Poisonfeather (Gibson Vaughn #2)(90)
You were right.
There was nothing else to say.
Lea watched as the convoy crossed the airfield and disappeared down the hill. When they were out of sight, the scavengers that had been lying patiently in wait for the lions to abandon the carcass turned their attention to the Merricks. Lea walked back toward her parents. If they were to die, they would die together.
The first gunshot sounded like a handclap in the distance. The night quieted itself, curious to see what came next. Then another. And another. And then it was a string of fireworks, dancing in the street. Ogden crouched beside her father. Lea knelt beside her mother, who was using a suitcase as a shield. She thought about drawing her pistol, but at this range it would be like throwing pebbles into the wind. They huddled together behind the luggage and listened to the gunfire and breaking glass. It wasn’t until the first screams drifted across the airfield that Lea realized that no one was shooting at her. They were killing each other over there. Whatever unofficial truce existed among them had run out the moment the security team left, and they were fighting it out for the right to claim the Merricks.
At this distance, it all seemed like an abstraction, the muzzle flashes oddly beautiful in the night. The entire skirmish ended in a matter of moments. A final volley and then nothing but the odd gunshot. A few stray vehicles fled. Men moved among the remaining cars and settled up with the wounded or the dying. Her mother tried to take her hand, but Lea wrenched it out of her grip. The time for pretending was over. Across the airfield, two vehicles separated from the pack and sped toward them.
The bill had finally come due.
THE GIANT, CRAZY BIRD
Don’t you know about the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage, unaware that it was incapable of stopping it? Such was the high opinion it had of its talents.
—Zhuang Zhou
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Time to get out of West Virginia. Get out. Get out. Get out. He’d thought of nothing else since Swonger tried to gun him down with his busted .45. Get out, stay out. First things first, though. Gibson needed to lose the van. He didn’t want to take it back into Virginia. A bus stop in Morgantown behind the West Virginia University Hospital would be a good dump site. He could wipe it down, catch a Greyhound for DC, and put miles between himself and Niobe, West Virginia.
He drove as fast as he dared—seven or eight miles above the speed limit. With each set of headlights that came around the bend, Gibson saw Martin Yardas’s ghoulish face pleading up at him for forgiveness or mercy. Whatever salve the dying believed would ease their final moments. The smell of that grim room clung to the roof of his mouth no matter how much water he guzzled. The sound of the .45’s hammer falling, and the split second when he’d forgotten the firing pin in his pocket and believed his destiny lay beside Martin Yardas.
Go home. While there’s still time.
Was there still time?
A bug the size of a small bird splattered off the windshield. Gibson jerked the steering wheel so hard the van wobbled into oncoming traffic. He straightened out the van and tried to shake it off, forcing out a dead-battery laugh. Then he pumped wiper fluid onto the windshield until the bug was nothing but a streak at the edge of his vision.
Driving north and east, he felt the confusion of a pilot who’d fallen asleep at the stick and, emerging from a thick cloudbank to unfamiliar terrain, realized he was horribly off course. Far from home. He had no idea how he’d let this happen . . . except that wasn’t the truth, was it? He knew exactly how it had happened. After all, he was the one who’d been on autopilot, and it was hardly the first time. That was the worst part—how familiar this all felt. Once again, he’d muted the responsible part of his brain, the part that understood consequence and in theory knew better. He’d done it as a teenager so he could go after Benjamin Lombard, again in Atlanta, and now, older and supposedly wiser, he’d done it yet again. Muted it so that he could do what he wanted. Well, it wasn’t muted now, and it had a lot of catching up to do. So he drove along in silence while, in his head, he caught a damn good tongue-lashing.
Where to start? He’d fled his responsibilities at home to right a wrong for a man who had told him explicitly to stay away. He could dress it up as noble, but maybe he’d done it for selfish reasons. This was exactly the kind of father that he swore he wouldn’t be. He saw that now. And for what? Nicole had probably run his visitation rights through a shredder by this point. No doubt exactly what she’d left the message to tell him—to stay away—and how could he blame her? He never had listened to it, but feeling masochistic, he hit play and held the phone to his ear. His ex-wife’s voice was weary but calm:
“Figured you wouldn’t answer. Listen. I shouldn’t have said what I said. I’m not going to apologize, but I shouldn’t have said it. And I didn’t mean it. Not all of it. I was angry; I was frustrated. I couldn’t take any more. Even if I know where it comes from. I know you. I know how you beat yourself up. I know how badly you wanted that job, and I know you think you’ve let us down. But we’re okay. Ellie is okay. She doesn’t care what kind of job you have. So come back from whatever you’ve run off to do. It makes me nervous that even Toby doesn’t know. Now quit being an asshole and come back before it really is too late.”
The message ended, and Gibson threw the phone into the passenger seat. Don’t start, he warned the voice in his head but then berated himself anyway, using language that would have made his drill instructors in boot camp proud. Thoughts of home pushed the van up to seventy-five, but he quickly took his foot off the gas. It would be the height of stupidity to get pulled over now. Getting home was the important thing, not how fast.