Cold Harbor (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 3)

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  Damon Washburn.

  In his heart, Gibson knew that if the CIA agent hadn’t imprisoned him, without due process, he would have been here to stop the arsonist, or at least to draw the threat toward himself instead of Nicole and Ellie.

  Damon Washburn would answer for that.

  Somewhere, Damon Washburn was living his life, having scraped Gibson off the heel of his shoe. That would change now. Gibson wanted Damon Washburn to think about him as much as he thought about Damon Washburn.

  Toby appeared in the kitchen. He held a watch. It looked expensive. Toby looked at Gibson quizzically and held it out to him.

  “It was among your dirty clothes. Does it belong to you?”

  Gibson took the watch and looked at it. He’d found it in the hallway of the fifth floor of the Wolstenholme Hotel in Niobe. It had been a chaotic, bloody scene, and he’d put it in his pocket without much thought. It must still have been there when Damon Washburn seized him at the airfield. Gibson looked at it now. It looked expensive, but Gibson was no judge of such things. He remembered there’d been an engraved inscription on the back. Turning it over in his hand, he read, “Merrick Capital 1996–2006.” Duke’s revenge on Damon Washburn came with a price tag, and the watch would fetch good money from a collector. Problem solved. Gibson smiled to himself. There was a perverse symmetry to Charles Merrick bankrolling his plans for Damon Washburn.

  “Can I borrow a car tomorrow?” Gibson asked Toby.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “I think I need a trim,” he said.

  “Well, maybe just a little off the top anyway,” Toby deadpanned. “I think that can be arranged.”

  Gibson thanked him, and Toby went back to his housework.

  Duke stepped into view. “Are you finally ready to do what needs doing?”

  Gibson said, “Why didn’t you warn me about Nicole?”

  “Kid, all I’ve done is warn you. You had to see for yourself.”

  “You’re a son of a bitch.”

  “One of us has to be,” Duke said.

  “You really think it will change things?”

  “You’ll be a whole new man.”

  “All right,” Gibson said, capitulating.

  “Say his name.”

  “Damon Washburn.”

  “That’s right,” said Duke. “Now make him remember you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Gibson passed another night on the floor, lights on. In the morning, he found a laundry basket of clean clothes outside his bedroom door. An old winter coat and sweater hung from the doorknob. Toby had left him a note along with car keys and a hundred dollars. The note advised him to bundle up and listed the address of a barbershop. At the bottom, the note read, “Come and give Sana a hug when you look presentable. She sends her love.”

  As he weighed his options for the future, Toby and Sana made a compelling argument for rejoining the human race. Just as Damon Washburn made the case for scrubbing his hands of the whole miserable experiment. Unfortunately, as much as he admired the Kalpars, he wasn’t like them. And of the two paths, only Damon Washburn gave Gibson a sense of purpose.

  Gibson would thank Washburn for that when he saw him.

  He turned over Toby’s note and wrote a list of errands. Everything he’d need to begin his hunt. Step one: even if he no longer felt at home in the world, he would need to pass for someone who did. He wouldn’t get very far looking like he’d escaped from an asylum.

  The sleeves of Toby’s sweater and coat were too long, but Gibson wore them gratefully. He scooped up the money and car keys and packed his duffel bag. He wouldn’t spend another night under their roof. Toby and Sana saw him as a reclamation project, but he had no intention of being reclaimed. Damon Washburn would pay, and Gibson, in turn, would pay the price to see that he did.

  Bear cleared her throat. “What about Ellie? You promised to take care of her.”

  “I am.”

  “You’re giving up. Coward! What kind of father does this?”

  “A bad one.”

  “You promised. How can you do this?” Arms crossed, Bear waited for an answer and stomped her foot when he started getting ready to leave instead. “I hate you.”

  “Yeah,” Gibson said. “I hate me too.”

  Gibson had been driving since he was thirteen, and sitting behind the wheel of Toby’s car, he felt thirteen again. He circled the block a couple of times until he started to get the hang of it.

  The Arlington barbershop was both resiliently old-school and multicultural. Three of the six chairs were staffed by Greek men in their sixties, the fourth by a Filipina woman, the fifth by a young African man with an indomitable smile, and the last by a stout Brazilian woman who sang as she worked. Five of the six chairs were occupied, and several customers waited for their regular barber. Customers and barbers alike paused at the sight of Gibson, who stood awkwardly in the doorway, fighting his urge to flee.

  One of the Greek barbers, lounging in his chair reading the Post’s sports section, whistled appreciatively at the apparition in the shop’s doorway.

  “God has sent us a wise man,” the barber said. “What tidings do you bring us from the east?”

  The shop roared with laughter.

  “And what has he done with his two friends?” another asked, picking up the joke.

  “Where’s the frankincense?” bantered a third.

  When the barber saw Gibson hadn’t joined in, he hopped up and beckoned to his chair. “Come in out of the cold, my friend. Come. Sit.”

  The shop sprang back to life after Gibson took a seat. The barber swept the cape around Gibson and studied him in the mirror. He tried and failed to run a comb through the rat’s nest of Gibson’s hair.

  “You offer a unique challenge, my friend. What are your intentions?”

