Poisonfeather (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 2)

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  “Are you relaxed?” she asked.

  “Is this part of the test?”

  She smiled clinically at his joke and patted his arm, which didn’t help to put him at ease. He felt solidarity with the fetal pigs of the world, pinned helplessly to high-school dissection trays. Do your worst, he thought, and shifted around, seeking a less painful position in the straight-backed metal chair where he’d be spending the better part of the day. All for a job he knew nothing about. But that was how top-secret SCI worked.

  SCI, or sensitive compartmented information, was a control system that “compartmented” employees, who would never have access to an entire project. An employee might be assigned to develop a particular subsystem while having no idea of the full scope of the larger endeavor. In theory, it made espionage much more difficult. It also meant that Gibson had interviewed for the job blind and wouldn’t find out the exact nature of the work until his clearance was approved. Only then would he be officially read in. It hadn’t mattered. Five minutes into the interview, he would have run through traffic for the job based simply on the hypotheticals they’d posed him. The guy who’d recruited him for the job, Nick Finelli, warned him it would be this way.

  “Take the interview,” Nick had advised. “Trust me, you’ll want it.”

  Nick Finelli was a buddy from his days in Intelligence Support Activity. ISA, or the Activity, as it was affectionately known, was the military’s version of the CIA and provided tactical support to the military’s Special Operations Command, particularly Delta and DEVGRU. Serving in the Activity made you mighty attractive to defense contractors, and after Nick cycled out, he’d immediately landed a job with Spectrum Protection Ltd., which specialized in computer systems and cybersecurity. Exactly the kind of employer Gibson thought he’d have lining up for his services when he left the Marines.

  The Activity should have opened doors in the private sector. Gibson had been something of a star in his unit. But whatever doors it did open, Vice President Benjamin Lombard had slammed shut again. Lombard hadn’t taken it kindly when Gibson had hacked his computers and turned his files and e-mails over to the Washington Post. It hadn’t mattered that Gibson had only been sixteen at the time, or that he’d gone on to serve his country with distinction. When Gibson left the Marines, he’d learned the hard way what it meant to be on the business end of the vice president’s blacklist.

  It had been a hard couple of years, and he’d had to scrounge for work. It had cost him his marriage and very nearly the dream house that he’d intended for his family. Bought at the height of the market before the financial collapse, the house had teetered on the edge of foreclosure for several years. It was Gibson’s nightmare, losing that house. He might not ever live there again, but nothing mattered more to him than his daughter growing up there. It was safe. Good schools. Pretty backyard with a canopy of elm trees. Gibson smiled. It was finally within reach. With Lombard no longer in the picture and a job with Spectrum Protection on the table, he could, for the first time since he’d left the Marines, envision a future in which Ellie’s childhood at 53 Mulberry Court was secure.

  Maybe that explained how badly things went from there.

  The polygraph was going smoothly in hour three. Gibson was starting to anticipate the break for lunch at noon. Ms. Gabir’s questions flowed steadily, punctuated by his staccato yeses and nos. His readings fed into a laptop, and she paused periodically to type a note, but otherwise they were making good progress until the knock at the door. Amanda Gabir excused herself and stepped out into the hall. When she returned, Gibson saw a pair of security guards behind her.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry. The polygraph has been terminated.”

  “What? By who?”

  She didn’t answer but set to unstrapping him.

  “By who?” he said, voice rising.

  One of the security guards stepped into the room. “Sir, please lower your voice.”

  He took that as an invitation to yell. “Who?”

  “At the request of Spectrum Protection,” Amanda Gabir said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why. Please don’t ask me any more questions.”

  Unwilling to sit still and be unstrapped like a child on a fairground ride, Gibson ripped the blood pressure cuff off and threw it to the ground.

  “Easy there, friend,” the guard said.

  Gibson chose not to be easy, and by the time he was hustled out the back into a service corridor, they weren’t friends anymore either.

  “Get the hell off me,” he shouted to the empty corridor as the door slammed shut.

