Poisonfeather (Gibson Vaughn #2)(53)

“The phone’s worthless,” he finished. “It’s just a shell.”

“You don’t know that.”

“If you go in there now, all you’re doing is tipping Merrick off. He’ll shut everything down, wait out his sentence, and disappear. You’ll kill our only shot at breaking into his communications.”

“Why? Because some white-trash ex-con says so?”

“Hey,” Swonger said, stepping forward again. “I ain’t afraid to hit a girl.”

“You ought to be.” Margo tightened her grip on the bat.

Gibson could feel the situation spinning away. If it were Lea and him, there was a chance of talking her into it. But Margo and Swonger knew only escalation, and they were headed to blows.

“I’m trying to help,” he said.

“I don’t need your help.”

“Don’t be this stubborn. You can’t afford it.”

Margo poked Gibson in the chest with the baseball bat. “You two need to get up out of here.”

Gibson shoved the bat aside. There was a moment of silence, before the four of them set to cursing each other in the street. In the heat of the moment, they all forgot where they were, and as their tempers rose so did their voices. They were all exhausted. Maybe that explained their collective stupidity.

“Would you all shut the hell up!”

They all froze and then turned slowly toward the voice. Tim Slaski was standing on his front porch in a threadbare bathrobe, squinting in their general direction.

They fell silent and stared at him, openmouthed.

“I mean, it’s four in the goddamn morning. What the hell is the matter with you?”

Gibson and Lea looked at each other. He shrugged as if to ask, What’s it gonna be? She wouldn’t even need to break in now—the lamb had come to the lion. He watched her calculate her options.

“Sorry,” she called to Slaski. “Thought there was a party out this way.”

“Ain’t no damn party. It’s four in the morning. Go on and get before I call the police.”

“Say you’re sorry,” Lea hissed at all of them.

Sheepishly, they all raised a hand and called out an apology like a group of rowdy teens.

“Never mind that, just get,” Slaski said.

“We need to talk,” Lea said to Gibson. “Now.”

“We’ll follow you,” Gibson said.

It was a relief when she agreed. He didn’t like their chances of finding their own way back to Niobe at night.




It was a tense scene back at the Toproll. The darkest part of the night was over, and Lea could see the Wolstenholme Hotel coming into focus against the sky. She waited on the street for the two men while Margo opened up the bar. It had been a long night, and they’d all think more clearly in the morning. That would be the smart move, but smart moves seemed to be in short supply tonight. She shook her head at the yelling match outside Slaski’s house. They’d all acted like clowns. She’d need to be smarter if she hoped to see this thing through. The best place to start was to learn these men’s intentions before she let them out of her sight. They were still sitting in their car, staring at her, talking. Conspiring. Get a good look, boys.

“Are you coming?”

Inside the Toproll, Margo slipped into bartender mode and put on a pot of coffee. The bar wouldn’t get mopped down until morning, and the stink of stale beer and cigarettes clung to every surface. Lea could tell Margo was still adjusting to the shift in the nature of their relationship. The boss had become the employee, and Lea wondered if she’d been wrong to mix Margo up in all this. She’d always had a gift for bringing people around to her point of view, and Margo’s financial difficulties had made her an easy convert. But maybe this was one time that she should have left well enough alone. What had once seemed a complex but fairly linear puzzle was branching out of her control.

She watched two of those branches enter the bar. The skinny, tattooed one slipped behind the bar to pour himself a beer, but Margo shooed him away. He retreated grumpily to a barstool and sat staring at the row of taps. His companion stood silently at the door watching her, watching her like some microbe at the far end of a microscope. She didn’t care for it.

“You really screwed us back there.”

“I saved you.”

She’d expected him to yell, try to intimidate her, but his voice was calm and considered; it surprised her, and that angered her still more.

“The hell you did. Slaski is burned. He saw our faces.”

He shook his head. “Slaski wears contacts.”

“Contacts? And you know this how?”

“He was squinting. When he came out on the porch, he was squinting because he couldn’t make us out. We were blurs to him.”

“Oh, bullshit.”

“Hey,” he called over to the bar. “It’s a small town. Would Slaski know you if he saw you?”

“Yeah, he would,” Margo confirmed.

“But he didn’t. You’re fine,” he said, turning back to Lea. “So if you want to go back there later that’s your call. Now, can we talk?” He looked at his partner, then Margo. “Just you and me, for now.”

Lea led him through the back room to Parker’s booth. Hopefully Margo wouldn’t curb stomp his little friend in the meantime.