CHAPTER NINETEEN
“He’s alive?” Gibson asked.
Invoking the name of George Abe felt like a lure. Something Calista knew that he cared about enough to hear her out. She wasn’t wrong. He’d more or less written off George after Jenn Charles had disappeared, but the mere mention of George’s name sparked hope.
“More than that,” Calista said, “I know who has him.”
“Where is he?”
“That, I do not know,” she replied.
“I knew it—” Gibson began.
Calista cut him off. “But, I do know where he will be in eight days.”
Gibson sat down on the couch. She had his attention now, but he reminded himself to trust nothing that this woman said. Some of it would be true; she always built her deceptions on an honest foundation, but mixed in, often in plain sight, would be the lies and half-truths that masked her agenda. Whatever story she told him, it wouldn’t be the whole picture. If he found himself believing her, he had only to remind himself that it had been Calista Dauplaise who had sent him after Bear despite knowing, from the very beginning, exactly where to find her.
“If you know where he’ll be, what do you need me for? It’s not as if you’re short of goons, and we don’t exactly trust each other.”
“We certainly do not.”
“So you can see where I might find that suspicious?”
Calista smiled. “Uncouth though you may be, you are a clever boy.”
“And how did that work out for you the last time?”
“Poorly,” Calista admitted.
“So what am I really doing here?”
“Any effort to free George Abe cannot be seen as coming from me.”
Gibson understood Calista’s angle now. He represented the perfect cover. Given their history, no one in their right mind would suspect they’d ever work together, and his personal relationship with George would both offer an explanation of his motives and also deflect attention away from her. Textbook Calista Dauplaise. He might be a clever boy, but she operated on an entirely different level.
“I saw all your new security. What are you afraid of, Calista?”
She pursed her lips as if tasting something that had spoiled. “Colonel Titus Stonewall Eskridge Jr.”
“That cannot be a real person.”
“Ordinarily, I would be inclined to agree with you.”
“So who is he?”
“He is the CEO of Cold Harbor. A PMC—a private military contractor—”
“I know what a PMC is.”
“Of course. Well, Cold Harbor is an especially unscrupulous one. No mean feat. Are you familiar with the organization?”
Only by reputation. And it was an ugly one. Cold Harbor was known as a small but ruthless outfit that took jobs other PMCs wouldn’t touch. Took on clients that the United Nations would’ve preferred to see on trial in the Hague. In fact, if he remembered correctly, a couple of incidents in Africa had put Cold Harbor on the Hague’s radar.
But none of what Gibson knew about Cold Harbor was current. Back when he’d served in the Marines, the Joint Chiefs had leaned on PMCs to an unprecedented degree. At least until Blackwater drove into Nisour Square in 2007. Since then, the Pentagon had retrenched its thinking on the wisdom of unleashing mercenaries over whom they exerted little operational control.
“If I am,” Gibson said, “I don’t remember.”
“Oh, no, I will wager that you do. Colonel Eskridge was a close friend of the former vice president. Do you recall the men who attempted to seize you at the lake house in Pennsylvania?”
Gibson remembered only too well. Holed up with Jenn and Dan Hendricks in a house on Lake Erie, trying to piece together their next move. In Washington, George Abe had been arrested. Then men claiming to be FBI had rolled up to the lake house. All hell had broken loose, Jenn and Hendricks holding them off despite being hopelessly outgunned. Billy Casper had caught a bullet. It still amazed Gibson that any of them had survived the firefight.
Calista said, “They were Cold Harbor, working at the behest of Vice President Lombard.”
“So Cold Harbor also took George?”
“And have held him ever since.”
“Why would they keep him alive after Lombard committed suicide in Atlanta?” Gibson hung air quotes around “committed suicide.” “Seems like an unnecessary risk.”
“Ah, well, therein lies the rub. You see, dear Jennifer Charles shot and killed the leader of the Cold Harbor team.”
