Poisonfeather (Gibson Vaughn #2)(57)

“Whoa, that even legal?”

“Not for civilian purchase. Government use only.”

“And we need this thing?” Lea said.

Gibson nodded. “It’s the only way, but there’s no way we’re getting ahold of one.” He gave them the price tag.

Swonger whistled. “Dog, you don’t think small.”

“It would have been ideal, but there’s just no way. We’re just going to have to go back to Lea’s plan. Figure out a way to take the SIM card off Merrick without him knowing. Maybe Parker could—”

“I’m telling you, ain’t no way that’s gonna work,” Swonger interrupted. “Merrick will keep it close. Probably sewn into the hem of his blues so if he gets searched, he can snap it in half just as a precaution. Easier to get another one down the road. All this time and Merrick never been caught with it on him? Then he real careful.”

“I agree with Gavin,” Lea said. “There has to be another way.”

Gavin? Gibson braced for the inevitable tirade from Swonger about his name, but none came. Instead, Swonger seemed pleased to have his opinion taken seriously.

“The only other way’s the Stingray,” said Gibson.

Swonger asked if he was absolutely sure the Stingray would work.

“Yeah. I’d need to make some modifications, but it’d work.”

“Let me make a call,” Swonger said. “Maybe I know a guy.”

“Who?”

“My boy Truck.”

“Truck?”

“Truck Noble.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR


Seemed Truck Noble ran a crew out of Virginia Beach and wasn’t much for crossing state lines without good reason—the best coming in stacks of green. Unfortunately, cash was in short supply, and Truck Noble wasn’t interested in any kind of layaway plan. Appeals to his friendship with Swonger didn’t do much to move the needle either. Still, Swonger swore he could convince Noble to meet them.

“I just need a little more time. Truck and me, we go back.”

“Not far enough,” Gibson observed.

“Hey, how about you go to hell?”

Gibson went back to combing through dark-net sites without any luck.

Their new routine was to meet in Lea’s apartment above the Toproll every night after her shift to recap their progress. It didn’t make for long conversations. They were getting nowhere but fed up. Lea and Gibson were both losing faith in the mythical Truck Noble. Instead, they spent more and more of their time trying to scheme ways to get Merrick’s SIM card, which largely consisted of Lea and Gibson drawing up a plan to take it from Merrick in the prison, and Swonger shooting holes in it. Cue another argument.

But the real source of tension looming down over them all was the mysterious guest of the hotel’s fifth floor. No one in town had the first idea about who was up there. Well, Jimmy Temple knew, but he’d made his deal with the devil and wasn’t saying. However, his demeanor painted a grim picture, having turned jumpy, eyes red-rimmed, a white stubble settling across his jowls, as if sleep wasn’t coming so easy these days. The look of a good man who knew more than he cared to know. Even housekeeping had been banished from the fifth floor. Meals were delivered by the phalanx of bodyguards, who also collected fresh sheets and towels each morning.

In a town devoid of juicy gossip, the fifth floor had become the lead story. There was a sense of personal affront that an entire hotel floor had been booked for one guest. That kind of excess served only to remind Niobe of its own perpetual insolvency, stirring resentment. Resentment and curiosity as the identity of the guest on the fifth floor festered in the imagination of Niobe. And, as any good horror-film fan knew, the human imagination was its own worst enemy.

Most nights at the Toproll featured drunken talk of confronting the bodyguards and demanding an explanation, but whenever the bodyguards came around, the tough talkers made themselves scarce. The bodyguards favored the booth by the door, and anyone sitting there would vacate spontaneously when they arrived, the bar muted and sullen until they departed. One more thing in town the visitors in Niobe owned.

Gibson wasn’t surprised at the town’s reaction: the bodyguards gave off a professional, not-to-be-messed-with vibe and were definitely not in the question-answering business. Gibson felt hostile eyes on him too and had stopped visiting the Toproll except after hours. He might not be from the fifth floor, but he also didn’t belong, and, like white blood cells, the locals felt an indiscriminate need to excise any and all foreign bodies from their midst. Bottom line, the tension building in Niobe needed an outlet. There had been a steady uptick in the number of bar fights, petty theft, and domestic violence calls, and the drunk tank was standing room only most nights.

Niobe sheriff Fred Blake was a thin white man in his late sixties whose defining characteristic was a certain world-weariness. His default expression was the almost-imperceptible shake of the head of a man who couldn’t quite believe the incompetence surrounding him. Despite being a sheriff’s department of one, Fred moved at his own pace and of his own volition. If the town didn’t like it, they could get off their asses and hire him some deputies. So far the town hadn’t taken him up on his challenge. Thirty years in the Army as a transportation-management coordinator clearly informed his philosophy about law enforcement. His job was to keep the town running. Some town sheriffs resented outside interference, but according to Margo, Fred Blake was the first one on the phone to the state police on the rare occasions that something outside his typical purview occurred. Unfortunately, a full drunk tank didn’t warrant a call to the staties. So what to do? The sheriff had gone so far as to contemplate an outright shuttering of the Toproll for a week until people settled the hell down. That had not gone over well.