Poisonfeather (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 2)

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  “Figured you wouldn’t answer. Listen. I shouldn’t have said what I said. I’m not going to apologize, but I shouldn’t have said it. And I didn’t mean it. Not all of it. I was angry; I was frustrated. I couldn’t take any more. Even if I know where it comes from. I know you. I know how you beat yourself up. I know how badly you wanted that job, and I know you think you’ve let us down. But we’re okay. Ellie is okay. She doesn’t care what kind of job you have. So come back from whatever you’ve run off to do. It makes me nervous that even Toby doesn’t know. Now quit being an asshole and come back before it really is too late.”

  The message ended, and Gibson threw the phone into the passenger seat. Don’t start, he warned the voice in his head but then berated himself anyway, using language that would have made his drill instructors in boot camp proud. Thoughts of home pushed the van up to seventy-five, but he quickly took his foot off the gas. It would be the height of stupidity to get pulled over now. Getting home was the important thing, not how fast.

  In the passenger seat, his phone vibrated, then vibrated again and again, signaling incoming text messages. Gibson drove a mile or two before snatching it up: “Lea Regan (3 Messages).”

  “Nope, nope, nope, not my problem anymore,” he said and dropped the phone back in the passenger seat. His show of callous bravado lasted less than two miles before he pulled to the side of the road. He stared accusingly at his phone, then, with a resigned sigh, picked it up.

  I don’t know if you can see the stars where you are, but they’re beautiful. So many. Been here two years but never noticed them before. Funny right?

  I’m at Dule Tree Airfield with my father. Just watched his plane leave without him. It was beautiful. Don’t know how you did it, but it worked. They’ll be coming for us soon. Thank you. Goodbye and good luck.—L.

  If you’re still in Niobe, get out.

  There was a lot to digest in those three messages, and he read them through a few more times, trying to parse her tone—tone being the hardest thing to convey in a text message. Her words didn’t read as scared, and she didn’t seem under duress. That should have been a good sign, but he didn’t like her good-bye one bit. It didn’t sound like the Lea he knew. She sounded resigned. Fatalistic.

  Gibson could see the chain of events that led to her messages. If she knew there was no money, then Merrick must have tried to access it. If his plane had left without him, then he had needed the money to get himself out of the country. But it wasn’t there because Gibson had taken what little remained. That had left Merrick at the mercy of his many enemies, and frankly Gibson felt fine with that. Merrick deserved whatever he got. But how would Emerson and the fifth floor react? He remembered clearly what Emerson had said he believed. That he would kill them all. Well, Gibson had a bad feeling that Emerson might be making good on his threat.

  Gibson looked up Dule Tree Airfield and let his GPS plot the fastest route. Then he spun the wheel and turned the van toward the airfield and muted his inner voice before it realized his destination. Around the first bend, he saw a familiar gray Scion idling on the shoulder. Of course, Swonger was still following him; he didn’t know anything else. Gibson slowed to a stop in the middle of the road and rolled down his window.

  “What are you doing?” Gibson yelled over.

  Swonger stared straight ahead, both hands on the wheel. Maybe he thought that was how invisibility worked? Gibson didn’t know what went on in his head.

  “Swonger.” Nothing. “You know I can see you, right?”

  A car zipped between them, horn wailing. Swonger didn’t so much as blink, stubborn as a two-year-old at bath time. Gibson waited, but Swonger looked prepared to turn blue before he’d acknowledge Gibson. So be it; he didn’t have time to deal with this now. Gibson left Swonger to play statue, but a quarter mile down the road, Gibson saw the Scion swing around to follow.

  Swonger made a point of riding the van’s bumper all the way to Dule Tree Airfield. Gone were the days of following Gibson at a discreet distance. Gibson made no effort to get away; that would have felt foolish and been a waste of energy. He turned off the main road and climbed the dirt road to the airfield. The Scion followed. At the gate, Gibson killed his lights and coasted slowly toward the main office; he didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean they were alone. Behind him, at the front gate, the Scion waited patiently. Seeing no other apparent way out, Swonger seemed content to leave him to his reconnoiter.