“They all died one way or another.”
“True, but that particular man’s name was Titus Stonewall Eskridge the Third.”
“Oh,” Gibson said, fitting that into the puzzle. It was funny how one missing fact could change an entire narrative. “So Eskridge is taking it out on George?”
“Oh, heavens no. George is merely bait.”
“For Jenn.”
“Eskridge wants her quite badly. However, from what I gather, Jennifer Charles is a rather gifted operative, and despite his best efforts, he has yet to corner her. So they persist in this game of cat and mouse. She has made several audacious, if failed, attempts to liberate George while inflicting not inconsiderable damage to his organization over the last two years.”
“How has this not made the news?”
“For the same reason that the catastrophe at the lake house went uninvestigated—Eskridge has gone to elaborate lengths to clean up after Jenn Charles. He has no interest in involving the authorities. Should he catch her, justice will be meted out in extremely personal terms. I shouldn’t like to think about it. His thirst for revenge has quite unbalanced him.” Calista paused just long enough for Gibson to wonder who she meant. “If you ask me, the entire affair has unflattering undertones of Moby Dick.”
If true, Eskridge was messing with the wrong woman. Gibson smiled inwardly at the thought of Jenn Charles waging a one-woman war to free George Abe. It at least explained why she had been off the grid all this time. Still, he couldn’t see how this served Calista’s self-interests, and self-interests were the only interests that mattered to this woman.
“So what’s Eskridge got on you?”
Calista smiled. “Prescient as ever. Colonel Eskridge has Benjamin Lombard over me. Several rather damning recordings, in point of fact. He and I differed considerably in our vision of the vice president’s future, and Eskridge blames me for spoiling his plans. In a fit of pique, he threatened to release them after Benjamin took his own life—expose everything to ruin me.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“Because Colonel Eskridge is a pragmatic animal, or at least he was at the time. I helped him reconsider and see how valuable my connections in Washington could be to his business interests now that his patron was deceased.”
“You cut a deal with Eskridge.”
“Yes. A deal most unfavorable to myself, but the best I could hope for, given my tenuous bargaining position. It is an arrangement that I have tolerated for two years, however . . .” Calista paused to arrange her words. “Circumstances have changed, and my arrangement with Colonel Eskridge is no longer tenable.”
“How have circumstances changed?” Gibson asked.
“That is not your concern apart from the opportunity it presents vis-à-vis George.”
“Poor, dear George.”
“Precisely,” Calista agreed. “Colonel Eskridge has realized that the United States is no longer hospitable to his brand of PMC. He is in the process of relocating his operation to more permissive climes. Every two weeks, a Cold Harbor transport delivers personnel and equipment to Cold Harbor’s new base of operations in North Africa.”
“So? What does this have to do with George?”
“In eight days, George will be on that flight. Eskridge feels it will be easier to see Jenn Charles coming from Africa. Frankly, I think that girl has his number, but he’s not short of confidence despite all evidence to the contrary.” Calista added a thought: “In any case, this move to Africa will a
lmost surely mean the end of poor, dear George.”
“And how does this advance your cause? It’s sure not poor, dear George’s well-being.”
“Well, no, that is your cause,” Calista allowed. “But so long as George can be convinced to keep the peace, then I am willing to let bygones be bygones. Suzanne Lombard’s affairs have been resolved in the best interests of all involved, and I have moved on from it.” Calista paused to sip her tea. “My stake is Colonel Eskridge. You get George and simultaneously end the need for Jenn Charles to carry out a suicide mission in Africa. I get the plane. Or rather, what is on the plane.”
“And what is on the plane?”
“That I do not know. But judging by the secrecy around it, Colonel Eskridge is swimming in very murky waters once more. I intend to see he drowns in them.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I need you to assist my operative—”
“Operative?” Gibson interrupted sharply. If she thought he would work with the man who had killed his father and tried to hang Gibson, she was out of her damned mind.
