The Castle Doctrine (Daniel Faust Book 6) Page 23

  One of his eyelids twitched. He shot a look across the crowded dance floor as his shoulders tightened.

  “What’s your point?” he demanded.

  “Point is, I don’t see any of those Chicago boys in the mix. Nope, they’re all chilling in the back, not lifting a finger to back your crew up. I bet you even asked, and they came up with some half-assed excuse not to get involved. Like you have to ‘prove yourself’ to Angelo by handling us on your own.”

  Another twitch. Little Shawn might be a hardcore killer, but I’d clean him out at the poker table. His lips twisted into a dull-witted scowl.

  “Don’t matter,” he said. “Don’t need their help anyway.”

  I looked back at Squint, who was breathing down my neck.

  “Careful, pal. You spend all your time focusing on me, you’re gonna miss my boy coming up behind you. Bam, game over.”

  He took a halting step backward, looking over his shoulder, the paranoia contagious. I was inside their heads now, right where I wanted to be.

  “Yeah,” I said, “figure I brought seven or eight hitters in here, somewhere in that crowd. Maybe getting closer now, closing ranks. Hey, Shawn, do you see all of your security guys out there? Any of ’em…missing?”

  None of them were, of course, but spotting anyone in the maelstrom of smoke and twirling laser lights was a tall order, and the power of suggestion had filled Shawn’s mind with nightmares of an ambush. He wasn’t even looking at me now, lips moving as he made a silent head count. Only Crook-Nose was still giving me his undivided attention.

  I’d swung the odds in my favor as best I could. It was now or never.

  “Now’s the part where I should probably give you one last chance to change your mind and come back to the fold, but I was talking to the guys and, well…honestly? Nobody likes you, Shawn.” I turned to Crook-Nose. “Hey, you want to see a magic trick?”

  “No.”

  I sighed. “Tough crowd.”

  Like I said, I was a washout when it came to elemental magic. The most I could manage, on my best day, was a tiny spark.

  That said, when your index finger was casually crooked over a tumbler filled with high-octane rum—in some parts of the world, the key ingredient in a Molotov cocktail—a spark was all you needed.

  The liquor ignited with a crump of heat and flame, and I hurled the burning rum into Crook-Nose’s face. He staggered back, screaming, clutching at his eyes, and my other hand was already in the duffel, closing around Bessie’s stock. The sawed-off shotgun whipped free just as Squint turned my way. One trigger yanked, one barrel boomed, and Squint’s body went flying onto the dance floor. The shotgun kicked like a mule in my hand, my elbow slamming back against the bar, as the lounge erupted in screams of panic.

  Shawn went for his piece, got it clear from the holster—and froze as the shotgun’s double barrels pressed up against the bottom of his chin. His brow glistened with sweat.

  “Listen, man, it wasn’t—” he started to say.

  No time. I pulled the second trigger and blew open the top of Little Shawn’s skull. Bone fragments and blood spray arced through the smoky air, caught in the dazzle of laser lights. Crook-Nose came at me, his hair smoldering and face lobster-red, contorted with feral rage. The composite dagger dropped from my sleeve and into my hand. I stabbed him through the breastbone once, twice—then the blade snapped and left me with a useless nub of plastic in my fist. I tossed it onto his corpse as he hit the floor.

  A gunshot winged past me, buckling the chrome bar. While the civilians stampeded for the exit, the shooters in the purple kicks struggled against the tide, trying to get a clean shot as they waded toward me. I hoisted myself onto the bar, rolling up and over, tumbling onto the other side as a burst of machine-pistol fire turned a row of bottles into a waterfall of shattered glass and vodka. I was on my belly in the splash zone, going fetal and covering my face as the wreckage poured down.

  I popped up from cover just long enough to get pinned down again, ducking beneath a hail of bullets. PK shooters, six of them, had untangled themselves from the shrieking crowd at the exits. They marched toward the bar in a firing line. I gave a slow five-count, enough time for any stragglers to get out of harm’s way, while I knelt down and yanked the mouth of the duffel bag open wide. I tossed the shotgun back in the bag; Bessie’s job was done, for now. Then I reached for two of Winslow’s presents: a pair of slender steel cylinders stamped with Cyrillic lettering, sealed at the top with ring pins. I pulled the first ring with my teeth and lobbed the cylinder over the bar, then the second.

