Double or Nothing (Daniel Faust Book 7)

by Craig Schaefer

  I winced as the drone winged off toward the compound fence, gaining altitude.

  “Briefly. Very, very briefly. Jen’s kinda bi but mostly prefers women. I think I was the last guy she got with.” I put on a stoic face. “I like to think that I was so good, I was the last man she ever needed. No one could possibly compete after that.”

  “Yeah. I don’t think that’s it.” She gave me the side-eye. “So, wait, does she think that I’m—”

  I shrugged. “Nobody knows what you’re into. I mean, nobody’s ever seen you dating anybody.”

  Spotty electric lights burned in the distance, beyond the fence. They looked like blurry smears on the drone’s eye-view, pixelating as the quadricopter moved in close. Pixie cursed under her breath and rattled off a few quick commands. The camera window bloomed wider as the focus tightened.

  “This camera’s a piece of—hold on, that’s better. Anyway, I don’t date. At all.”

  I held my breath and watched the feed as a guard patrol rounded a corner. The drone zipped upward, hovering over their heads. They passed underneath it without a second glance.

  “The patrols have penlights clipped to their uniform pockets, and Maglites. Good to know.” I glanced at her. “So you jump straight to the sex stuff? Don’t even have to buy you dinner first?”

  She gave me a look that could curdle milk.

  “I don’t do the sex stuff either. I’m just not wired that way. I like a good snuggle, that’s about it.” She pointed to the screen. “Here. This outbuilding is the only one with a guard posted outside. The windows are tinted, but see that glow coming from inside?”

  “Like security monitors,” I said. “Think the main generator’s in there, too?”

  “Can’t tell. But over here,” Pixie said, the drone winging off to the left, “we’ve either got a very expensive outhouse with a padlocked door, or that’s some kind of utility shed. Could be electric, water, comms—”

  “Or the lucky trifecta. Let’s check out the main house.”

  “So,” Pixie said, “I hate to ask…”

  She didn’t have to.

  “I’ll talk to her and let her down easy,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Jennifer wouldn’t be thrilled—she’d been lusting after Pixie since they first met—but she wouldn’t be brokenhearted either. At her most optimistic, she knew it was still a coin flip at best.

  The copter took a detour, going long around the edge of the compound, keeping away from the foot patrols. A few horses lingered out in the corral, lonely shadows in the dark.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You know, I don’t say this a lot. I don’t think I’ve ever said it. But ever since I got dragged into this world. You know, demons, monsters, craziness…”

  “As I recall, I dragged you into it.”

  “As I recall, I insisted. You tried to warn me. I should have trusted you.” She focused on the screen, concentrating as she steered the drone. “Anyway, I know I get on your case a lot, but you’ve really gone out of your way to make me feel like…well, part of the family. And that means a lot to me. Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. Nobody’s looking out for us in this world. We gotta look out for each other. There—that window’s lit up. Can you get closer?” I tapped a faint glowing rectangle on the screen, just out of focus. “Anyway, I’m just sore because I had money in the betting pool.”

  “The betting pool?”

  “Yeah, see, I put fifty bucks on you being robosexual. I figured you were building contraptions in your garage, like with pistons, and weird attachments. That’s what I told everybody, anyway.”

  “Daniel Faust,” she said with a sigh, “you are an enormous asshole.”

  “I know, Pix.” I patted her on the shoulder. “I know.”

  A silhouette sat in the second-floor window. The drone dipped closer, bouncing on a sudden gust of midnight wind, and the camera went blurry. Pixie tapped a few keys, muttering under her breath, and the screen snapped into focus.

  It was Cameron Drake. He sat in a wheelchair and stared out the window, looking twenty years older than the last time I’d seen him. He wore a tattered bathrobe, stubble caking his cheeks, and his eyes were haunted and distant.

  “Whoa,” Pixie said, “is that Drake? Looks like he went full Howard Hughes.”

  I squinted at the screen. “When we met, the guy was working overtime to murder his liver, but…that’s not just booze. There’s something wrong with him.”

