“There won’t be a scene,” Mr. Sidhu said, speaking for the first time. He held open the back door of the SUV. Gibson saw no option but to play along.
Calista Dauplaise lived in a mansion built by her great-great-great-grandfather, Alexandre Dauplaise, in the aftermath of the War of 1812. His wife, Sophie, had christened the house Colline—Little Hill—upon her arrival from France. Seated at the top of Georgetown, it had been home to one of the oldest families in Washington going on three centuries now. Calista’s ancestors had played a historic role in the nation’s rise as statesmen, generals, and diplomats. A role that had waned in recent years, although Calista was singularly devoted to restoring her family to prominence. If only Duke Vaughn had intuited the ruthlessness of that devotion, how different life might be now. When Duke had threatened her plans, she had dispatched a monster to murder him, staging it as a suicide in the basement of the family home.
Gibson had been fifteen the day he tiptoed down the steps and saw his father’s feet dangling in the air. Calista had sent the monster back for Gibson a decade later when he’d dug too deeply into Bear’s disappearance. A strange little man with eyes at home in the dark and a voice that lacked several essentially human chromosomes. Gibson touched the scar across his throat, remembering the sound of the stool clattering across the floor and the way the rope bit into his neck. He’d be buried alongside his father had Jenn Charles and Dan Hendricks not come to his rescue.
Despite all that, when the time came, Gibson had made peace with Calista Dauplaise to protect Bear’s daughter. It had been a hard deal to stomach, but he’d sided with the living over the dead, chosen to save an innocent girl before avenging his father. He wouldn’t change that decision even if he could, but that didn’t mean he’d ever felt entirely good about it. The guilt was a punishing weight. It fueled the twisted version of Duke that even now sat beside him in the backseat with murder in his eyes. Part of Gibson wished he hadn’t stashed his gun out at the power plant; another part worried what might happen if he had it now.
“What should have happened three years ago,” Duke said.
Gibson slumped back and wondered what could possibly tempt Calista to break the truce and invite him to her home. He was no closer to an answer when they crossed Arlington Memorial Bridge, the Lincoln Memorial rising up to greet them. They looped down onto Ohio Drive, which briefly became I-66 before they exited onto Pennsylvania Avenue at the south end of Georgetown. Crossing Rock Creek, they took a right and disappeared up the hill into the labyrinthine heart of old Georgetown.
Here we go, he thought.
“Here we go,” Duke agreed.
A black, wrought-iron fence capped with golden spear points rose up on the right. Through the trees that edged the property, he glimpsed the house itself, an imposing, perfectly symmetrical Federal the length of a city block. That one woman called it home was almost enough to make Gibson consider communism.
A pair of uniformed guards stopped the SUV at the new gatehouse. It had been completely rebuilt since the last time he’d been here. Where before it had served a largely ornamental function, the new front gate looked capable of repelling an armored assault. Gibson counted a half dozen security cameras. All it lacked was a moat. Something or someone had put the fear of God into Calista. He didn’t mind that at all.
At the top of the sloping drive, they circled the fountain that dominated the center of the driveway. Curving white quartz steps, thirty feet across at their widest point, led up to a towering front door. They stopped at the bottom, and Sidhu held the door for him again. The butler met them at the door. Gibson remembered him from the day that he’d come for Catherine, Bear’s daughter. The butler remembered him as well.
“Hullo, sir. So good to see you again. Would you care for a beverage? Beer, isn’t it?”
“Good memory, Davis, but a little early for me.”
“If you insist, sir. May I take your coat?”
Davis ushered Gibson and his two chaperones down a high-ceilinged hallway. On one side, glass doors faced out onto the terrace that overlooked the gardens; on the other hung an art collection that would have stopped Toby Kalpar in his tracks—canvases by Winslow Homer, Henry Bacon, John Singer Sargent, among others. They passed through a door and into an antechamber where a fastidious, bespectacled man sat typing briskly at an antique desk. Jazz played soothingly in the background from speakers that Gibson couldn’t see. Without looking up from his keyboard, the man instructed them to sit in an accent that Gibson’s ear could narrow no further than West African. Cools and Sidhu did as they were told. Gibson followed suit.
“Who is he?” Gibson asked.
“Ms. Dauplaise’s secretary,” Sidhu explained.
The secretary glared at them over his glasses. “Quiet, please, gentlemen. There’s no talking.”
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself with that?” Gibson suggested pleasantly.
The secretary froze with a satisfyingly prim, dismayed expression, then stood haughtily, five foot and maybe three hundred pounds. Gibson fixed him with a helpful smile. With a disappointed shake of his head, the secretary disappeared through a door behind his desk.
When he was gone, Sidhu spoke up. “That wasn’t necessary.”
“Felt necessary.”
“Ms. Dauplaise only wants to talk. There’s no call for profanity.”
Gibson gave him a sidelong look. “Are you kidding me? Do you know who you work for? And cursing is where you draw the line? What kind of dipshittery is that?”
Sidhu began to rise, but Cools put a hand on his partner’s shoulder. Reluctantly, Sidhu sat back down.
“Do not curse at me again,” Sidhu said.
Gibson was weighing his options when the secretary returned and pointed to Cools and Sidhu. “She wishes to speak to you.”
Gibson patted Sidhu on the knee. “Good talk.”
His two chaperones followed the secretary into Calista’s office, leaving Gibson alone. He wondered if this could be another of his hallucinations. Simply being back in Calista Dauplaise’s home felt strange enough. But to be treated as a guest and not a prisoner . . . well, that was downright surreal. Gibson realized that Duke hadn’t followed him into the house. Apparently it had taken Calista Dauplaise to drive his father away.
After a few minutes, the office door opened, and the three men returned.