  The last goodie in my bag was an army surplus gas mask. I pulled it on and strapped it tight as the two tear-gas grenades exploded, flooding the lounge with white mist. I hefted the duffel, brushed a little broken glass from the shoulder of my three-piece suit, and went hunting.

  Staying low, I snatched the bottle of 151 from the bar. The shooters were staggering, coughing, flailing shadows in the mist with hair-trigger firearms. I tossed the bottle up in the air like a target, and one obliged, firing wildly at the sudden movement until his gun clicked on empty. I snaked a card from my breast pocket and sent it flying. He crumpled to the dance floor and I stepped over his body, still crouched, eyes sharp behind the blurry lenses of my mask.

  A figure stumbled from the fog, turning my way, gun swinging up in a shaky hand. I grabbed his wrist and shoved it to one side as he opened fire. Bullets raked across two of his buddies in the mist, hazy forms doing a herky-jerky dance before they dropped. I chopped the edge of my hand down on the shooter’s inside elbow, buckling his arm, and swung the muzzle of the gun up toward his face. Then I hooked my finger over his and pulled the trigger for him.

  Four down, two to go, and the tear gas was clearing fast. One of the shooters was down on his knees, coughing and dry-heaving, the other running for the bar—and the sink on the other side. I’d half-expected the place to flood with Outfit men by now, but the sound of stampeding feet was headed away from the fight. Apparently they’d decided discretion was the better part of valor. I wondered, when they made it out to the back parking lot, if they’d notice that the sentries Shawn had posted were missing. Or if they’d spot the butter-stick bricks of C-4 that Winslow’s bikers had wired to the underbellies of their sedans, set to an ignition-switch trigger.

  I got my answer as the floor shook under my feet, the lounge rocking from the impact of a detonation.

  Strolling past the kneeling banger, I tugged a card from my breast pocket and flicked it toward him in passing. He slumped to the ground, throat cut, twitching. The last one was hunched over the bartender’s sink, throwing fistfuls of water in his face. I stood behind him and reached for one of the few unbroken bottles from the mirrored shelves. Bombay Sapphire gin. Good stuff. I shrugged, then smashed it over the back of his head.

  I walked back around the bar and kicked Little Shawn’s body onto its back. Then I snapped a picture of what was left of his face with my burner phone and texted it to Jennifer. She’d make sure the word got out.

  The mist cleared. I stood alone in the Cobalt Lounge under the spinning laser lights, the dance floor littered with corpses and fallen guns. From outside I could hear the faint echoes of screams, the crackling of flames, and the distant wail of sirens.

  Time to go.

  37.

  My backup was already gone, the rooftop across the street vacant but evidence of their handiwork all around me: more of Little Shawn’s shooters scattered along the sidewalk and out in the street, slumped over the fallen velvet ropes, cold hands still clutching their guns. The sirens came on loud and fast. No telling who would arrive first, ambulances or a SWAT team, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I ripped off the gas mask and ran, darting down a back alley and turning on a side street, keeping away from the city’s arteries. Losing myself in the marrow, on forgotten roads with no cameras, where nobody ever called the cops.

  I navigated by memory, picturing the rumpled map on Jennifer’s card table, my extrac
tion route marked in yellow highlighter. Eventually I reached the end of the line, a lonely corner under a busted-out streetlight, and I stopped to catch my breath. I could still hear the distant sirens, wailing out against the electric dark.

  Headlights flashed up ahead. A car boiled from the shadows: Caitlin’s snow-white Audi Quattro. She pulled up to the curb and rolled her window down.

  “I hate to say it, for fear I’ll encourage similarly reckless behavior in the future,” she said, “but I just spoke to Jennifer. You were right. Your social credit among the seedier denizens of our fair city has just received a considerable upgrade.”

  I hopped into the passenger seat. She was rolling before I even pulled my belt on, pointing her headlights away from the sirens’ blare.