  Traffic was a typical Northern Virginia quagmire. It took forty-five minutes to drive the fifteen miles to Nick Finelli’s offices at Spectrum Protection. Security was there waiting for him. Five of them. Solid men in matching blazers. They saw him coming and formed a wall; Gibson didn’t even get through the front door. He made his scene, and they let him rage for a while. He mistook their restraint for timidity and made a lunge for the door. They threw him to the ground and threatened to call the police.

  “Go on home,” the oldest of the five said. “You had a bad day. You want to top it off with a night in jail?”

  Gibson dusted himself off and thought about whether or not he did. He knew he wasn’t thinking straight, but he was in one of those states of mind in which knowing better wasn’t the same as doing better.

  “What’s it going to be, friend?” the guard asked.

  That made Gibson laugh. “I’m everybody’s friend today.”

  “I’m trying, but you need to go home. There’s nothing in there for you.”

  That was becoming abundantly clear. Gibson walked back to the street and turned around to stare at the building. Was Nick Finelli staring down at him? Did he feel like a big man hiding up in his office? How many times had Gibson covered his ass? Debugged his elementary-school coding? He tried Nick’s number. It rang until it went to voice mail. Gibson hung up and dialed again. The fourth time, the phone rang once and a prerecorded message told him that the number he was dialing was unavailable. Nick had blocked his number rather than give him an explanation. So that was how it was going to be. They’d see about that.

  Nick Finelli’s white Lexus pulled into his driveway a little before seven that night. It was a large, modern house in a development in Fairfax. Bigger by half than Gibson’s ex-wife’s house. Toys littered the deep-set front yard, and Gibson watched Nick tidy them up. He’d had time to cool off, and the urge to wring Nick’s neck had passed. Whatever was happening wasn’t Nick’s doing.

  Gibson crossed the street and called out.

  Nick did not look happy to see him. His old friend unbuttoned his jacket and ever so slightly turned his right hip away from Gibson. “What are you doing?”

  “I tried to talk to you at the office, but your five secretaries said you were in a meeting.”

  “You can’t be here.”

  Gibson looked at the ground for confirmation. “And yet here I am.”

  A car passed, and Nick watched it until it was out of sight. “I can’t talk to you. You know how much trouble I’d be in? I have a family too, you know.”

  “So? You know where this leaves me.”

  Nick put his hands on his hips and nodded his head glumly.

  “Why’d they pull the plug on the polygraph?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t see fit to enlighten me.”

  “Who?”

  “My boss. His boss. Christ, the CEO called personally.”

  “And that’s unusual?”

  “Are you serious? My boss has six bosses between him and the CEO. He’s never even been on the same floor as the CEO. So, yeah, it’s unusual as hell.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  Finelli looked up and down the street. “All I know is, I’m in my supervisor’s office. We’re talking when the phone rings. He answers it and sit
s bolt upright like it’s Ronald Reagan’s ghost. Goes sheet white.”

  “And?”

  “Cease all contact. That was the word that came down.”

  “With me?”

  Nick Finelli nodded. “I don’t know what you’re into, but for the CEO to call down personally and halt a routine hire? Christ, I’ve never even heard of such a thing.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Gibson asked no one in particular. Lombard was gone. This blacklisting was supposed to be a thing of the past.

  “I don’t know, but you’re radioactive. We can’t touch you. I doubt anyone will, whatever this thing is.”

  “Find out for me.”

  “No can do, man.”

  “You owe me,” Gibson said. “You know you do.”

  “Yeah, I do owe you. But there’s a line, Vaughn, and you’re not at the front of it,” Nick said and gestured toward his house and the family inside. “So I’m just going to have to keep owing you for now. I’ll understand if you need to hold that against me.”

  “This isn’t fair.”

  “I don’t imagine it is.” Nick put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, man. I truly am. I know how bad you needed this.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now be a friend and get off my lawn.”

  The day wasn’t a total wash—everyone wanted to be his friend.

