The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(64)

“That offer expired,” I told him.

His forearm slipped. He caught the ledge with his hand. He looked up at me, eyes wet with tears, pleading.

“Please,” he begged, “c’mon, you know I’m worth more alive than dead. I can help you! I can help you! Please, please, I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna f*cking die—”

I felt strangely calm. I was realizing something about myself, and I felt okay with it.

“You were right about one thing,” I said softly. “See, I fooled myself. Thought I was some crusading hero for a while there. But that’s not who I am at all, is it?”

Tony looked up at me, mouth agape. His fingers, white from the pressure, began to slip.

“I’m the bad guy,” I told him, and kicked his fingers away.

Tony screamed as he fell. I stood at the Enclave’s edge and watched him go. His flailing arms waved the way down to the pavement. Just another long goodbye.

I found a couple of dirty rags among the construction equipment and knotted them around my forearm. They kept the bleeding under control. The elevator seemed slower doing down than it had going up. The sky felt colder. I got off on the ground floor, stepped around the broken remains of Tony Vance, and got into my car.

I didn’t move for a while. It wasn’t that I felt bad about killing him. I didn’t feel bad at all. That’s what scared me.

I took out my phone. Caitlin answered on the third ring.

“Yes?”

“Can I come over?” I asked, then listened to the sound of her breath as she made up her mind.

“Yes.”

? ? ?

I didn’t have far to travel. The address she gave me was just a few blocks up the Strip, a penthouse apartment in the Taipei Tower. I ignored the looks I got in the lobby, trudging across a chrysanthemum-patterned carpet as red as the tattered rags on my arm. A sharp-eyed man in a black suit made a beeline for me, and I braced for an argument.

“Sir—” he started to say.

“I know, I’m bringing down real estate values. Don’t worry, I’m just passing through.”

“Exactly, sir,” he said, gesturing toward an elevator bank down a short hallway. “Miss Brody is expecting you. You’ll want to take the express elevator up to fifty-six. It’s already unlocked and keyed for you.”

She stood in her doorway at the top of the world, dressed in a pencil skirt and a fluffy gray sweater that fell off one pale shoulder. I stood in front of her like a supplicant at the temple gate, looking for something to say.

“I think I’m broken,” I told her.

“I’ll open a bottle of wine,” she said and took me by the hand.

Caitlin marked her territory with decor from an ’80s music video. Track lighting cast spotlights across hardwood floors and museum-white walls, with fixtures in chrome and stainless steel. She sat me down in a plush black leather sofa under the watchful eye of a Nagel painting as she slipped into the kitchen. She came back with a bottle of merlot and two glasses.

“I killed a man tonight,” I said while she poured.

She offered me a glass. “I’m sure he had it coming.”

“I’m serious.”

“And I’m a demon,” she said, leaning back on the sofa and crossing her legs. She regarded me with eyes the color of molten copper. One blink and they were back to their normal green. “Don’t come to me looking for absolution. I won’t give it to you. What’s really got you upset?”

“Yesterday, these people murdered a friend of mine, right in front of me. He was a nice guy, but he had something they wanted, so they tortured him and they killed him. Tonight, this guy Tony…he drowned his daughter. Drowned her and sucked the soul out of her body. She was only eight years old. I asked him why he did it. He said I had it all wrong, that they’re the good guys. They’re trying to save the world, he told me.”

“Everyone,” Caitlin said, cradling her wine glass, “is the hero of his own story. That goes double for fanatics. Some of the greatest horrors in history were perpetrated by people who insisted, all the way to damnation’s door, that they fought on the side of the angels. I hope you didn’t think you could reason with him.”

I sipped the wine. It had a strong, musky scent, peppery and ripe. “At first? Yeah. I kinda did.”

“How’d that work out for you?”

“Badly.”

Caitlin got up and walked over to her stereo, a sleek Bose perched on a glass table. Soft synthesizer strains rose up as she returned to the couch. It sounded like a Duran Duran song.

“There are two answers to evil,” she said. “The first is to justify it. The evil that you do is for a good cause, you’ll be validated in the end, it needed to be done, etcetera, etcetera. Of course, once you start walking that road, it’s all downhill. I’m sure this Tony person didn’t start by drowning children. You have to work your way up to that kind of atrocity.”

“And the second answer?”

“You own it. Be truthful and accept your own nature.”

I leaned back, a line from Shakespeare crossing my mind.

“‘It must not be denied that I am a plain-dealing villain,’” I quoted.

Caitlin beamed. “You know the Bard! ‘If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking. In the meantime, let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me.’”