  “Good,” I said. “Hopefully now I’ll get fewer people asking who I am, and more of them listening to what I have to say.”

  “Oh, nobody needs to ask who you are now,” Caitlin batted her eyelashes, all innocence. “We all know that you’re…the guy.”

  I slumped low in my seat. “Not gonna let that go anytime soon, are you?”

  Caitlin tilted her head, thinking it over.

  “No. Likely not.”

  I tried for a change of subject. “Any word from the troops? How’d we do out there?”

  “Swimmingly. Everyone completed their assignments, and the ‘Playboy Killers’”—she gave the slightest roll of her eyes—“don’t have enough surviving members to form a bowling team. As for our guests from Chicago, most of them were taken out by the car bombs. One or two got away and are at this moment presumably running to their master with their tails between their legs.”

  I closed my eyes. My splinted fingers ached, my bandaged wrists burned at the slightest touch, I was going to have a nice bruise on my elbow, and my back was a mess of scrapes and pulled muscles, but I was still breathing. We’d cleared out the Outfit’s foot soldiers. With the pawns down, it was time to go for the high-value pieces.

  I wanted the king.

  “We should get everybody together, chart out our next move—”

  “What we should do,” Caitlin said, “and this is Jennifer’s decree, as well as mine, is scatter and lie low for the night. At this moment, the authorities—many of whom are firmly in our enemy’s pocket, I remind you—are scouring the city in response to multiple shootings, an explosion, and a pile of dead bodies. You, and everyone else who participated in the festivities, need to stay well out of sight until the commotion dies down.”

  “We’ve got to strike while the iron is hot. If Angelo gets a chance to regroup—”

  “Daniel,” she said. “You are in no shape to fight. You know that. You’re going to get some rest, and that’s final.”

  I sighed. “All right. You may have a point. Drop me off on the Strip? I’ll find a place to crash and we’ll meet up in the morning.”

  “Nonsense. You’re coming home with me.”

  I fumbled in my pocket, showing her the tiny blue amulet.

  “Can’t risk it. Ecko’s tracking me with this, and I’m letting him, until I get the chance to lead him into an ambush. I’m not going to risk handing him your home address.”

  Fifteen minutes later, she led the way across the chrysanthemum-patterned carpet of the Taipei Tower’s lobby. The clerk behind the front desk snapped to attention, like a napping private caught by his drill sergeant.

  “Ms. Brody!” he said. “A pleasure as always. Is there anything we can, that is, do—”

  Caitlin handed him the amulet, wrapped in its nest of tissue.

  “Be a dear and put this amusing bauble in my safe, would you? I’ll be back to pick it up in the morning.”

  As he scurried off, gingerly holding the prize, she looked my way. “Permanent residency has its privileges. There are three hundred and ninety-two rooms in this hotel, and superb security. If Damien Ecko wants to knock on each and every door looking for us, he’s welcome to try. Now then. Shall we?”

  I knew every inch of Caitlin’s penthouse. The sweeping hardwood floors, the track lighting, black leather and chrome. The original Patrick Nagel painting hanging over her sofa, and the well-stocked wine rack. And she knew every inch of me. She peeled off my jacket and unbuttoned my vest, like an archaeologist carefully sweeping away sand and dust to gaze at the relic beneath. Her smooth fingers gently unhooked my cuff links, the French cuffs of my shirt tugging back to reveal strips of gauze soaked through with dark stains. She shook her head slowly, storm clouds brewing behind her eyes.

  “I’m a little damaged,” I told her.

  “Injured,” she said. “Not damaged.”

  Then she took me by the hand and led me into the bathroom, with its picture window overlooking the lights of the Vegas Strip and the shadowy mountains in the distance, and turned on the shower. The double showerheads pulsed down, billowing with steam, as she gingerly unwrapped my bandages. The soldering-iron burns were angry red lines marring my skin.

  “You keep forgetting a very important rule. Or perhaps I haven’t made it clear to you, which is my fault, but I’ll expect you to remember it from now on.”

  I looked into her eyes. “What’s that?”

