On his way out, Bachmann stopped to ask Toby a few questions—no doubt verifying Gibson’s shifts from the weekend. The detective shook Toby’s hand and glanced back in Gibson’s direction. Gibson waved. For the second time in a week, he’d won an important battle. And for the second time in a week, it felt like a loss. A Pyrrhic victory. Revenge hadn’t fixed anything. Getting even with Damon Ogden was a sideshow, nothing more. He’d been crazy to think otherwise.
Maybe he’d had to take Ogden in order to know? It had felt better planning it than doing it, that much he knew. And having done it, and knowing that it hadn’t fixed anything, he didn’t know what to do about it. Even if he wanted to, he wasn’t sure there was a way to walk it back. He’d made the bed he now lay in, and had lit it on fire too, for good measure.
On the way home, a squad car pulled in behind Gibson. He didn’t think anything of it at first, but it stayed on his bumper even after he made a turn. A voice in his head urged him to floor it and make a run before the police had him completely boxed in. He resisted the temptation, even as the police stayed behind him for five more blocks.
He pulled off into a convenience store parking lot. The prowler followed. A second police car was already there. Was it waiting for him? How did they know that he’d pull over here, the voice asked. Gibson mimed a phone call, hand shaking, and lingered behind the wheel. The two officers chatted with each other, too smart to look Gibson’s way. They strolled into the convenience store, talking animatedly between themselves. Neither looked Gibson’s way as he backed slowly out of his spot. He kept an eye on the rearview mirror to make sure he wasn’t being followed.
“You’re being paranoid,” Bear said from the passenger seat.
“Where have you been? I needed you.”
“I’m here. I’m always here.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
She looked at him pityingly. “Stop this,” she said. “While there’s time.”
“I don’t know how.”
“He doesn’t know who took him,” she reminded him.
That was true. He couldn’t undo the kidnapping, but that didn’t mean Ogden had to stay kidnapped. If Gibson released him, what would Ogden really know for certain?
Could it be that simple?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Under ideal circumstances, the evening rush hour around Washington, DC, was a snarled clusterfuck. It began as early as three in the afternoon and didn’t taper until after seven. Toss in a steady “wintery mix”—weatherperson jargon for sleet, snow, and freezing rain—and traffic quickly went from bad to war crime. For reasons that defied easy explanation, DC drivers were notoriously awful at driving in the elements. Most reacted to snow as if seeing it for the very first time, either driving so cautiously as to be a danger or so fast that they became rudderless torpedoes the first time they tapped the brakes. Gibson had taken one look at the forecast and thanked his lucky stars. He was breaking his cardinal rule tonight, and he couldn’t have asked for better weather.
Up ahead, a light went from green to yellow. Gibson watched a car fishtail miraculously to a stop without hitting anything. The driver looked around with a sheepish grin at his good luck. Judging by the GPS, not everyone was enjoying so blessed an evening commute. Gibson’s traffic map showed most roads highlighted in red, yellow icons indicating accidents continuing to multiply. Fat snowflakes danced before his headlights. Good. Let it snow. Accidents and heavy snow gave him his best odds. He glanced in the rearview mirror; it had become a nervous tic since Bachmann’s visit to the diner. Gibson doubted he could spot a tail if he had one, or lose one even if he did. But getting lost in the maelstrom of a winter’s rush hour? That he could do.
He’d waited until after five p.m. to leave the diner. Traffic was already hopelessly knotted, and for the last hour he’d been in an endless cycle of stop-start, stop-start, one car length at a time, mile after mile. Visibility was down to about thirty feet, but after the sun went down, it dropped to a single car length. Gibson began switching lanes, getting on and off the beltway, doubling back again and again. If someone could follow him in this, they deserved to catch him. Around eight p.m., he pulled into a parking garage in downtown Bethesda and took a walk around the block. He bought a cup of coffee at a Dunkin’ Donuts. He sat in the shop window, sipped his coffee, and waited.
Since Detective Bachmann’s most recent visit, Gibson’s thoughts had turned more and more to the past. To that brief, shining moment when he’d lived his best life. Near the end of his time in the Marines, when his work for the Activity had earned him praise and respect from the higher-ups, his marriage to Nicole had been rock solid, and Ellie had been the perfect, hyperactive cherry on top. With the clarity that only ever came too late, he saw the moment that he took his first meandering, careless step away from that life. He saw the subsequent fumbling steps that had been supposed to lead him home but only compounded his misery. The steps that had led him here. Steps that continued to lead him further and further away from anything that might reasonably be called a good life.
Wouldn’t life be better if, like a video game, you could simply reload an earlier save and relive a decision until you made the right one? A foolish, Dickensian fantasy shared by all those who had reduced their failures to one decisive moment. Life wasn’t a video game, and wishing wouldn’t make it so. But he realized that, in a way, a video-game philosophy had crept into his thinking. All these unwinnable battles. He’d squandered the last few years struggling to reclaim his mythologized best life instead of working toward the best that life still had to offer him. He was still a young man; there should still be time. But there might not be opportunity.
At least not so long as Damon Ogden remained locked in that cell. Taking him had been a mistake. Gibson accepted that now. Ogden’s imprisonment would never give him back what had been taken, would never heal him, would never even the score. Damon Ogden had to be freed. The question was how. Gibson’s only advantage was that Ogden knew neither the identity of his abductor nor where he was being held. It needed to stay that way. Unfortunately, that eliminated the simplest approach: an anonymous tip that led to Ogden’s cell. The cell would give investigators a crime scene to scour that would undoubtedly turn up a variety pack of Gibson Vaughn DNA. Ogden would have to be moved, which would violate the first commandment of his plan: stay away from Ogden for at least three months.
Unless he’d blundered badly, the name Gibson Vaughn should still be no more than a single data point in a sea of information that investigators were sifting through. Chances were remote that they’d initiated surveillance on him, but, in the end, that was nothing but supposition—he had no way to be sure. And if wrong, he’d lead investigators straight to Ogden, in which case his goose would be cooked and then shot twice for good measure. But that would simply be a chance he’d have to take. Couldn’t go back, couldn’t stand still, the only choice to move forward.
Through the front window, Gibson glanced up and down the block. Nothing suspicious jumped out at him; it was now or never.