  The bedroom door opened. Pixie zipped the drone upward, rocketing away. A tiny battery-status bar in the corner of the screen started flashing red.

  “Gotta reel it back in,” she said. “So, uh, he looked kinda catatonic. Do you think he’s even gonna be able to talk? I mean, a big part of this plan is hinging on Drake’s cooperation.”

  Good question. And another uglier one loomed in the back of my mind. When I’d squared off with Ms. Fleiss at Gosselin’s magic museum, she’d plunged me into a nightmare world—forcing me to vividly experience my friends’ deaths, over and over again, while only a second or two passed in the real world.

  Drake had been in her clutches for months. What had she been doing to him? And could it be fixed?

  16.

  We got back to Austin in the dead of the night, crashed for a few hours, then woke everybody up to work out the final plan. The whole crew clustered around the satellite map while we refueled with black coffee and doughnuts. I popped a chocolate munchkin into my mouth, grateful for the sugar boost.

  “Gonna need a fallback,” Jennifer said. “If Drake’s really catatonic, I mean, searching the house without his help is still an option.”

  “It’s just going to take longer. And the longer it takes, the harder it’s gonna be to get away clean. What we need is a really good diversion, something we can set off to buy some time and cover our exit.” I tapped the edge of the map, thinking. “What we need is a little chaos.”

  “Sounds like we need a bomb,” Corman said.

  Jennifer shook her head. “If we were back home, easy, I could line up a few sticks of boom-boom before suppertime. My only contact out here is Gabriel’s buddy and, well…you saw the quality of his merchandise. I’m not lookin’ to blow my hands off.”

  “Drake owns horses,” Caitlin said, cradling her chin in her fingertips. “Probably not trained for war, wouldn’t you think?”

  “It’s the twenty-first century. When’s the last time anyone outside of a Renaissance fair trained horses for—” Pixie paused, remembering who she was talking to. “Oh. Right. Yeah, no, probably not. They looked pretty docile when we flew the drone over, though, and most of them were in the stable for the night. A few gunshots won’t start a stampede.”

  “So we encourage them,” Margaux said. “I encourage them.”

  I looked her way. “What’ve you got in mind?”

  “Sometimes my spirits like to dance inside people’s skins. And sometimes they can be convinced to…go down-market. Especially if you ask the right ones, with the right offerings, and there’s a little mischief to be made.” She pointed to the map’s far edge. “I can set up here, behind the hillside—in the open, but out of sight from the ranch—and make my plea to the loa.”

  Jennifer looked dubious. “Don’t you use drums and rattles when you do your thing? Sound carries pretty far out there.”

  “If this works, by the time anybody thinks to check it out, they’ll be neck-deep in spirit-mad horses. All the same, I’ll need somebody watching my back just in case. Preferably somebody with a gun. My hands are gonna be occupied.”

  Bentley gave her a formal bow. “Cormie and I would be delighted to be your dates for the evening.”

  “We still need a little help gettin’ in the front door,” Jennifer told me. “Or through the fence, as the case may be. I figure you and Cait are storming the house, finding Drake and the knife. That leaves support, and we’re a pair of hands short.”

  “I’ll be running overwatch with the drone
,” Pixie said. “I can steer you around the foot patrols, no problem, at least so long as the battery holds out.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “Obliged, but that ain’t the issue. Now I can do some damage in that utility shed on my own, but taking control of the security room, that’s not a one-woman job. Don’t know how many guards are in there, where they’re positioned…one wrong move and I’m dead. The plan’s dead too. But mostly me.”

  “So I’ll go,” Corman said. “Bentley can cover Margaux on his own.”

  “That won’t work either,” I said. “I need one of you acting as our wheelman. Best-case scenario, we slip in and out and nobody’s the wiser. It’s a lot more likely that this job is going to get loud and nasty, and we’re all gonna have to get out of there fast. Which means we need somebody positioned with the escape vehicle, buckled in and the engine running. Every second counts.”

  “If one of them’s gonna be driving,” Margaux muttered, “it should definitely be Corman.”

  “Because I’m a better shot?” Bentley asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “Because you’re a better shot.”