  “High and tight,” Gibson replied.

  The barber didn’t understand, so Gibson held up his thumb and forefinger, half an inch apart. “That long.” He narrowed his fingers until they almost touched. “The sides.”

  “And the beard?”

  “Gone.”

  The barber nodded his head in agreement. “A fresh start. You are a wise man after all.”

  The barber went to work with electric clippers, hair falling away in long sheaves like winter wheat to the scythe as a face that Gibson recognized slowly reemerged. When the beard was no more than stubble, the barber reclined the chair and lathered his face with warm foam and shaved him with a straight razor. The barber held up a mirror so Gibson could judge his handiwork.

  “An improvement,” said the barber. “Very handsome.”

  Gibson studied his gaunt features in the mirror. He’d lost a lot of weight but looked almost civilized. Almost. The running scar that laced his neck from ear to ear lent him a frightening aspect. It would make him too memorable, and he would need to let his beard grow back. But it was nice to be clean-shaven for a moment. He traced the old wound with his fingers—a permanent reminder of how close he’d come to dying in the basement of his childhood home, and of the man who’d tried to hang him there. The man had told him that it would take a long time to die when hanged from that height. The short drop, he’d called it. Perhaps, Gibson thought, he was still dying in that basement and everything since had just been a fantasy.

  He couldn’t be that lucky.

  “Stop thinking like that,” Duke said.

  “Get out of my head.”

  “You’re not the only one he hung in that basement, you know. But I don’t have a scar. No one came to save me.”

  “I was only a kid.”

  “Always an excuse.”

  “That’s not fair,” Gibson said.

  He realized that the barbershop had fallen silent and that all eyes were on him. Watching the crazy man talking to thin air. He apologized meekly and tried to pay for his haircut.

  “Keep it,” the barber said. “Merry Christmas.”

  Bear was waiting in the car—a little dark cloud of judgment.
She and his father were taking turns beating up on him today.

  “Bear. Not now. Please.”

  She didn’t move or blink.

  “What?” Gibson asked. “What do you want from me?”

  “You’re going to regret this.”

  “I’m not safe to be around Ellie.”

  “And you think getting even with Damon Washburn will help that?”

  Gibson tried to convince her, but it came out all wrong. Bear continued to press her case all the way over to the bank, even after he had parked. His head ached, and he needed to go in and see if he had any money left in his account, but he didn’t trust himself around people with Bear hectoring him this way. Gibson was sick of listening to her. His mind was made up. It might not be a perfect plan, but it was the plan he needed. He snapped at Bear to give it a rest, and when he glanced over again, she was gone.

  In the bank, Gibson left fifty dollars in his account and withdrew the balance: $810. His credit cards had both been frozen due to nonpayment; he couldn’t afford to pay them off and wouldn’t be able to sign up for new ones without a job and a home address. The bank would have issued him a new debit card, but given his shopping list, it would be better not to leave an electronic footprint. So, all of his worldly possessions came down to these: $860, the contents of his duffel bag, and Charles Merrick’s gold watch. His old landlord would have long since evicted him from his apartment and sent his things to the dump. Financially, no great loss; the apartment had been only the approximation of a home, and he hadn’t owned anything of monetary value. But he was sorry to lose his personal effects, especially the photographs of Ellie.

  Gibson made a series of stops after the bank. A navy surplus store for a winter-clothes starter kit and boots. A computer-repair shop for a used laptop. A house with a room for rent on Craigslist that would have been perfect except it had no separate entrance. Gibson couldn’t have anyone keeping tabs on his comings and goings. So until he found something that fit his needs, he took a room at a rundown motel. At a convenience store, he bought two flip phones to replace his smartphone, which couldn’t be reactivated without a credit card. While the manager rang up his purchase, Gibson stared at the tired rotisserie hot dogs making their lazy circuit. It was time, he realized, to give Sana that hug.

  The holidays were in full swing at the Nighthawk. Toby took his festivity very seriously. Every square inch of the diner had been decorated. The Vince Guaraldi Trio played over the stereo, and Gibson felt the warm crush of voices as he pushed through the door. He grinned despite himself. Sana came out from behind the counter and wrapped her arms around him. When they broke away, Sana cupped a hand to his cheek and frowned at him.

  “I will not forgive you for shaving before I saw you.”

  “Your husband thought it best.”

  Sana harrumphed. “He is so delicate, I swear.”

  She thrust a menu in his hand and promised to visit when things quieted down. Gibson took his favored booth in the back and ran his hands over the familiar table. The very spot where George Abe had once recruited him to join Jenn Charles and Dan Hendricks in the search for Bear. In a way, it had all started right here. As much as anything can ever be the start of anything. Gibson recognized in himself the basic human need to arrange the events of his life into digestible stories. Stories needed beginnings; this was his. One of them anyway.

  Accepting George Abe’s offer had been the first in a series of choices that had led him to his present circumstances. The strange part was that, despite all that he had endured, he was hard-pressed to say which decision he would undo, given the chance. Individually, each had seemed necessary and right. It was only when he took a step back and looked at the big picture of his life that he saw where they had led him. Led them all.

