Poisonfeather (Gibson Vaughn #2)(85)

Gibson didn’t think so. Yardas wanted to tell him, but he needed permission.

“I won’t tell him that you told me. I promise. It’ll be our secret.”

“Our secret?” Yardas repeated.

“It’s not his money. You know that.”

Giggles burbled up again from the cracks in Martin Yardas as if Gibson had unwittingly told a profound joke. Gibson saw tears coursing down his cheeks.

“Why don’t you tell me?” Gibson asked. “What’s the password?”

The giggling faded to silence, and Gibson watched Yardas struggle to his feet. The man wasn’t well, but he wasn’t as weak as he looked. He shuffled over to the computer, leaned over Gibson’s shoulder, blocking Gibson’s view, and quickly typed a long string of characters. Yardas hit enter and drew back to show Gibson.

He was laughing and crying again.




It must have been a strange sight: this ragtag motorcade snaking its lazy way through West Virginia. Her father’s rented security at the fore, pursued by God only knew who. If you could call it pursuit. Everyone driving responsibly below the speed limit, obeying all posted traffic signs—not willing to risk police interference. It lent the proceedings an illusion of peacefulness that Lea wanted desperately to believe, but she sat facing backward and in the gathering twilight could see the long line of cars come for revenge. There would be no peace today.

Not all the cars from the prison were behind them now—some had, no doubt, assessed the competition, calculated the long odds, and decided that dead was too high a price to pay for Merrick’s scalp. Part of Lea wished that she’d been one of those, because judging by what she saw out the rear window, more than enough remained to see the job through. Didn’t the hearse lead the way in a funeral procession? That’s what this felt like—Charles Merrick’s funeral. Because whenever they got to where they were going, the cars trailing behind planned on burying him.

Lea sat squeezed in between two men. To her left, a fearsome, heavily bearded white man made all the more intimidating by the military chest rig and combat rifle wedged between his legs. He had the kind of beard that food disappeared into, never to be seen again until the ants retrieved it. The man hadn’t spoken or acknowledged anyone, his attention absorbed by the chatter coming in over his headset. To her right, a pensive black man with a troubled expression fidgeted with a cell phone, checking the time every few seconds. Lea feared he might see the Walther holstered between her legs; she crossed her legs away from him.

Her parents, on the other hand, sat comfortably side by side at the back of the limo and appeared entirely oblivious to the situation. They carried on as though this were Central Park and heavy traffic on the Sixty-Fifth Street Transverse were keeping them from the Metropolitan Opera. Lea squinted into the fading sun and studied the former husband and wife. Charles Merrick certainly didn’t look like a man just out of prison, and eight years had done nothing to dull his shine. The years had been less kind to her mother, and it angered Lea to see her alongside him. She had always been a slight woman, but now she verged on a sinewy, self-inflicted gauntness. Her features had gone from sharp to severe, the tautness of her skin no longer a sign of youth but of will. Veronica Merrick had never lacked for that.

Lea also found it disquieting how familiar this all felt: riding in a limo while her parents bickered without ever quite fighting. Separated eight years, they’d resumed the tense cold war that had defined their marriage without missing a beat. It left Lea with a terrible feeling of emotional déjà vu that made it impossible to keep up her ruse that she was the sweet, na?ve daughter just happy to be reunited with her father. She felt the pantomimed smile plastered to her face slipping.

“Is she all right?” her father asked her mother.

“She’s upset,” Veronica said.

“Oh, do you think?” Merrick said dryly. “Poor girl is obviously in shock. We should have told her a long time ago.”

“Told me what?” Lea interrupted to no effect.

“You know we couldn’t.”

“Where has she been all this time?” Charles asked.

“I honestly don’t know.”

“I’m sure you don’t.”

“Tell me what?” demanded Lea.

She’d have bet money on all four Beatles reuniting before seeing her parents partnered up in any manner. Charles and Veronica Merrick despised each other. That was the bedrock on which Lea had anchored her worldview. The basis for all her decisions. Her parents’ divorce had scorched the earth and laid ruin to any pretense of civility between them. Her father had betrayed his wife, humiliated his family, and left them all destitute. That was indisputable—the reason Lea had come to Niobe. To avenge her mother. To set things right and see her father punished. Yet here they were, discussing her as though she weren’t there. A terrible thought occurred to her.

“Are you two . . . together?”

Her parents stared at her as though she’d just appeared through a wormhole. Her mother’s face crinkled into one of her patronizing smiles that passed for laughter.

“Oh, darling, no. Absolutely not. Your father is still a disgrace.”

“Thank you, Veronica,” Charles said and turned to Lea. “Your mother and I have an arrangement.”

“What arrangement? And who are these men?”