A Plain-Dealing Villain Page 4

  “Agent.” My throat went tight.

  “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just getting some fresh air. Please, keep planning your armed robbery. Pretend I’m not even here.”

  She set down her paper and picked up her cup. Then she looked me in the eye and slowly, loudly, slurped her coffee.

  I folded my newspaper and pushed back my chair. “It’s fine. I was just leaving.”

  “Oh? Where to? The Athens Credit Union? That laundromat off Bonanza Road? The Ford dealership on Fairfax? Can I come with? No, never mind, just go ahead and I’ll meet you there.”

  I gritted my teeth and walked away.

  Harmony slurped her coffee again and gave me a finger wave. “See you soon!” she called out behind me.

  I drove two blocks, pulled off to the side of the road, and took out my cell phone. Every instinct screamed that I was making a bad move, but that didn’t stop me from punching in the numbers and making the call.

  “Nicky,” I said, “that job still available?”

  5.

  Nicky gave me a phone number. It rang through to voicemail. There was no message on the other end, just a few seconds of silence and a beep.

  “This is Daniel Faust,” I said. “Nicky Agnelli referred me, said you might have some work you need done. Call me.”

  My phone rang less than a minute later. A woman with a crisp British accent rattled off instructions before I could get a word out.

  “Proceed to Henderson Executive Airport. It’s just off St. Rose Parkway. Hangar four. Your flight leaves in thirty-two minutes. Be prompt.”

  “But what is—” The line went dead. I shrugged and threw the Barracuda into drive. I didn’t have long, not with afternoon traffic clogging up the highway, and something told me this was a one-time offer.

  Most of the tourist traffic came in and out of Vegas through McCarran International. Henderson Executive was for a better heeled crowd, mostly high-rolling whales and corporate bigwigs winging into town on their company jets for a weekend of expense-account-approved wining and dining. I had four minutes to spare when I jogged into the cavernous white confines of hangar four, and I whistled long and low when I saw what was waiting for me.

  A Gulfstream G550 filled the hangar from wall to wall, painted golden tan. A small crew in white jumpsuits was working feverishly to get it air-ready, uncoupling fat yellow fuel hoses and going over the jet’s underbody with penlights and clipboards.

  “Mr. Faust,” called out a voice from the far end of the hangar, the same woman from the phone call. She had dark brown skin and sharp eyes, and she strode toward me like she was on a mission. “I’m Ms. Fleiss,” she said, “Mr. Drake’s personal assistant. Come with me, please.”

  Fleiss wore her curly black hair pinned in a tight bun, and her tailored suit had shoulders sharp enough to cut glass. I followed her up a wheeled staircase and into the Gulfstream, suddenly feeling like a bum who had wandered into a taping of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Drake’s ride was an expanse of white leather and cream, with wall-mounted HDTVs and plush swivel chairs.

  It looked like they were doing some remodeling. Toward the back of the jet, a heavy sheet of white plastic dangled from painter’s-tape anchors, and another sheet draped the floor. I was distracted by a new arrival, a tanned wall of meat with chiseled muscles and razor-cut blond hair. He wore a shoulder holster over his tight white T-shirt, showing off a fat chromed .45.

  “Mr. Pachenko,” Fleiss explained with a nod. “Mr. Drake’s head of security. Hold your arms out to your sides, please.”

  I knew the drill. I stood there while Pachenko’s meat hooks slapped my hips, chest, and back, working their way down to my ankles. Most people don’t know how to do a proper frisk, or they half-ass it, but not this guy. If I’d been carrying anything bigger than a deck of cards, Pachenko would have found it.

  “Please, sit down and buckle up,” Fleiss said, walking me over to a chair right in front of the dangling tarp. The plastic crinkled under my shoes. She sat down in the swivel chair opposite mine. A small lacquered table inlaid with a swirling gold leaf design stood between us.

  “You haven’t told me where we’re going,” I said.

  “Austin. Provided you pass the job interview, you’ll be well compensated for your time.”

  “And if I don’t?” I said.

