Poisonfeather (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 2)

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  He rolled over to see Martin Yardas holding a thick silver .357. Everything moved in that gauzy, oatmeal-slow way when his adrenaline kicked in. It gave him time to wonder about irrelevant things, such as how long Yardas had been wearing that underwear and where he’d been hiding that gun. Didn’t matter. Martin Yardas was crazy enough to use it. Gibson put his hands up, but it was the computer Yardas wanted, not Gibson. The thin man went to the desk and put another round through it like a mercy killing. Then stood there staring at it, his lips moving mechanically. Gibson couldn’t hear the words over the ringing in his ears, but when it subsided, Yardas was still saying “sorry.” Over and over as tears rolled down his face.

  “Where’s the money, Martin?”

  “It’s gone.”

  “Gone? Where did it go?”

  “Lost.”

  Gibson didn’t understand what that meant. “What do you mean?”

  “I lost it.”

  Then Yardas cursed at the top of his lungs, doubling over at the force of it—a mad howling cry like a demon fighting an exorcism. The demon was winning.

  “Lost it how?” Trying to keep him talking. Keep him on the thin side of coherent.

  Yardas’s hand went white around the .357, and for a second Gibson thought he’d asked his last question, but the gun stayed pointed at the ground.

  “I was supposed to invest it,” Yardas said in a whisper.

  “You did.” Gibson had seen the old transaction logs on the brokerage site.

  “Yeah. But I did it wrong . . . he would have been rich.”

  Gibson was missing a piece of the puzzle. “Start at the beginning. How much money did Merrick have when he went to prison?”

  “Three hundred and seventy million dollars.”

  Much less than a billion, but Gibson still didn’t see how Merrick could have hidden it from the Justice Department. It was impossible. That kind of money would have left a trail a mile wide.

  “And you’ve been investing it for him? All this time. He’s been sending you text messages with investment instructions. I saw the texts.”

  “Yes.”

  The story tumbled out now through the tears. A truth that Martin Yardas had been living with for eight years. It must have been a relief to say it out loud. To admit it to someone, anyone. A son’s confession.

  From the beginning, Martin Yardas had disregarded his father’s investment instructions, which he found strange and out of touch with reality. So instead of filling Merrick’s orders, Yardas had struck out with an investment strategy of his own. He’d lost half of Merrick’s money in the first year.

  “I thought, you know, he’d been through so much. And he was in prison. So I could help, right? I’m not stupid, you know?”

  “But you lost it? Three hundred and seventy million dollars? How is that possible?”

  Yardas explained how: in a panic, he had chased bad money with good. So desperate to cover his losses that he’d made a string of high-risk, high-reward investments. None of which had panned out, each leaving him in an ever-growing hole. All the while lying to his father that everything was on track.

  “And you’re telling me that Merrick has no idea that he’s lost almost everything?” Well, everything now. “He hasn’t seen any of the statements or documentation?”

  “He’s in prison. What do you think would have happened if it had been discovered? We couldn’t risk it.”

  “So Merrick thinks he has a billion dollars?” No wonder Merrick had been so cavalier in the interview.

  Yardas nodded in despair. “One point two seven billion.”

  Gibson was no expert on the stock market, but to his understanding, anything above a 10 percent annual return was considered an exceptional year. For Merrick to more than triple his investment in only eight years, it would have meant a miraculous run. And all from prison. Instead, he’d been swindled by his broker. Apparently there was room left in the world for poetic justice.

  “So he just took your word for it all this time.”

  “I was his son.”

  Yardas put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. He did it so casually—the way a man might scratch an itch with the tip of a finger—that Gibson didn’t know to react until Yardas lay bleeding on the ground. In shock, Gibson still didn’t move as he struggled to make sense of what had just happened. But then he heard a spluttering, coughing sound. Somehow Yardas was alive, struggling to bring the gun back up to finish the job. Gibson scrambled to his feet and wrested the gun away, then knelt beside the dying man.