She anticipated his concern. “No, it is not him. He has not worked for me since Atlanta. I simply need someone with your skill set to consult on this operation.”
“What exactly is the objective of this operation?”
“I need the plane and its contents taken before it leaves US airspace.” She said it as though it would be no harder than lifting the key to a gas-station restroom. And in eight days, no less.
“Is that all?” Gibson said incredulously.
“My confidence is commensurate to your abilities. Now, I think it best that you meet with my operative, who is waiting and will elaborate.” Calista pressed a call button, and the door opened, her secretary filling it amply.
“Hold on,” Gibson said. “Even if any of this is true, what makes you think I’d work for you again?”
“Self-preservation, Mr. Vaughn.”
“We have a deal.”
“This is a separate deal.”
“How so?”
“Because the CIA is offering a substantial reward for information concerning the whereabouts of their missing man, and I have this.”
Calista opened a manila folder and showed Gibson a photograph of him dragging Damon Ogden toward the power plant.
Whatever else might be true, Gibson admired Calista’s discipline. Most people wouldn’t have known to hold their trump card until the end. She’d allowed him to believe he controlled his fate. Believe that their conversation had been a negotiation rather than what it proved to be—a capitulation.
In a daze, he trailed Cools and Sidhu back down the long hall of Colline. His chaperones bundled him back into the SUV, and twenty minutes later, Gibson still felt like a boxer describing a knockout punch he hadn’t seen coming. He couldn’t even call it a sucker punch. After all, he’d prepped himself to be on his toes with Calista, and she’d still blindsided him with ease. What the hell was he going to do now? Besides exactly what he was told.
“Never fails,” Cools said. “They go in her office all tough and come out like spring lambs.”
“He wasn’t that tough to begin with,” Sidhu said.
Cools’s bulldog eyes considered Gibson in the rearview mirror. “That true, sweetheart? Were you ever tough?”
When Gibson didn’t answer, Sidhu turned around in his seat. “What? Don’t feel like cursing at me now?”
He really didn’t.
“Where are we going?” Gibson asked.
“Reston. You have a meeting,” Cools said.
Right, with Calista’s operative—Gibson remembered now. He’d been a little distracted by Calista blowing up his fantasy that he’d gotten away with taking Ogden. When in fact, he’d signed over the deed to his freedom to the most dangerous person he’d ever met. Even if Gibson delivered his end, chances were that Calista would still feed him to the CIA. She’d said she needed to tidy up her affairs. Gibson certainly qualified as a mess. But he didn’t see any choice but to play along for now. Hopefully something would come to him. How those chickens did love to roost.
Reston, Virginia, was an edge city founded in 1964, but hadn’t boomed until 1984, when the Dulles Toll Road was finished. When Gibson had been a kid, this had still been mostly farmland. Those days were over. Reston Town Center was about thirty minutes west of Washington, near Dulles International Airport. The thirty minutes depended on the roads being absolutely clear, which they almost never were. At rush hour, it could easily take an hour and a half.
Cools turned off into a newish development with underdeveloped trees that made the cookie-cutter houses appear even larger than they already were. There was a sameness to the landscape, and the street signs were still on back order. It made navigation tricky. Twice they stopped at the wrong house. Third time was the charm, and Cools pulled to the curb and threw the SUV confidently into park.
“Ring the bell,” Sidhu advised.
“Aren’t you coming in?”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” Cools said with a cold laugh. “We’re not welcome.”
Gibson looked up at the house uncertainly. It felt like a setup.
“Off you go. There’s a good boy.”
Gibson went up the walk to the house. He felt like a virgin who’d been led to the lip of a volcano. The front door sat under a small covered overhang; he rang the doorbell and stepped back into the sunshine. Seconds ticked by. He glanced back at the SUV, where his chaperones still watched. His bad feeling became a dreadful certainty that he was one of Calista’s affairs about to be tidied up. He tensed at the sound of approaching footfalls, preparing to flee.
