Poisonfeather (Gibson Vaughn #2)(76)

They didn’t talk about it again after that. In her downtime, Lea continued parsing through Merrick’s text messages, hoping to decipher all of his instructions. She made notes in pencil, keeping a running tally when she wasn’t researching stocks on her phone. Slow going, but she made steady progress, becoming more and more excited as her list grew. Gibson and Swonger were both dying of curiosity, but Lea seemed content to let them die. It was Gibson’s shift when Lea finally finished her calculations.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”

“How much?” Gibson asked.

“Yeah, how much?” Swonger asked.

“One point two seven billion. US.”

Gibson caught a glimpse of Swonger in the rearview mirror and saw the exact moment that his brain fused to the top of his skull. Swonger began to whoop and drum the roof of the van with his palms.

“No. Your math has to be wrong,” Gibson said.

“I’m telling you, I did it five times. One point two seven billion.” Lea held up her worksheet for him to see as if he could check it while driving.

“There is no conceivable way that the Justice Department missed one point two seven billion,” Gibson said. “It’s just not possible.”

“Maybe it wasn’t that much when they arrested him?”

“Maybe Justice just ain’t all that?” Swonger suggested.

“Or maybe they didn’t miss it,” Gibson mused under his breath. He had been wondering how Merrick had pled out to such a short sentence. Could there be more at play here than a Wall Street crook with a big mouth?

“You think he made some kind of deal?” Lea asked.

“It would explain a lot.”

“What could he have that the feds would want?”

“You’re asking us?” Gibson said.

Gibson didn’t know, but assuming the fisherman knew as much as they did, he must have wanted something pretty important in order to pass up $1.27 billion. It made him question exactly whom he had gotten into bed with. He brooded on that as he drove on. Glancing over, Lea looked troubled about it too. Of the three, only Swonger seemed in good spirits about the news and babbled excitedly about it.

Lea’s discovery changed the tenor of the wardrive instantly. The hypothetical had become a one followed by nine very real zeros. And now that the stakes were known, the pressure was on and the tension began to mount. No more music; they drove in silence, and every day that the Stingray remained idle brought more backbiting among them. Four days before Merrick’s release, Swonger raised the idea of Lea calling the number again and digging for more information. Gibson shut him down. It was a nonstarter, as far as he was concerned; going back to that well would almost certainly spook their target. But the idea came up with increasing frequency as Merrick’s release drew closer, and even Lea began warming to the concept.

Still, they kept crossing grids off their list, kept shrinking the remaining map. Gibson had lost track of the one-gas-station towns that they’d stopped in. Mostly because Swonger had a bladder the size of a leaky teacup. At one pit stop, they both had to go. In the empty restroom, Swonger sidled up to the urinal beside Gibson—in clear violation of every unspoken rule of men’s room etiquette. Gibson glanced over at Swonger, who was staring down thoughtfully.

“You circumcised?”

“What the hell, Swonger?”

“I am. Strange thing to do to a kid, know what I’m saying? I mean it’s weird. Like who was the first dude to look at a baby and think, yeah, I’ll just take a little off the top? What’s that about? And it was a long-ass time ago. Like BC. So weren’t no scalpels. They were taking like flinty rocks to their baby boys’ business. No Bactine neither. Nobody even knew there was such a thing as a germ until like the nineteenth century. I mean, it’s hard enough out there for a baby in olden times without dying over some infected junk. And for what? Ain’t no purpose to it.”

“What is your point?”

“Just saying. People can talk themselves into almost anything being a good idea.”

“We’ll find him,” Gibson said, sounding far less confident than he’d intended.

The day before Merrick’s release, Gibson drove nonstop for ten hours, exhausting the largest remaining grid. That left only nine more grids to cover, but when he turned the steering wheel over to Lea, it was already past noon. Gibson calculated that they had time to cover only four of the remaining grids before Merrick walked free. Not great odds, but they would ride this bet out to the bitter end. He climbed onto the cot, put in a pair of earplugs, and was asleep before the van left the gas station.

Gibson’s body felt the van come to a stop and woke him from a guilty dream about his daughter. The van doors slammed shut. He sat up and stretched his aching back. Nighttime—how long had he slept? He climbed out of the van to find himself in front of Margo’s garage back in Niobe. Lea and Swonger stood together at the top of the driveway, watching him.

“What are we doing back here?”

“It’s futile,” Lea said. “We agreed.”

“Oh, did we? Did we agree?”

“You were being unreasonable, so Gavin and I took a vote.”

“While I was sleeping.”

“Majority ruled, dog.”

“I’m not your dog, Gavin. This was still our best chance.”