  Martin Yardas breathed in sandpaper rasps. It was a grisly sight. The bullet had entered at the temple and pinged around the inside of the skull, angry for a way out, until it found its freedom through his left eye socket. Blood pooled around his head like a halo, and he looked up at Gibson with his one good eye.

  “I was his son.”

  Not knowing what else he could do, Gibson took his hand. “I know.”

  “A billion dollars . . . I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “I was his son.”

  Gibson heard a crash and the sound of splintering wood from the front of the house. Footsteps pounded down the hall, and Gavin Swonger came around the corner, gun in hand. It said something that Gibson wasn’t even surprised anymore that Swonger had turned up. Of course Swonger had followed him. Gibson would have kicked himself if he weren’t still in shock over what had just happened. The look on Swonger’s face told the story.

  “Goddamn, dog, not playing anymore, are you?”

  “Hey, I didn’t shoot him.”

  “That’s cool. Did you get it first?”

  “What?”

  “The money. You get it?”

  “Swonger, listen. I know what Lea said, but—”

  “One point two seven billion,” Yardas croaked.

  Swonger’s brow furrowed. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Nothing. You have to listen to me. There isn’t any billion.”

  But Swonger wasn’t listening and wasn’t standing still for explanations. Gibson could see how it looked: a dying man, the sting of cordite in the air, and Gibson kneeling over him with a gun. Swonger’s native paranoia had already jumped ahead to the part where Gibson had stolen the money and killed Martin Yardas to silence him. No matter what Gibson said, Swonger would see only betrayal.

  “Where’s the money?” Swonger asked, raising his gun.

  Gibson wanted to explain, but instinct brought Yardas’s gun up in self-defense. It was a reflex but the wrong one. Swonger let loose, pulling the trigger indiscriminately, gun held sideways like a gangster. Gibson flinched even though nothing happened, knowing he’d be a dead man now if Swonger’s gun had a firing pin. Swonger stopped pulling the trigger and looked down at his gun. Gibson pointed the .357 at Swonger’s chest and cocked the hammer.

  “Listen to me.”

  Swonger took two steps back and bolted for the front door. Gibson chased after him, more to make certain that he was gone than out of any desire to catch him. At the door, he heard the wailing shriek of tires as Swonger’s Scion roared away.

  Good. Let him go. It didn’t matter now.

  He went back inside to find that Charles Merrick’s son had died. This wasn’t a part of the country where people called the police over a few gunshots, but he wanted to be long gone just in case. It was time to go. He wiped off the .357 as best he could and dropped it near the body of Martin Yardas. Then he did the same to the computer, picture frames, and door. He’d come a fair piece to stand in this room with a man who had been dead a long time already. Gibson pitied the young man and felt a kinship with him. He had been a fool, yes. A lunatic by the end, almost certainly. But Gibson understood the influence that Charles Merrick had held over his unacknowledged child. How far the son would have gone to prove himself, and how far he had fallen in so doing. Well, it was over now.

  And what about Charles Merrick’s other child? Gibson hoped she was safe a
nd hadn’t done anything reckless. Although, in a way, she’d gotten her wish in the end. Perhaps not by her hand, but her half brother had done the job that she’d set out to do. Their father was finally penniless. Nearly anyway.

  It was almost funny.

  He only hoped that, wherever she was, she appreciated the joke.

  Charles Merrick stared at his account balance like an actor stumbling on stage and realizing that he’d learned the lines for the wrong play. He felt them staring at him and knew he should mask his horror, but for the first time in his life he couldn’t hide his real feeling.

  One penny.

  He had one penny to his name.

  Veronica looked over his shoulder and shrieked.

  After that, things went to hell at an alarming rate. Bo Huntley snatched back the laptop and saw for himself. Then he snapped shut the laptop’s case. Merrick recovered enough to try and fail to reason with him, forcing a laugh to remind everyone that he was still in control here. It took far more effort than he would have liked.

  “This is preposterous,” he said.

