

“She’s got wheels turning inside wheels,” Tony said, “and everything’s a part of her master plan. Anything that doesn’t fit, she annihilates. You can’t beat her.”

“You’re forgetting something,” I told him.

“Yeah?”

“She already tried to kill me once. I’m still standing.”

Tony sighed, leaning against a standing girder. A gust of wind rippled through the skeletal tower. A car horn blared far below, somewhere in the neon mists.

He looked at me. “You’re not gonna be reasonable about this, are you?”

“I’m feeling pretty unreasonable tonight.”

“We can make you rich,” he said. “Power, sex, drugs, anything you want, name it. All you have to do is stay out of our way. Easiest job you’ve ever had.”

“Here’s my counteroffer. You go to the cops, confess to killing your daughter, and ride the consequences.”

“You know that’s not gonna happen.”

I shrugged. “You won’t like the alternative.”

“Huh,” Tony said, and then he threw the bottle at me.

I turned my shoulder and it bounced off, hit the concrete, and shattered. The distraction bought him the second he needed to rush for a plank set up between a pair of sawhorses. His flailing arm knocked aside an abandoned hard hat, and he snatched up a circular saw.

He turned to face me, clutching the cordless saw in his hands like a battle-ax. The machine whined to life, the blade’s teeth spinning into a lethal blur, and he moved in for the kill.





Thirty-Two



Tony charged at me, swinging the screaming saw with long, heavy sweeps. I jumped back once, twice, looking for something to give me an edge. A toolbox, heavy and pitted with age, sat in the shadow of a stack of drywall. I dodged to the right and went for it. The second I did, I knew I’d misjudged the distance. Tony lunged and the saw blade glanced against my forearm, chewing fabric and skin and spattering his face with my blood.

With my teeth gritted against the sudden, searing pain I stumbled out of his reach, sweeping up the heavy toolbox by the handle. I turned just as he made another charge; then I brought up the box and slammed it against the blade. White-hot sparks flew, and the saw screamed. The recoil sent Tony staggering back a step. Before he could recover I ran in swinging and smashed the toolbox against the side of his head.

He reeled back. The saw flew from his grip and skidded across the bare concrete. He teetered toward the building’s edge. His face was a bloody mask of terror as he went over the side and caught the ledge at the last second. He dangled from the tower’s lip, his legs kicking helplessly.

I dropped the toolbox. Crimson rivulets ran down my arm to the fingertips, the pain almost blinding. I gathered together the torn fabric as best I could and pressed it to the cut. It wasn’t that deep—he hadn’t sliced into muscle or bone—but it bled like a slaughtered sheep.

“Help,” Tony gasped. He clung to the side of the building, one hand and one forearm upon the ledge. “Please, gimme your hand, pull me up.”

I stood over him, watching, but all I could see now was a little girl dead in a bathtub.

“I’ll turn myself in!” he cried, slowly losing his grip. “C’mon, man! I swear it. You can walk me right to the cops! I’ll tell them everything! I’ll expose Lauren!”