  George Abe had been missing since Atlanta.

  Jenn had gone after him. Alone. No one had heard from her since.

  Of the original team, only Dan Hendricks had so far eluded the curse. He lived an isolated existence in California, keeping a low and extremely paranoid profile. He’d skirmished with the same contract killer who had tried to hang Gibson. It had rattled Hendricks, who believed with fatalistic certainty that eventually the killer would return to finish what he’d started. Maybe he hadn’t eluded the curse after all.

  Before his disappearance, Gibson had talked to Hendricks every couple of weeks. Checked in to trade notes and see if he had heard from Jenn. Gibson remembered clearly the morning that he had said good-bye to her at the motel outside Atlanta. They’d been through one hell of an ordeal to solve Suzanne Lombard’s disappearance, and it had frayed their uneasy alliance. By the end, they had all needed to go their separate ways, but that was one decision that he would have made differently if he’d known it was the last time he’d see Jenn.

  When the waiter came, Gibson asked for a black-and-white milkshake and ordered his father’s favorite breakfast. Milkshakes and eggs—picturing Jenn’s horrified reaction to the combination made him smile. Maybe he should reach out to Hendricks. It had been eighteen months. There had to be news, one way or the other. But if it were bad news, Gibson didn’t know if he could hear it. He’d already heard all that he could stand. Instead, he stared out the window until Toby put his food on the table.

  “It’s not such a bad face,” Toby said with a smile. “But on second thought, I prefer the beard.”

  “Thank you.” Gibson held up the car keys and the hundred dollars.

  “Why do you have your bag with you?” Toby wanted to know.

  “I still had a little money in my checking account, so I rented a room,” Gibson lied.

  “Good. That’s a good step. I’m impressed. What will you do next?”

  “Well, I thought I’d eat and do a little job hunting.” It was the truth. If he wanted any chance of getting away with what he had in store for Damon Washburn, he would need to construct a convincing narrative of a man attempting to rebuild his life. A permanent address was his first priority, but a job would be an important next step.

  “Then I will leave you to it,” Toby said.

  “What?” Gibson asked. Toby had a funny look on his face.

  “It’s hard to believe you are the same man I collected from the police two days ago. It shows character, my friend. You are going to be all right.”

  Toby squeezed his shoulder and left the table before Gibson could reply. He ate slowly while the diner filled with the evening rush. Once, a bustling diner had provided comforting, peaceful background noise, but now all the sound and movement felt oppressive. He couldn’t keep up with all the stimuli, and his vision distorted at the edges like a television channel with bad reception. Something out of another era, which is how he felt. He mopped up the eggs with his toast and looked around, hoping to catch sight of Bear or Duke.

  He hadn’t seen either one since the bank. All afternoon, he’d counted that as a sign that maybe he could function without them. But he’d depended on them to survive that cell, and he missed them now. It also worried him that knowing Bear and Duke weren’t real did nothing to diminish his affection for them. Then again, no one understood what he’d been through the way they did.

  He looked around for them again.

  This was not healthy. He knew that rationally. They were a crutch of his mind. Missing figments of your imagination was insane. They weren’t his friends because they weren’t real. He repeated it over and over to himself without conviction. Something inside him felt irreparably broken, and he didn’t see how to do what needed doing while entertaining the ghosts of his past.

  “Don’t be so melodramatic, son,” Duke admonished him. “Glad to see you still clean your plate.”

  Right on cue.

  Gibson pushed his plate away and ignored his father.

  “Very mature,” Duke said.

  “I’m not talking to you in here. People will think I’m crazy.”

  “You are crazy,” Duke pointed out.

  “Am I?”

  “You ar
e now. In there, you were sane. Out here . . . not so much.”

  “So stop talking to me.”

  Duke shrugged and winked at the elderly couple staring in their direction. “Thing is, sport, I’m not talking to you. Reflect upon that.”

  Gibson took out the refurbished laptop that he’d paid cash for at a storefront repair shop in Arlington; the machine didn’t have a lot of pop under the hood, but it would get him where he needed to go. The purchase had put a serious dent in his bankroll, especially given that he already owned a laptop. But Gibson didn’t see any other way. It had occurred to him that his original laptop had also been in the custody of the CIA for the last eighteen months. God only knew what kind of malware had been installed. He could tear it apart like Gene Hackman and still never trust it again. There could be malware embedded all the way down in the motherboard and chipset. He’d drive himself crazy—crazier—looking. He’d wipe it and sell it as soon as possible.

  “Easy there, cowboy,” Duke said. “That old computer could still come in handy.”

  Gibson looked at his dad questioningly.

  “If they’re watching,” said Duke, “then why don’t you show ’em what they want to see?”

  Why hadn’t he thought of that?

  “You did,” Duke said with a wink.

  Assuming the Agency was keeping tabs on him, he could use the old laptop on free Wi-Fi at coffee shops and public libraries to establish a pattern of behavior for his watchers to take in: job and apartment hunting, shopping for a used car, contacting his credit-card companies to set up a payment plan. Anyone watching would see a reformed, upstanding citizen trying to rebuild his life. Then he would switch to his burner laptop and hunt Damon Washburn.