  Monday nights were slow at the Nighthawk Diner. Gibson sat at his regular booth in the back and pushed food around his plate. His phone rang. Nicole, calling to ask how the polygraph had gone. He let it go to voice mail.

  What was he going to do now?

  It was a simple question, but one that he thought he’d answered at long last. Now that he knew that he hadn’t, he didn’t think he could face Nicole. The prospect of having to start all over, of needing to find a new answer, frightened him. The struggle to get himself to this day, to that interview, had been enormous, and, at this moment, he didn’t know that he had the will to keep fighting. He felt only defeat. His hand shook as he took a sip of water. He couldn’t get it to stop.

  With Lombard out of the equation, this was all supposed to be over. Yet, clearly, the CEO hadn’t terminated his hire on a whim. Someone with influence had reached out to Spectrum Protection, salted the earth, and put the fear of God into its CEO. But who? Gibson had no idea. And that was what scared him. Benjamin Lombard’s crusade against him had ended in Atlanta. But someone out there was still keeping score, still determined to make him pay. One name leapt to mind—Calista Dauplaise. She was the most obvious suspect, but while she certainly had motive, he couldn’t see it. Everything Calista Dauplaise did had a purpose, calculated to advance her agenda. In a strange way, a personal vendetta seemed beneath her; she’d have considered it a waste of valuable political capital. And frankly, it would be in her interests for him to get the Spectrum job. It would have given him something to lose and taken him off the board—now, he was an angry loose end. No, this was someone else. But who?

  How could he fight an enemy he couldn’t even name?

  He took up his fork, started to take a bite, and then pushed his plate to the edge of the table instead. He sat brooding out the window until he saw Toby Kalpar’s reflection. Toby owned the Nighthawk Diner with his wife, Sana. After separating from Nicole, Gibson had rented his apartment as much for its proximity to the diner as anything else. He’d adopted it as a second home in the months before the divorce became final, when he just hadn’t wanted to be around people. A meal at the diner forced him to leave his crummy apartment.

  Toby and Sana had adopted him in return.

  Gibson pointed at the seat opposite. Toby sat and their eyes met. Toby nodded to his friend; Gibson nodded back. After that, they sat in silence as men do when talk seems a wearying proposition. Gibson was grateful for the company and grateful that Toby knew not to ask about the polygraph. Toby’s given name was Taufeeq, but he had gone by Toby ever since emigrating from Pakistan.

  “Are you still seeing that woman?” Toby asked, steering wide of the abortive polygraph.

  Gibson had been on two dates with a woman from his gym. On the second, he’d made the tactical error of bringing her to the Nighthawk and now was all but engaged in Toby’s eyes.

  “Didn’t work out.”

  “Why? She was a nice woman.”

  Because she has a roommate, and I’m embarrassed of where I live. Well, he could forget moving out and finding a better place now. No dog. No bedroom for Ellie, so no weekend visits. Gibson stopped himself there. If he kept working his way down this checklist, he was going to flip out again, and he’d only just calmed down. Not thinking about it seemed the safest option for the time being.

  “It just didn’t work out.”

  Toby smiled and nodded patiently—the way only men who have found their place in the world can to men who have lost theirs. Sana called for her husband to help her. He stood to go but hesitated.

  “Gibson,” Toby began, finally getting to the point of his visit. “I know you have much on your mind, but . . . there was a man here today.”

  “Who?”

  “He was asking questions. Taking pictures. He knew a lot about you.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “About Atlanta . . . he wanted to know if you were in Atlanta last summer.”

  A chill raised the hairs on Gibson’s neck. He’d told no one about Atlanta. Not even Nicole, although he’d desperately wished that he could. It wasn’t safe for her to know, and he’d made a promise to Grace Lombard to keep silent and to stay away. Far away. A promise that he intended to keep. Anyone asking questions about Atlanta was not a friend.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “What could I tell him?”

  Toby took out his phone and showed him a photograph. “He did not like it,” he said with a shrug, “but if you take pictures of me, I take pictures of you.”