  I fixed my eyes on the satellite map. Tracing lines in my mind, calculating distances. I rapped my knuckles on the table.

  “Okay,” I said, “change of plans. Caitlin, you’re with Jennifer. I’m going after Drake and the knife solo.”

  Caitlin arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “Drake knows me. And I know that knife. I mean, I already stole it once. I can move in, nice and quick and quiet, and get out the same way. Meanwhile, Jennifer’s end of this job is a lot more likely to get violent. I want you backing her up.”

  “When it comes to violence,” Jennifer told her, “you are kind of an artiste.”

  “And what if Naavarasi is wrong?” Caitlin asked. “What if Fleiss is there?”

  “Then I get the hell out before she spots me, we scrub this whole thing, and Naavarasi can go pound sand. By which I mean I’ll find some way to make it up to her. Maybe chocolate, and a nice floral arrangement.”

  * * *

  Sourcing a getaway car was easy. We rented it. A black Ford Explorer with seating for seven and a V8 engine, perfect for getting around in the scrub. We pulled off to the side of the highway, just shy of the access road to Eastern Pines. I unscrewed the license plates, tossed them in the cargo nook, and took a razor blade to the Budget bumper sticker. If the guards happened to spot the car on our way out, they’d have no way to trace it back to us.

  Finding a couple of live chickens for Mama Margaux’s ritual had been a little harder. They were in the cargo nook too, squawking up a storm, and ten minutes into the drive the SUV filled with a stench that had us clutching our noses and rolling down the windows.

  “That is rank,” Bentley said, fanning his hand in front of his face. “I have nothing against the occasional blood sacrifice, when needs must, but couldn’t we have bought packaged chicken for this? From the grocery store, for instance?”

  “And where exactly do you think packaged chicken comes from?” Margaux asked him.

  “I like to imagine it just spontaneously appears there. I prefer not to engage with my food any further than that.”

  Margaux folded her arms, stoic. “Can’t kill the chicken, don’t eat the chicken.”

  Behind the wheel, Corman made a sour face as we rumbled along the access road.

  “Definitely not getting the cleaning deposit back,” he said.

  “Reminds me of growin’ up back home,” Jennifer said. “Good times, good times. So Mama, how long is it gonna take to do this thing?”

  Margaux shrugged. “It’s not a science. Twenty minutes if the loa are feeling generous. An hour if they’re feeling less generous.”

  “And if they’re not feelin’ generous at all?”

  “Well,” Margaux said, “at least we’ll have a home-cooked chicken dinner tonight.”

  Pixie stuck her head out the window and gulped down fresh air. I was testing my memory, rehearsing in my head, mentally following the trail the drone had laid for us the night before. Then I passed out my new purchase, courtesy of Naavarasi’s per-diem money: a handful of new Bluetooth earpieces, slim and storm-gray.

  “We’ll make our staging area over by the dunes, same place Pix and I staked out last night. Once me, Caitlin, and Jennifer go in, start the clock. In exactly one hour, if we’re not out by then, get the ritual underway. We’ll also be in phone contact and Pixie’s drone will be doing flybys until the battery dies. If you see anything hinky, if the job goes sideways—”

  “Start the ritual,” Margaux said. “You’ll be covered, Danny, don’t worry about it. We’ll get it done.”

  She handed me a pair of black leather driving gloves, thin and supple, and a rubber mask. I turned the mask and squinted at it.

  “Is that…Ronald Reagan?”

  Margaux held up another pair of masks. “I also got Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter.”

  Jennifer and Caitlin shared a glance. Caitlin tilted her head, noncommittal.

  “Dibs on Carter,” Jennifer said.

  A mile out from the ranch, Corman killed the headlights and cruised in slow. The starlight guided our way across the scrub. Far from the city, the night was a canopy of twinkling lights, an ocean vast and deep.

  The Explorer rumbled to a stop. The engine fell silent. We synchronized our earpieces.