  Something had crashed into the chain-link fence surrounding the hangar. The impact had caved in several sections, and judging by the deep tire tracks, it had taken a lot of tire-spinning to dislodge whatever vehicle had been responsible. In the moonlight, Gibson followed the tracks out onto the field abutting the runway, afraid of who or what he might find in the tall grass. But apart from a torn-up field, Gibson didn’t see any hint of Lea’s whereabouts. It was a relief, but not much of one . . . something bad had happened here.

  Gibson drove around the grounds, looking for anything out of the ordinary, but came up empty. Lea was right, though—there were so many stars.

  Over on the far side of the airfield, a light in the trees caught his eye. It rippled among the branches, but he couldn’t see its source. Curious, he drove to the tree line, which dropped away down a hillside. He grabbed a flashlight and walked to the edge. Thirty feet down, cars had been rolled off the edge and lay stacked on top of each other like models at the bottom of a kid’s toy chest. A shattered pyramid of metal and chrome. Gibson also found the source of the light—one of the cars was wedged upright between two SUVs; it stood on its hind end, headlights illuminating the canopy above.

  His sense of relief shaken, Gibson clambered down the hillside to an SUV that had rolled to a stop against a tree away from the main pileup. Other than a shattered windshield, it looked more or less intact. At least until Gibson played the flashlight over the SUV—someone had used the side panels for target practice. It looked like it had been flown in from a war zone. He shone the flashlight inside, but the SUV was empty. Something caught his eye, and he opened the driver’s side door. Blood had pooled in and around the seat, shell casings glittering amid the gore. Someone had fought and died in this car. So where was the body? On a hunch, Gibson popped the trunk but found it empty too.

  Gibson checked the other vehicles. Most had taken small-arms fire, and he found plenty of blood but still no bodies. Someone had won a decisive battle at the airfield, dumped the cars down the hill, and taken all the bodies. He wondered who had come out on top and had a sinking suspicion that he knew the answer to that one. Emerson looked to have made good on his word.

  What he still didn’t know was whether Lea was alive or dead, only that she wasn’t here. And that left only one option.

  Niobe.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Not long after midnight Gibson arrived back in Niobe. He powered up the Stingray and programmed it to sniff for Lea’s cell phone. Then he rolled slowly up Tarte Street, looking for signs of life, but the town was as still as a held breath. At the liquor store, a tumbleweed dog aloof on its haunches watched him go. As the familiar outline of the Wolstenholme Hotel loomed up on his left, the Stingray began to ping, the signal strengthening as he passed the front entrance. Lea’s phone was inside. He glanced up through the glass doors into the dark of the lobby. A figure in the gloom stepped back and out of sight, or it might have been nothing but a shadow thrown by his headlights.

  The hotel’s side parking lot was deserted. As were the five spots in front of the Toproll—a first in Gibson’s experience. He parked in back beneath the stairs to Lea’s apartment, tossed his baseball cap on the dashboard, and scratched his scalp hard with both hands. No sleep in the past twenty-four hours had him feeling like a tire with no tread left.

  A cinder block propped open the Toproll’s back door. He counted that as an invitation and let himself inside. Faint music led him through the kitchen to the swinging doors that opened out to a nearly empty bar. Peering out, G
ibson saw Margo behind the bar and Old Charlie at his regular perch, keeping a lonely vigil over a shot and beer. He found the man a comforting sight.

  Gibson took a seat, and Margo came down the bar to see what he wanted.

  “Well, well. The prodigal asshole returns.”

  “Coffee,” he said. “Please.”

  She poured him a cup. “Fresh pot.”

  “Sugar?”

  She slapped a caddy down on the bar.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “No one came in tonight, so I closed early.”

  “How come?”

  “You know how come.”

  “What’s the sheriff think?”

  “Ain’t seen the sheriff all day. Jimmy Temple neither. Hotel’s been shut up tight since the fifth floor came back from wherever they went. Then the phones went out—landlines and cell. Internet too. That was two hours ago now.”