  She didn’t answer. The jet’s engines throbbed as it taxied out of the hangar, taking a sharp right turn and pointing its nose toward the runway. I didn’t like this, didn’t like a thing about it, but at least Agent Black wouldn’t be waiting for me at the airport on the other end.

  And if she is, I thought as the jet rolled forward, picking up speed and pushing me back in my chair, I quit.

  The jet lifted off, took a shuddering turn over Vegas as we hit a pocket of turbulence, then rose over the clouds and into a pale sky. It wasn’t long before we leveled out and a gentle chime sounded over the cabin speakers.

  “Good,” Fleiss said, glancing at her wrist. Her watch was a slender gold Cartier, the oblong face encircled with a dusting of diamonds. “Mr. Pachenko? We’re ready to begin the test.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, either.

  The slab of beef came back with a wooden box in his hands, about a foot across and half as deep. He held the thing like it was a sleeping rattlesnake, and I didn’t blame him. It radiated power, a purple vortex of seething malice that felt like it might lash out at any moment.

  He set it down on the table between Fleiss and me.

  The wood was pitted, old and gray, like it had been carved from some dead and lightning-seared log. Engraved symbols covered the face and circled the sides, prickling my memory. Glyphs from old European witchcraft, mostly, but a handful were out of place or misinscribed. While I studied the box, Pachenko unrolled a cloth napkin next to it, revealing a handful of tools. A pair of steel lockpicks. A Phillips-head screwdriver. A tiny mallet, like doctors use for testing reflexes, and a coiled steel spring.

  “As I’m sure you can imagine, Mr. Drake deals with a great number of opportunists,” Fleiss explained. “Impostors, pretenders, poseurs. As such, before he takes you into his confidence, he would like to verify that you live up to Mr. Agnelli’s claims. A test of skill.”

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  Fleiss shot another glance at her watch. “We will land in two hours and fourteen minutes. You have until that time to open the box before you. You may use any of the tools in front of you to accomplish this task.”

  Pachenko moved to stand at Fleiss’s shoulder. Then he pulled his .45. I thought his gun was big before. It looked a lot bigger pointed at my face.

  “If the box is not open at the moment our wheels touch the runway,” Fleiss added, “Mr. Pachenko will execute you.”

  Now I knew what the plastic sheeting was for.

  “I suggest you move with haste,” she said.

  I took a few deep breaths and weighed my choices. I figured I could spare enough time for that, at least.

  The hard way wasn’t an option. If I gave Pachenko the bum-rush, he’d gun me down before I unbuckled my seat belt. I was going to have to play it their way.

  The box then. Nicky had told me Drake wanted someone who knew his way around physical and occult security. I’d take this test one piece at a time. I let my eyes slip out of focus and narrowed my concentration, studying the box with my second sight. Violet lines of power wrapped around the wood like a spiderweb or a cargo net, sealing it tight and thrumming with malice. Some kind of potent curse, set to lay a whammy on anyone who opened the box without defusing it first. Simple enough.

  Taking it apart wasn’t so simple. The longer I studied the web, the more daunting it became. Every intersection of lines was a trigger, every bend and knot a hammer waiting to fall. If I snipped a single line, the others would trigger and blast their deadly payload right in my face.

  Fleiss, emotionless and still, watched me as the minutes slipped away.

  I need
ed to find the trailhead. The place where the curse weaver had started his work. If I could isolate that one single strand of magic, I could cut off the spell at its knees and render it harmless. I stared at the lid and the sides of the box, following this line and that, running into dead end after dead end. The lines seemed to emerge from a wellspring in the middle of the lid, but that wasn’t the trailhead. So how…

  I half smiled. Then I turned the box over. There it was. One little clot of concentrated magic, tied off and drilling up through the heart of the box from the bottom to the top. Plain as day and unconcealed, for anyone who could think beyond the pointless maze on the other side. I called a spark of power to my left hand, hovering over the knot, and exhaled sharply as I snipped my index and middle fingers together like a pair of shears. The air tingled as the curse strands whipped away and dissolved, burning to nothing in the space of a few quick heartbeats.

  “Occult competence and three-dimensional thinking,” Fleiss murmured, as if taking notes under her breath.

