E-mail, he decided, was a safer option. He could take his time and formulate his thoughts. It gave him the best chance to convince her that he hadn’t burned down her home. It was certainly better than showing up unannounced on her doorstep. The only problem was, he needed an e-mail address for her. Try as he might, he couldn’t find one. She’d no doubt known that would be how he’d look for her.
That’s when Gibson remembered the old emergency e-mail account that they’d set up when he’d been on active duty. An anonymous account that had no connection to either of them, and from which neither had ever sent an e-mail. In the event of an emergency, either one of them could send an e-mail back to the account itself, creating a closed-message loop. If she hadn’t deactivated it as well, he could try reaching out to her that way. He logged into the account to begin drafting his message to her. In the inbox was a single, unread e-mail dated six weeks after the fire; the subject line read: “Gibson.” He took his hands off the keyboard, as if afraid they’d accidentally open the Pandora’s box. At the kitchen sink, he threw water on his face—it had worked the night before but now succeeded only in making him wet—then went back to the kitchen table and read Nicole’s message:
Ellie is safe. I hope that you are too. Although the fact that you still haven’t made contact makes me imagine the worst. I pray it’s not true, but I can’t imagine what could have kept you away.
The police have confirmed the fire was arson. I didn’t want to believe it, but there’s no question. They’ve labeled you a person of interest in the investigation. It’s important to me that you know that I don’t believe you had anything to do with it. I’ve told the police over and over that they have the wrong idea about you and that their portrait of you doesn’t resemble the real you, but they won’t listen to me.
I won’t believe you started the fire, but I do think the fire is because of you. I think whatever you got yourself mixed up in the last two years tracked you back to your daughter and burned her home to the ground. So while I don’t blame you for what happened, I’ll never forgive you either. No one put a gun to your head. You chose this path for your own selfish reasons, and you’re too smart a man not to have known there would be repercussions.
Gibson, I don’t think you’re a bad man, but you’re bad for your daughter. I don’t know if you’re alive or dead, but I am taking her where the people who want to hurt you can’t hurt her. If anything of the man I married remains intact, you’ll understand that and help me protect her by staying away. I imagine you’ll find us if you try; I’m begging you not to try. For Ellie’s sake, you have to let her go. Give Ellie a chance at a safe, normal childhood. Trust me to take care of her, and stay away. Please.
Gibson stood up and backed away from the computer. Unable to be still, he paced through the house, desperate for a counterargument that would neutralize hers. At a loss for what to feel, think, or do. Afraid, on a bedrock level, that Nicole’s e-mail was the most honest and true thing he’d ever read. He could find no fault in Nicole’s belief that the fire connected back to him.
Bear looked up mournfully at him. “You have to respond.”
“And say what? She’s right.”
“She can’t do this,” she said. “Ellie needs you.”
Gibson wasn’t so sure Bear didn’t have it backward. His reasons for going to Seattle were all selfish ones. Ellie would make him feel sane again. Ellie would love him. Ellie would save him. It wasn’t the responsibility of a nine-year-old to take care of her father. And what did he really offer his daughter in return?
He stopped at a framed photograph of Toby and Sana with their daughter. Gibson took it off the wall, either for a closer look or to smash it to pieces. If he had matches, he would burn their picture-perfect home to the ground. Then he heard Toby moving around upstairs, and his breath hitched. With both hands, he rehung the photo, chastened for even thinking that about his friend.
But an old, familiar anger had flared back to life. A coal cradled in the ash of a dead fire. The same anger that he’d turned on Senator Benjamin Lombard after his father’s death and that had fueled his pursuit of Charles Merrick’s stolen fortune. The anger that had sustained him during his eighteen months in solitary confinement. Toby and Sana didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end, but Gibson knew who did. The CIA agent who had ordered him taken into custody at Dule Tree Airfield.
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