  “Is that all?” Trying to buck himself up with a lame joke.

  “And I’m stuck with him?” She pointed to Old Charlie.

  “You never had it so good,” Old Charlie muttered.

  “Lea with them?” Gibson knew they had her phone, and that probably meant they had Lea, but he would love visual confirmation before making his next move.

  “Lea quit and moved out this morning. She’s long gone.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “No,” Margo said and warmed up his coffee. “She went to the prison.”

  Gibson filled Margo in on the rest. How from the prison she’d gone to the airfield with Charles Merrick. The text messages. He described what he’d found at the bottom of the hill.

  “Why didn’t you stop her?”

  “I think there was no stopping any of us.”

  “Damn, but you’re a bunch of fools.”

  Truer words had never been spoken; still, there was a silver lining. Gibson knew the fifth floor hadn’t gotten what it had come for at the airfield. How could it? There was no money to get—Gibson having finished the job that Martin Yardas had begun years before. But Emerson wouldn’t have taken Charles Merrick at his word. They’d have to interrogate him, and that would require time and privacy. Why else come back to the hotel at all? A town this size probably had a single trunk line that handled phone and data; knocking it out had put Niobe on an island. For one night, the fifth floor owned Niobe, and that was all the time they’d need to extract their mistress’s pound of flesh. Gibson didn’t like to think about what might be happening over in the hotel. Especially since Charles Merrick couldn’t give them what she wanted.

  He needed a plan.

  “What are we gonna do?” Margo asked with a bartender’s clairvoyance.

  “Let me get a whiskey.”

  “Not sure drinking is a solution,” Margo said.

  “Actually, make it two. I’ll be right back.”

  “Now we’re cooking with gas,” Old Charlie cracked.

  Gibson went out through the kitchen to the back door, ready to win a bet with himself. Sure enough, the gray Scion idled beside the van. Behind the wheel, Gibson’s faithful shadow glowered at him. Rather than glower back, Gibson smiled. He felt a sense of admiration for Swonger. A camaraderie that surprised him, especially given all the trouble Swonger had caused him. Whatever else there was to say about Gavin Swonger, there was absolutely no quit in him. Didn’t mean that Gibson didn’t want to throttle him, and strangely that gave him sympathy for all the people in his life who wanted to throttle Gibson. An insight into what it must be like to care about him. He waved for Swonger to join him inside and went back to his two tumblers of whiskey.

  “You gonna drink both of those?” Old Charlie inquired.

  “Don’t know yet,” Gibson replied.

  After a minute, Swonger eased through the kitchen door and stood there warily. “What do you want?”

  “Talk.”

  “One point two seven billion. Nothing else to say,” Swonger said, but came over to the bar anyway.

  “Then how about you listen?”

  “Where’s the money?”

  Gibson considered the best way to answer. He’d get only one shot at convincing Swonger, who wasn’t the easiest sell on his best day. And this had been no one’s best day. It would need to be a big play if he hoped to sway Swonger. Something that would put Swonger in the frame of mind to reconsider what he thought he knew for certain.

  “Give me your gun.”

  “What for? Don’t work.”

  “I’ll give it back.”

  Swonger gave him a funny look but popped the magazine before handing over the gun. Then he took a seat at the bar next to Gibson and fidgeted nervously with the magazine. Gibson slid one of the whiskeys over to him. Swonger didn’t touch it.

  “You’ve pulled this on me three times now,” Gibson said and began to disassemble the .45. “First time, up in New York, I thought you were just dumb. You’re not, though, are you? Not by a long shot. But that thing they say about first impressions . . . well, yours stuck. Longer than it should have. And I’ve been treating you like you’re stupid longer than I should’ve. I mean, you don’t make it easy, but still, that’s on me. Second time, at the motor pool, I told you not to bring a gun, but you did anyway. That was kind of the last straw. I knew I couldn’t trust you, but I didn’t get rid of you. I just pretended like it didn’t happen and kept going. Couldn’t figure out why I did that. But I realized something today.”

