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

I wondered if gunfighters ever met out on that rambling main street back in the day, settling their scores at high noon like in the westerns. My watch said 10:32. High noon was some time off, but we still had a gunfight on the agenda.

“Eat your sandwich,” Caitlin said, sitting to my right. We’d camped out a table at Times Gone By, one of the town’s few concessions to the tourist traffic. The restaurant was working the old mining town angle with the decor, from the rusted pickaxes and vintage photographs on the shingled walls to the red-and-white-checkered tablecloths. I’d ordered a sloppy joe with a dill pickle spear, and a ginger ale to settle my stomach. So far I’d just sipped at my soda, eyes riveted on the empty street on the other side of the big plate-glass windows.

“Something about a double murder just kills my appetite,” I murmured.

A voice crackled in my earpiece. “Aw, you’re missin’ out, sugar. These joes are better than the ones I make at home.”

From the far side of the almost-empty restaurant, alone at her own table, Jennifer lifted her half-eaten sandwich and gave a little wave. Like Caitlin, she wore cheap tourist sunglasses, garish and oversized. I’d gone for a pair of gold-rimmed specs with plain glass in the frames and a long scar on my cheek carefully simulated with a bit of mortician’s wax. Old theater trick, but it would do the job.

When dealing with eyewitnesses to a crime—like the pretty Latina waitress in the white linen bodice who took our orders, or the elderly couple talking about bird-watching a couple of tables over—you can usually rely on the fact that people are terrible at remembering faces. Give them something for their minds to seize on, like a prominent scar, an exaggerated limp, a brightly colored hat or pair of glasses, and the finer details will fall to the wayside.

Lauren Carmichael had gone into deep hiding after the battle at her house. We’d hit her where she lived—literally—and stolen her last ace card. We’d been searching for her and her psycho-for-hire buddy Meadow Brand ever since. The trail had gone ice cold until a couple of days ago, when the email server we’d bugged pinged back to life with a flurry of messages from Brand. Apparently Lauren was hiding from her, too.

R U going to keep ducking me?! one email read. U owe me mONEY, Lauren. I know u have it. CALL ME.

After two days of badgering, the response finally came through. It was the golden opportunity we’d been searching for.

I’m cutting my losses and liquidating all the corporate assets I can get my hands on. New name and face waiting for me in Paris. Can’t meet you in Las Vegas; too many people hunting for both of us. Drive two hours southeast, small village called Chloride. 11 A.M. tomorrow at Times Gone By. I will bring $200K USD in cash, which should satisfy my outstanding debt to you. After that, consider our business relationship amicably severed.

ROFL, Meadow responded. Just bring the $.

This was our last chance to take a shot at both of them. Payback for the blood on their hands. We had laid out our battle plans over a crumpled AAA road map and a round of stiff drinks.

“There’s going to be witnesses, no way around that,” I had said. “So that means we play it mundane. No magic. Just lead.”

Caitlin wrinkled her nose. “Guns? Ugh. Detestable little trinkets. Give me a good hunting spear any day of the week.”

“You’re on crowd control,” I said. “Lauren and Meadow aren’t going to show up at the same time, so that means taking the first arrival down fast and making sure any civilians stay quiet and contained. We can herd them all into the kitchen if we have to. Margaux, Bentley, Corman, I want you three on overwatch. I want eyes on the approach into town from County Road 125, and both ends of Second Street. No surprises this time.”

“I’m on the kill team,” Jennifer said. It wasn’t a request.

I nodded. “Yeah, you are. Just one thing: I know it’s not the ideal send-off, but we’ve got to do this fast and clean. You know what they’re both capable of, if they smell something funny. Especially Lauren. So no confrontations, no discussions, no last words. We go in, we gun them down, and we leave.”

That was last night. Now my watch said 10:42, and my sandwich was leaking sauce onto my plastic plate, drizzling it out in a bloody trail. I took another sip of ginger ale.

“Something funny on 125.” Margaux’s Haitian accent crackled over our earbuds. Wearing lineman’s overalls, she was up on a termite-gnawed telephone pole. The perfect perch to look out over miles of empty road and desert scrub.

“Whatcha got?” Jennifer said.

“Rust bucket of a panel van with Mexico plates, driving for Chloride. The spirits are fretting and tugging my ear. Bad business in that van, and it’s not the flavor of bad we’re lookin’ for.”

“Cormie’s headed that way,” Bentley said. His astral body was, anyway. Physically, Bentley and Corman were fifty miles away, sitting cross-legged on the worn carpet of a roadside motel room. While Corman flew and spied and spoke in a breathless whisper, Bentley played translator.

Spend enough time in the game and you develop a sixth sense for when a deal’s about to go bad. Think of it as an evolutionary advantage, given that the guys who didn’t develop one were all sleeping on prison cots or six feet under. I tried to tell myself that I was just nervous, that it might not mean anything, but that didn’t make the muscles in my shoulders unclench.