  “Do you have any other available funds, Mr. Merrick?” Bo Huntley asked for the third time.

  Merrick didn’t see how that was relevant. He held a handkerchief to his cheek and dabbed at the blood. Veronica had scratched the hell out of his face and, judging by her torrent of threats, would do it again if Ogden let go of her arms. The veins on her forehead stood out impressively, and she’d screamed herself an unattractive shade of purple.

  “Where’s my money? How can there only be one penny in this account? What have you done with my money?”

  Merrick wanted to shove his fist in her mouth, but she had a point. Where was the money? He needed a phone. What had that idiot bastard of his done?

  “We had a deal, you son of a bitch,” Veronica spat.

  “Mr. Merrick . . . ?” Huntley prompted.

  “Preposterous,” he said again and felt his mind going blank.

  “I’m going to need you and your family to exit the vehicle.”

  “You can’t seriously intend to leave us here. My ex-wife put down a sizeable deposit.”

  “And we delivered you to the airfield as promised. That’s as far as the deposit takes you. I ask again: Do you have any other funds?”

  “They’ll kill us.”

  Huntley had the look of a man sick of arguing with a five-year-old. He rubbed a spot between his eyes and came to a decision.

  “All right, everyone out. You have ten seconds, and then we drag you out. You too, Ogden.”

  With that, Huntley exited the limo and began barking orders to his team. Ten seconds after that, the dragging out commenced in earnest.

  Lea walked up the runway, following the taillights of the two Gulfstream aircraft as they rose into the night sky until she lost sight of them among the stars. It was a beautiful, cloudless night, and the sky was awash with stars. Had there always been this many?

  She’d known it was Gibson the moment her father went ashen at the computer. She didn’t know how he’d managed it but hoped it was the van, because then she’d at least played a part. But it really didn’t matter. Watching her father’s meltdown in the back of the limousine was the most satisfying thing she’d ever witnessed. Goddamn, it was perfection. She smiled, and she felt strangely at peace—for perhaps the first time in her life.

  Which was funny, because she also saw what a foolish, wasteful thing she had done. This revenge of hers, if you could even call it that, had been a mistake. A stupid, selfish waste of her time, and probably her life. Of all their lives. But knowing that now, as she did, she still would not have changed a thing. That was the thing about mistakes: often you had to make them to see them for what they were. And she wouldn’t trade this feeling of clarity for anything in the world. There would be a high price to pay, but she would pay it gladly.

  She slipped off her heels. She wasn’t about to die with sore feet. At the end of the runway behind her, depending on one’s perspective, a comedy or a tragedy was unfolding. Perhaps both. Pilots unpaid, both aircraft had departed, and her parents stood amid her mother’s luggage, piled unceremoniously on the tarmac, arguing with the security team, who ignored them as they loaded back into their convoy of vehicles. Huntley offered Ogden a ride out of there, but the CIA man shook his head.

  “I think I gotta stay.”

  “You sure?” Huntley asked. “Things are about to get loud.”

  “Yeah.” Ogden didn’t look any too excited about it.

  “Your funeral.”

  Damon Ogden stood to the side as the convoy departed, cell phone in hand, still trying in vain to get a signal. For all the good it would do in the time remaining. They were in denial about what was coming. It didn’t really matter. Acceptance was overrated.

  Like Ogden’s, her phone had no bars. She’d wanted to text Gibson good-bye. Thank him for everything. She doubted that she’d get another chance, so she wrote the text anyway. It wouldn’t send now but would store in the phone’s outgoing folder, and maybe someone, perhaps not her, would carry the phone within range of a cell tower. It would send then. Not like there was a rush, and it felt good knowing he might get it—her electronic message in a bottle. As an afterthought, she texted Margo a simple message:

  You were right.

  There was nothing else to say.

  Lea watched as the convoy crossed the airfield and disappeared down the hill. When they were out of sight, the scavengers that had been lying patiently in wait for the lions to abandon the carcass turned their attention to the Merricks. Lea walked back toward her parents. If they were to die, they would die together.