  He paused and produced the firing pin and the stop from his back pocket with a street magician’s flair.

  Swonger’s face went slack. “Son of a . . . When? How?”

  “Queens.”

  Swonger did the math and didn’t like the sum of what it implied. “I been packing a busted piece since New York? That shit’s cold, dog.”

  Gibson shrugged and put the gun back together while he told Swonger what he’d learned from Martin Yardas. He told it carefully. It was a true story, but that didn’t mean it sounded true. Especially to someone who would want so desperately for it to be a lie. Who wanted to believe that their winning lottery ticket was off by one number? He finished with Martin’s suicide.

  “And then you burst in,” Gibson said.

  “You expect me to believe any of that?”

  Gibson took the magazine from Swonger’s hand. Swonger didn’t let it go immediately, but Gibson tugged it free without too much struggle. A good sign that maybe he’d gotten through to him. Margo looked on in mute disbelief as Gibson slapped the magazine back into place and racked the slide. He laid the gun on the bar and pushed it back to Swonger.

  “Oh, I can’t even with this,” Margo said and retreated to the relative safety of her office.

  Old Charlie lifted his shot in anticipation of what might come next.

  Swonger stared at it skeptically. “What’s that supposed to prove?”

  “It’s a grand gesture, Swonger. Have a little poetry?”

  Swonger picked up the .45, feeling the weight of it, studying it in search of answers. Gibson could only wait to see whether Swonger was friend, foe, or executioner.

  “Poetry, huh? I pull the trigger, it gonna fire?”

  “It’ll fire,” Gibson said, the moment of truth slinking into view.

  “You a conundrum, dog, know what I’m saying?”

  “So I’m told.”

  “So what you realize today?”

  Old Charlie tapped his shot on the bar and drank.

  Gibson smiled at Swonger. “That I could have been you. Or you could have been me.”

  Swonger looked at him quizzically. “How you figure that?”

  “If I have a billion dollars, what am I doing back in Niobe?”

  “Why’d you come back if you don’t?”

  “Lea. The fifth floor took her at the airfield. She’s up in the hotel.”

  Swonger paled, but before Gibson could elaborate, the doors to the kitchen swung wide and Deja Noble knifed through, Truck Noble tight behind her. Terry followed, along with sev
en men. All armed. All grim purpose and ruthless intent.

  “Oh, no,” Swonger said.

  “What are they doing here?”

  “I maybe called Deja.” Swonger didn’t look too happy about that decision now.

  The men fanned out across the bar, checking all the doors and corners. Two disappeared into the back room and returned a moment later to take up a post at the mouth of the hallway. One of them tried the door to Margo’s office, but the door was locked. The man listened at it for a moment and then moved on. Deja traipsed toward them, trailing her hand along the bar.

  “This town, ah-ahhh, is coming like a ghost town,” she crooned in a faux-English accent. She stopped so close to Swonger that she practically touched him. Humming the melody to the song in his ear like a lover. “What are you fixing to do with that gun, Swong?”

  “Nothing,” Swonger said, swallowing hard.

  “That’s cool, but what say you let your Deja hold on to it for you, then. For safekeeping.”

  Swonger handed it to her with far less deliberation then he had with Gibson. Not that Gibson could blame him. Truck Noble glided past like an iceberg, brushing against their backs, and took the stool beside Gibson. He lifted Gibson’s whiskey, the tumbler no larger than a thimble in his hand, and held it up to his nose. His top lip curled disapprovingly, and he put it down out of Gibson’s reach. Terry stepped up behind Gibson and searched him; down the bar, Old Charlie was getting the same treatment.

  “He’s clean,” Terry said.

  “After all this, you still out here working your MLK game?” Deja said. “Don’t get you nonviolent types.”

  “It has its advantages.”

  “Yeah? I was always more of a Malcolm X girl myself.”

  “Deja. Fellow over there staring,” Truck grumbled.

  Old Charlie had finally found something in the Toproll more fascinating than his shot and beer.