Then the damnedest thing happened.
Jenn Charles opened the door.
She looked different. They both did, of course, but Jenn looked deliberately different. Her eyes were a different color, and her black hair had been dyed blonde and cut short. Like a wolf in a lean winter, she’d shed pounds, and it showed in her face. She stood there in the doorway, letting him grapple with his surprise. Which he did by saying the dumbest thing that came to mind—simply to have something to say.
“Jenn?”
“Hi, Gibson.”
“Jenn?”
“Surprise.”
That was putting it mildly. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“I know you have,” she said with a weary smile.
“And you’re in Reston?”
“You should come inside,” she suggested. “Where it’s warm.”
It seemed a good idea, so he did.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jenn led Gibson back to a kitchen that flowed into a great room. Everything was king-size, from the wall-mounted television to the overstuffed couches and plush armchairs. The artwork looked as if it had been stolen from the lobby of an Indianapolis Hilton, and there were enough small pillows strewn about to build a scale replica of Stonehenge. Animal prints had made a comeback while he’d been locked away. The entire house smelled like a commercial for air fresheners—some man-made approximation of a glacial spring. A fire crackled cozily in a broad stone fireplace. This was all wrong. Jenn didn’t belong here, in some subdivision in Reston, Virginia. It felt like stumbling across Amelia Earhart collecting tolls on the New Jersey Turnpike.
“Whose house is this?” Gibson asked.
“Airbnb.”
“Oh, this is so weird.”
“Coffee?” she asked and then turned away without waiting for an answer.
The first thing Gibson had ever noticed about Jenn Charles was her grace. She was calmer with a gun pointed at her than most people were tucked safely in bed. So the tremor in her hand when she poured the coffee caught him by surprise and made him a little sad. A reminder that change ran far deeper than the cosmetic.
“How long have you been here?”
“Couple of days.”
“And before that?”
Jenn thought about it and shrugged. “Somewhere else.”
�
��Yeah, me too.”
They sipped their coffee uneasily, aware of wandering into a minefield that neither felt eager to explore.
“I should have gone with you,” he said. “In Atlanta. I shouldn’t have let you go after George by yourself.”
“Let me?” She arched an eyebrow.
“I mean, we should have stuck together.”
“Well, we didn’t,” she replied without it being an accusation. A simple statement of fact. She ran her fingers through her hair and rubbed the back of her neck. “Honestly, I didn’t think it would be this hard.”
“Still . . .” He appreciated her exonerating him, but it fell on guilt’s deaf ears.
Jenn saw it in his face and came around the counter. She hugged him. His hands went around her, and he clung to her gratefully, ignoring the gun tucked against the small of her back.
“Why didn’t you ask for my help?” he asked.
“Because you were doing well. Dan said that you had a good job lined up and that things were turning around for you. I didn’t want to jeopardize that.”
“Wait.” Gibson stepped back. “When were you in touch with Hendricks?”
It was Jenn’s turn to look guilty. “From the beginning.”
“From the beginning beginning? Since Atlanta?”
Jenn nodded.
“Son of a bitch,” Gibson said. “Son of a bitch.” He kept saying it, hoping he’d start to feel less of a fool. It didn’t help. All those phone calls had been nothing but a smoke screen. Hendricks had known all along that Jenn was alive and had left Gibson in the dark. “I’m going to kill him.”
“Gibson,” Jenn said. “Gibson. No, it’s not Dan’s fault. I told him to stand down. It was my call.”
He picked up his mug and slammed it back down on the counter, slopping coffee everywhere. “Why? I thought you were dead, or worse. Do you really trust me that little?”
“That’s not it,” Jenn said. “That’s not it at all.”
“Do you know how much time I spent looking for you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Then what the hell?”
Jenn sighed. “Because I knew you’d try to help, and I didn’t want it.”
Cold Harbor (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 3) Page 15