  I turned the box back over. The ornamental lock on the lid was kid’s stuff, nothing compared to a serious padlock.

  That was what worried me.

  It was too easy. Anyone with a delinquent teenager’s grasp of lock picking could get through that thing in two minutes flat. After they’d gone to so much trouble with the curse on the box, I couldn’t believe this part would be that simple. They’d even given me lockpicks.

  My gaze flicked to the white cloth napkin and the spread of tools Pachenko had so generously laid out for me. Something was off about them. A faint chemical smell hung in the dry cabin air, and the metal was a little too shiny.

  I picked up the edge of the napkin and gingerly lifted it up, peeking underneath. Pinpricks of moisture dotted the underside, soaking through from above.

  Not long ago I’d gone up against a sorcerer who had a thing for brainwashing his victims with contact poison. He’d spread his happy juice over business cards, doorknobs and pens, anything he could get his victims to touch. Once they did, and the custom toxins seeped into their skin, it was all over.

  The lock was as simple as it looked. The picks—and all the other useless tools they’d offered me to overcomplicate the puzzle—those were the trap.

  Still, I needed something to get through that lock. Fleiss stared at me, unblinking, almost reptilian, as I worked it through. You may use any of the tools in front of you, she’d said.

  I unbuckled my seat belt.

  Pachenko took a step back and raised his gun as I got up from my chair. I kept my hands easy and open, right where he could see them.

  “Stay cool, big guy,” I said. “I’m following the rules.”

  Fleiss didn’t move a muscle as I reached for her hair, plucking out the bobby pin that held her bun in place.

  “This was in front of me,” I told her, sitting back down.

  She shook her hair out. “So it was.”

  I snapped the bobby pin in two, carefully bending one half to give it an L-hook, and got to work. This was the easy part. Thirty seconds’ work and the tumblers clicked. I reached for the hasp, then froze.

  I was missing something. The test should have been over and done, but Fleiss was still watching me like a mouse in a maze. Like there was something left beyond pulling that hasp and opening the lid. I couldn’t hear a thing but the pounding of my pulse and my instincts screaming in my ear, telling me danger was close enough to kiss.

  I lightly touched the sides of the box, keeping it closed, and rotated it to face Fleiss.

  She flinched.

  She had a hell of a poker face, but she couldn’t hide that. I said, “Thank you,” and turned the box ninety degrees so the lid would open away from the table, toward the far side of the cabin.

  I pulled the hasp and opened the lid. The box jumped as two darts launched out, whining through the air and digging into the baggage compartment. One dripped a few beadlets of slime-green venom down the ivory plastic.

  A pristine envelope of bone-colored paper sat nestled in the box between the empty launching mechanisms. I scooped it out and offered it to Fleiss.

  “I believe this is yours,” I said.

  “Yours, actually. Congratulations, Mr. Faust. Out of four candidates for this position, you are the first to successfully complete the interview assignment.”

  Pachenko holstered his gun.

  I thumbed open the envelope, peeking in on a stack of crisp green bills.

  “Two thousand dollars,” Fleiss said, “simply for meeting with Mr. Drake. Whether you accept his proposition or not, the money is yours to keep.”

  With the box in front of me like a bomb on a timer, I’d been too focused to feel the strain. Now, with the lid open and the danger gone, I had to squeeze the envelope tight to keep my hands from shaking. Misspent adrenaline flooded into my veins, looked for a fight, couldn’t find one, and started a riot instead. The stress turned to anger, and I wanted to start throwing punches. Instead, I swallowed it all down and focused on my breathing.

  I came this far, I told myself. I can go a little farther and hear the guy out.

  The wheels thumped down on the runway, and I sank back in my chair as the wing flaps rose and the turbines screamed. I hadn’t even noticed we were going down.

  6.

  Another private airport, another rolling staircase to see us off the jet. The Texas air wasn’t like the desert back home. It was hot but wet, a clammy dampness that clung to my lungs. Prickling beads of sweat stained the back of my shirt. A sticky heat. Sparse, cotton-ball clouds hung in a pale blue sky, with a storm broiling in the distance.