  I felt that familiar tension in my gut, the cold certainty that I was walking into a world of trouble that could end in a prison cell or a shallow grave. I preferred to dull it with alcohol when I could, just one drink before a job to settle my nerves, but I didn’t really mind the feeling. It was an old professional companion of mine. The night I didn’t feel that tension was the night I’d get sloppy and screw up.

  It would only take one bad night to end it all.

  I pulled on my gloves. They were tight, like a second skin, and thin enough that they wouldn’t slow me down. We piled out of the SUV and Jennifer set her duffel bag down on the ground.

  “It’s go time.” She unzipped the bag and opened it wide. “Arm up and mask up.”

  I opted for the snub-nosed .38 with the rattly grip and loose cylinder. It looked like the least reliable choice in the dodgy arsenal, which was why I chose it. I had my cards to rely on—plus Canton’s wand, if it felt like cooperating—and if I did my job right, I wouldn’t have to pull the trigger. If any gunfighting came into play tonight, it was most likely going to fall on Jennifer’s and Caitlin’s shoulders, so I wanted them to have the better tools for the job.

  Pixie set up her laptop on the Explorer’s hood, running preflight checks on the drone, while Margaux herded the chickens. Bentley and Corman helped her with the rest of her magical gear—bags of flour, pouches and sachets, a small hand drum with a wicker frame—and unfurled a roll of plain black carpet over the sparse grass.

  “While you go after Drake and the knife,” Jennifer told me, “me and Cait are gonna shut down that security room. Once we strong-arm it and make sure nobody’s gonna be calling for reinforcements, priority two is finding the generators. Plural. You know this place has at least one backup.”

  I nodded as I tugged on my Reagan mask. “Find them, but leave the generators online until I say otherwise. If we can keep this quiet from start to finish, all the better.”

  “And if we can’t?” Caitlin asked.

  “Then you blow the generators, Mama does her thing, and the guards have to deal with a total blackout and a horse stampede at the same time. We’ll be back in Vegas and counting our money before they know what hit ’em.”

  “Counting our money,” Jennifer said. “Sure, if we were gettin’ paid for this job.”

  “Drake is our paycheck. Hopefully.”

  Caitlin frowned. “Too many hopes and not enough certainties for my liking tonight.”

  “You and me both,” I said. “But that’s the job. So…let’s do this.”

  17.

  The three of us went wide arou
nd the compound, avoiding the front gates and the lights from the guard shacks, keeping clear of the access road. We stayed low as we skirted the fence line. Pixie’s drone whirred overhead. It wouldn’t have enough battery charge to stick around for the whole job, but it would last long enough to help guide us in.

  “You’re clear,” Pixie’s voice said in my ear. “Foot patrol just went by, about forty feet ahead of you, and I don’t see another in sight.”

  I took a pair of tin snips to the fence and snapped the chain links one at a time. A couple of feet to my left, Jennifer did the same. We cut an arch and met in the middle. The fence rattled as we shoved the sawed-off section in, making a hole big enough to wriggle through. Jagged links tugged at my windbreaker and scratched my back as I squirmed past. Caitlin and Jennifer were next. With a silent nod, we parted ways: I broke left, they broke right, and the drone zipped ahead of them.

  I was on my own now.

  I jogged in a crouch, balancing speed and silence, keeping to the loose dirt along the fence and away from the paved walkways. I heard the whine of a golf cart’s engine and pressed my back to the bunkhouse wall until it passed. A Maglite’s beam strobed by, a guard keeping a casual watch, then moved along. I moved along too, in the opposite direction.

  The Ionic pillars of the main estate rose up ahead, hard-angled eaves looming in the dark like ravens’ beaks. A light burned in the second-floor bedroom window, just like last night. That was where I’d find my first target. As for the second…I’d just have to improvise. I steered clear of the front door and made my way around to the side of the house. A service entrance wasn’t far away, and the window set into the door looked in on a dark, silent kitchen. I got low and fished out my lockpicks.

  Jennifer’s voice whispered over the Bluetooth link. “Security room is ours. We got access to the alarm feed, cameras, the whole kit ’n’ caboodle. Four guards. One made a move. The other three decided to live.”

  “Noise?”