  It was true; the man in the photo did not look happy. He also didn’t look anything like Gibson expected. Instead of being a clean-cut, po-faced suit, the man looked like a refugee from a Hacky Sack convention, with a garrulous, good-natured face framed by a receding hairline and a scruffy ponytail. The sweater vest he wore over a Henry Rollins T-shirt hung down below his hips, stretched long by swollen, overstuffed pockets. He was no one to Gibson, but Gibson was not no one to him. He asked Toby to text him the photo. He could see his friend biting back the impulse to ask what was going on and appreciated not having to lie to him.

  “I should see what Sana needs,” Toby said, excusing himself.

  Gibson’s phone vibrated, and he studied his new ponytailed admirer. The cherry on top of his day. If he’d been feeling needlessly paranoid after Nick Finelli’s warning, now he didn’t feel paranoid enough. It was a lot of chickens coming home to roost all at once. The Spectrum disaster. Judge Birk’s letter yesterday at the ballpark. Was that a coincidence too? Gibson took the blue envelope out of his messenger bag and read it again. Maybe it was connected, maybe it wasn’t, but it was a starting point: an answer to the question of what to do now. It would at least keep him moving, not necessarily forward, but moving. That was enough. Because he knew if he let inertia overcome him now that he might never move again.

  Gibson checked the time—it was only seven p.m. on the West Coast. He dialed the number and let it ring.

  “Hear from her?” Dan Hendricks had never been one for small talk.

  Her. They never spoke or wrote Jenn Charles’s name. Whether because of superstition or paranoia at who might be listening, Gibson couldn’t say.

  “Was just going to ask you the same thing. No, nothing.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  That marked the end of the pleasantries. Neither one of them wanted to be the first to give voice to what both feared. That the months were ticking past, and the chances of Jenn Charles or George Abe being alive were dwindling. Gibson heard the strike of Hendricks’s lighter.

  “How are things out west? You noticed any
thing unusual?”

  “Should I have? Why? What’s up?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing. I didn’t get a job.”

  “And what’s unusual about that?”

  Ouch. Gibson wanted to say something biting back, but he’d left all his fight back at the polygraph suite.

  “I just have a bad feeling.”

  Hendricks became serious again; he had a cop’s inbred respect for hunches and bad feelings. “No, everything’s everything. All quiet. What’s going on?”

  “Someone came around the diner today, asking about Atlanta.”

  “Government?”

  “I don’t think so. Toby took his picture. I’ll send it your way.”

  “Do that.”

  The two men fell silent.

  “Gotta go,” Hendricks said at last. “Appreciate the heads-up. Let me know if you get any more bad feelings. Or if, you know, they surface.”

  “Will do. Talk to you in a couple weeks?”

  The line was already dead.

  He paid the check but lingered at his booth. The prospect of facing his sterile, desolate apartment depressed him. Instead, he opened the blue envelope and reread the judge’s letter. It didn’t say much—not like the judge he remembered at all—and it made Gibson long for a little of the judge’s wisdom. Wisdom felt in very short supply right about now.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Next morning, Gibson was on the road south. He’d slept fitfully, given up around five a.m., and gone on his morning run rather than stare at the ceiling. Most mornings, he alternated between a five-mile and an eight-mile loop, but today he’d run them both, back to back. Still, no matter how hard he pushed himself, he couldn’t outrun Nick Finelli’s words.

  You’re radioactive.

  We can’t touch you.

  Radioactive.

  It was hard not to see fate moving the pieces around the board. Moving him south on Route 29 toward Charlottesville, Virginia—the place of his birth. He’d grown up there, buried his father there, been arrested and tried there, and by all rights should have been sentenced there. Instead, at the proverbial eleventh hour, Judge Hammond Birk had offered him a deal—the Marines instead of prison—in open defiance of then senator Benjamin Lombard. In doing so, Judge Birk had salvaged Gibson’s life from the slag heap. At eighteen, Gibson would have been chewed up by prison, and God only knew what kind of man would have walked out the other side. The judge had saved him from finding out.