  A sleek gray limousine waited on the tarmac. Privately owned, no livery plates. I got in back, and Pachenko filled out the bench seat beside me. Fleiss sat facing us, absorbed by her phone, fingers dancing across the touch screen as she rattled off a text message.

  I thought we were going to Austin, but the limo turned away from the city limits and headed south. The rolling hills swallowed us up, sprouting clumps of cedar scrub and rugged Texas oaks. I was a long way from anything that looked like home.

  I took out my phone, wanting to hear a friendly voice. I figured I should let Bentley and Corman know where I was, at least. Fleiss shook her head, not looking up from her own screen.

  “No calls, please.”

  I glanced to my right. Pachenko loomed with a frown permanently chiseled on his face, like he was a wall of stone ready to crash down on top of me. I put the phone away.

  “We’re almost there,” Fleiss added.

  “Almost there” turned into another twenty minutes of hills, but eventually the land leveled out and the road turned from asphalt to dirt, leading us to the hickory-wood gates of a ranch in the heart of nowhere. With bunkhouses and what looked like a turn-of-the-century plantation estate rising up ahead of us, it could have been a relic of the Old West. But there weren’t many boxy gray security cameras in those days, bristling from every rough-hewn post and rooftop, and the eagle-eyed men who patrolled the grounds in teams of two weren’t exactly carrying antique six-shooters. From their headsets and pressed uniforms to the assault rifles slung over their shoulders, everything about Cameron Drake’s security was state of the art.

  As the limo rolled through the gate and onto the ranch grounds, I started angling for a way out. My alarm bells were ringing louder by the second, and if Fleiss could be believed, they’d already murdered three other people who hadn’t gotten as far on the “job interview” as I had. Until circumstances proved otherwise, I stood on hostile ground.

  We rumbled around a circular drive lined with gravel and pulled up in front of the plantation house. The chauffeur hopped out to open the door for us. While I got out, stretching my legs and squinting against the sinking sun, a middle-aged man in denim and rolled-up sleeves jogged down the mansion steps to greet us.

  “Mr. Faust!” he called, flashing movie-star teeth and giving a wave. “Cameron Drake. Welcome to Eastern Pines. So glad you could join u
s.”

  His handshake was dry and firm. He had a strong Texas twang in his voice and a confident swagger. Maybe there was still a little adrenaline in my system from the flight, or maybe it was his too-friendly grin, but I struggled with the sudden urge to punch him out.

  “I didn’t have much of a choice,” I told him. My eyes eased out of focus as psychic tendrils uncoiled from my spine, brushing over his hand, licking the sky and taking their measure of the place. Cameron was magically inert. So was his slab of beef, Pachenko. Fleiss, though, she had some tricks up her sleeve and an iron wall around her soul. My senses slid right off her, like she was made of glass.

  Cameron’s house was what really caught my eye, glowing black and throbbing in my second sight. Something was in there—no, under there—something that felt hungry and cruel and stank like sulfur.

  Cameron furrowed his brow at me, like he didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “We put Mr. Faust through the usual test,” Fleiss said pointedly, as if she was feeding a bad actor his lines.

  “Oh, the test.” Cameron’s gaze darted between us. “Of course, right. Well, I…I take it he passed with flying colors?”

  If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be breathing. Apparently Cameron didn’t know what his own people were up to.

  “You have a conference call in thirty-eight minutes,” Fleiss told him.

  “Right. Thank you, Ms. Fleiss, we’ll take it from here.” He gave me a nervous schoolboy smile. “Lose my own head, if she wasn’t watching it for me. C’mon, lemme give you the grand tour.”

  Pachenko followed us, a lumbering shadow, as we mounted the porch steps and crossed a foyer lined with flowery Spanish ceramic tiles.

  “Grew up watching reruns of Dallas,” Cameron said. “Always wanted my very own ranch.”

  I stayed close to his shoulder, only half listening, sending out feelers for trouble. The house felt cold. Unloved. Like a museum pretending to be a home. The malevolent thrum underneath worried me most, leaking up through the tile and itching at the soles of my feet.