  One of her fingernails brushed my left wrist. Tracing the burn, like following a river on a map of hell, with a feather-light touch.

  “Nobody is allowed to hurt you,” Caitlin said softly, “except for me.”

  She held my gaze, deadly serious.

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said.

  We showered together, flesh to flesh under the hot spray and the steam, and then she applied ointment to my wounds and fresh, clean gauze. We lay together in her bed, under the stormy gray comforter, and listened to the rustling whisper of the air-conditioning.

  “So what do you think about this?” I asked, disturbing the silence with a question. “I mean, me stepping up to the table with the New Commission.”

  “Are you asking me for permission?”

  “No. I already made my choice. I’m asking what you think.”

  “What I think,” Caitlin purred. “Daniel, do you know why you caught my eye in the first place?”

  I shrugged. “I helped you out of a jam.”

  “Mm. While that certainly helped, no. It was how you did it. You set my tormentor in your sights because he offended you, and you destroyed him.”

  My thoughts drifted back to that long and terrible night. The poker game gone wrong, burning Caitlin’s contract…standing in my useless circle of salt as she took slow and bloody revenge on the sorcerer who’d enslaved her.

  “I think you did the honors there.”

  “No. I simply brought Artie Kaufman’s life to its natural and inevitable conclusion. You made it possible. Then you risked your life to free that lost girl’s soul—a girl you’d never even met.”

  “I freed her to go straight to hell,” I said, the memory like ashes on my tongue.

  “Damnation was Stacy’s only chance of escape from a half-souled eternity of mindless torment. Her only chance for a better life, however slight, however long it might take. You were strong enough to damn her.”

  “Didn’t feel like strength at the time. I just did what had to be done.”

  “Then there was Sullivan. You battled him with everything you had. And when the time came, when I needed to face him on my own, only then did you step aside and lay down your arms. Lauren Carmichael and her followers? Dead, and her plans in ruin, because of you. And so many others have stood in your path and fallen. You were buried in a maximum-security prison and even then, you only fought harder.”

  I rolled on the mattress, the feather pillow cool against my cheek as I faced her.

  “Not sure what you’re getting at.”

  “You’re a man of ambition at heart—which is, frankly, arousing. But more than that…I’ve called you my knight in tarnished armor more than once. Teasingly, but there’s a speck of truth to it. You’re a warrior, Daniel. You’re not happy unless you have a cause, somethi
ng to fight for. I’ve watched you, of late. So listless, so off course—”

  “I know.” My fingertips brushed her bare shoulder, tracing the curve of her arm. “I burned out. I got lazy, slow. I know that. I’m trying to make a comeback.”

  She chuckled. “Judging from tonight, I think you’re well on your way. If you want my opinion, it’s this: Jennifer’s little club doesn’t matter. Whether you become a lord of the underworld in Las Vegas or manage a donut shop in New Mexico, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you find a fight and a cause that’s worthy of you, one that fans those flames in your heart and keeps you standing tall. Because those flames are what drew my eye in the first place.”

  She eased closer on the mattress, twining her arms around me. Pulling me close.

  “You must remember that I am eternal, Daniel. I only see the long view. And in my vision, all this strife is simply training, like a runner preparing for a marathon. In the end, you will fight for me. For me, and for my prince, and for my people.”

  “For you,” I whispered, gazing into her eyes.

  She gave me a knowing smile.

  38.

  At Jennifer’s fortress, in the fresh light of a new day, I commandeered a whiteboard. Salvaged from one of the sprawling tenement’s cluttered storage rooms, an artifact from a long-shuttered schoolhouse, the dusty slate bore three names separated by stark black lines. Angelo Mancuso. Then Kirmira. Then Damien Ecko.

  “We’ve got three problems,” I told the leaders of the New Commission as they gathered around the card table. “These first two? They go together like a hand in a glove. The third is my problem first and foremost, but he’s working for the Outfit, so he’s on the list.”

  Winslow rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Obviously we gotta take Angelo out, but what’s the big deal with the other two? What makes them any tougher than the rest of the shooters we knocked off last night?”