  The first gunshot sounded like a handclap in the distance. The night quieted itself, curious to see what came next. Then another. And another. And then it was a string of fireworks, dancing in the street. Ogden crouched beside her father. Lea knelt beside her mother, who was using a suitcase as a shield. She thought about drawing her pistol, but at this range it would be like throwing pebbles into the wind. They huddled together behind the luggage and listened to the gunfire and breaking glass. It wasn’t until the first screams drifted across the airfield that Lea realized that no one was shooting at her. They were killing each other over there. Whatever unofficial truce existed among them had run out the moment the security team left, and they were fighting it out for the right to claim the Merricks.

  At this distance, it all seemed like an abstraction, the muzzle flashes oddly beautiful in the night. The entire skirmish ended in a matter of moments. A final volley and then nothing but the odd gunshot. A few stray vehicles fled. Men moved among the remaining cars and settled up with the wounded or the dying. Her mother tried to take her hand, but Lea wrenched it out of her grip. The time for pretending was over. Across the airfield, two vehicles separated from the pack and sped toward them.

  The bill had finally come due.

  THE GIANT, CRAZY BIRD

  Don’t you know about the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage, unaware that it was incapable of stopping it? Such was the high opinion it had of its talents.

  —Zhuang Zhou

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Time to get out of West Virginia. Get out. Get out. Get out. He’d thought of nothing else since Swonger tried to gun him down with his busted .45. Get out, stay out. First things first, though. Gibson needed to lose the van. He didn’t want to take it back into Virginia. A bus stop in Morgantown behind the West Virginia University Hospital would be a good dump site. He could wipe it down, catch a Greyhound for DC, and put miles between himself and Niobe, West Virginia.

  He drove as fast as he dared—seven or eight miles above the speed limit. With each set of headlights that came around the bend, Gibson saw Martin Yardas’s ghoulish face pleading up at him for forgiveness or mercy. Whatever salve the dying believed would ease their final moments. The smell of that grim room clung to the roof of his mouth no matter how much water he guzzled. The sound of th
e .45’s hammer falling, and the split second when he’d forgotten the firing pin in his pocket and believed his destiny lay beside Martin Yardas.

  Go home. While there’s still time.

  Was there still time?

  A bug the size of a small bird splattered off the windshield. Gibson jerked the steering wheel so hard the van wobbled into oncoming traffic. He straightened out the van and tried to shake it off, forcing out a dead-battery laugh. Then he pumped wiper fluid onto the windshield until the bug was nothing but a streak at the edge of his vision.

  Driving north and east, he felt the confusion of a pilot who’d fallen asleep at the stick and, emerging from a thick cloudbank to unfamiliar terrain, realized he was horribly off course. Far from home. He had no idea how he’d let this happen . . . except that wasn’t the truth, was it? He knew exactly how it had happened. After all, he was the one who’d been on autopilot, and it was hardly the first time. That was the worst part—how familiar this all felt. Once again, he’d muted the responsible part of his brain, the part that understood consequence and in theory knew better. He’d done it as a teenager so he could go after Benjamin Lombard, again in Atlanta, and now, older and supposedly wiser, he’d done it yet again. Muted it so that he could do what he wanted. Well, it wasn’t muted now, and it had a lot of catching up to do. So he drove along in silence while, in his head, he caught a damn good tongue-lashing.

  Where to start? He’d fled his responsibilities at home to right a wrong for a man who had told him explicitly to stay away. He could dress it up as noble, but maybe he’d done it for selfish reasons. This was exactly the kind of father that he swore he wouldn’t be. He saw that now. And for what? Nicole had probably run his visitation rights through a shredder by this point. No doubt exactly what she’d left the message to tell him—to stay away—and how could he blame her? He never had listened to it, but feeling masochistic, he hit play and held the phone to his ear. His ex-wife’s voice was weary but calm: