“You go in.”
“To Langley?”
Ogden nodded. “Ask for a man named René Ambrose. He’s my boss. Tell him you’ve got me. Offer to trade me for a plea deal.”
“I’ll have to do time?”
“Releasing me doesn’t make this a wash, Vaughn. You’ll still owe.”
“How much time will I have to do?”
“Depends, but I’d guess ten to twenty. But I’ll push your deal through. I give you my word.”
Gibson whistled at the number. If he served twenty years, he would be in his fifties when he got out. Ellie would be almost thirty. Not comforting math.
“You have to kill him,” Duke said.
“No, I’m not doing that.”
“It’s your only option,” Ogden said.
“Shut up. I’m not talking to you.”
“You want to do twenty years for this son of a bitch?” Duke said.
“If that’s what it takes.”
“Who the hell are you talking to?” Ogden asked.
“Oh, where are my manners? I should have introduced you two. This is my dead father. He thinks I should kill you.”
“You’re damn right I do,” Duke agreed.
Ogden stared at the empty space where Duke stood. “You’re actually insane.”
“What the fuck else would I be?” Gibson yelled. “You’ve been here two weeks. That’s nothing. Try eighteen months and see which of your ancestors shows up for a chat.”
He didn’t remember pointing the gun at Ogden or wrapping his finger around the trigger. Ogden’s hands were up. He was talking, but Gibson couldn’t hear him over the ringing in his ears. He drew a deep breath and eased his finger from the trigger.
“Nice try,” Gibson said to Duke, who shrugged.
“That was all you, kid.”
“All right,” Gibson told Ogden. “You sit tight. I have a couple of things to take care of, and then I’ll see how bad your boss wants you back.”
“How do I know you’ll come back?” Ogden’s voice suddenly held a note of panic that Gibson knew all too well.
“I give you my word.”
“Your word? What’s that worth?”
“About the same as yours. No, wait, I saved your life in West Virginia. And I delivered you Charles Merrick. So a little more.”
“You kidnapped me,” Ogden said.
“Yeah, you weren’t there at the time, but I promised you that too.”
Ogden had no response to that, which Gibson appreciated. Ogden looked at the floor for a long time before finally asking the question on his mind.
“How long are you going to be gone?”
“A week or so.”
“And how long is that?”
Gibson opened his shopping bag and took out an alarm clock. He set the time and slid it across the floor to Ogden.
“What’s this?” Ogden asked.
“Your new best friend.”
Ogden looked at the clock. “Is it morning or night?”
“Night.”
Out in the service corridor, Gibson secured the cell door and leaned against the wall. He admired how Ogden had played it. He’d been both good and bad cop—hard and unforgiving, then bearing a ray of hope. Not an easy line to walk, but Ogden had made turning himself in sound like the smart play. Gibson agreed in principle. But he knew that if he walked into Langley he’d never see the light of day again. He’d have to figure something out.
After they got George.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Gibson sat in the back of the Nighthawk Diner and stared blankly at the laminated pages of the menu. After leaving the power plant, he should have driven straight back to Reston, but he needed time to think. He also needed to ask Toby Kalpar one last favor. The box of keepsakes that Toby had salvaged from his old apartment sat on the banquette beside Gibson. He opened it and took an inventory. Satisfied everything was there except for the pictures of Ellie that he’d kept for himself, he closed the box’s flaps and went back to the menu.
His summit with Damon Ogden had left him somber and reflective. He hadn’t expected a miracle, and Ogden hadn’t told him anything that he didn’t already suspect, but somehow hearing it aloud had crystalized his awareness that he had no outs left. Like a gambler down to his last dollar, he looked back on the chain of bad bets on long odds that had led him to this precipice and knew there was no way to get back what he’d lost. What he ought to do was take that last dollar back off the table before he lost it too. Not chase bad money with good.
Speaking of which, his hack today had violated a raft of statutes. Moreover, he hadn’t even broken the laws because he thought it might get him home to Nicole and Ellie. The truth was, there hadn’t been a way home for a long time. There might never have been one, but that hadn’t stopped him from hoping. Hendricks had once warned him about the danger of hope. Hope was a cancer, Hendricks had said. A cancer that gnawed a person down to the bone. At the time, Gibson had dismissed the advice as self-serving cynicism. But he realized now that Hendricks hadn’t meant all hope. Some hope was essential. Hendricks had meant the kind of hope that kept a person from accepting a hard truth. Hope that kept people from finding closure and moving on with their lives. The hope that a missing child might turn up alive and well after a decade. That your ex-wife might have an uncharacteristic change of heart. Or that the ones you loved would not suffer for your sins.
At this point, there was no way back to Ellie. He accepted that now. And given what he’d done and the consequences yet to be faced, he knew it to be for the best. He wiped at his eyes. It was a painful, heartbreaking thing to know that you were not in your own child’s best interests. A bitter thing to accept about yourself when your biology screamed that she needed you to survive. But it was the other way around, wasn’t it? He’d forfeited the right to argue differently.
So he’d helped Jenn because he could and because she needed him. Jenn was also family, not the kind that you were born into but the kind you built for yourself.
Duke snorted. “They’re always special, aren’t they? Suzanne. Birk. Jenn Charles.”
“And you,” Gibson said. “You were the first. Don’t forget that you started all this.”
His father had a point, though. Didn’t Gibson always find a rationalization for how his wrongs added up to a right? Some justification to make things worse for himself. He’d been doing it since he was a boy, when he hacked Senator Benjamin Lombard. And again costing his family dearly when he’d joined the hunt for Suzanne Lombard, and later to help Judge Hammond Birk. Damon Ogden was only the icing on the cake. Yet here he went again, making things worse for himself. Strange thing was, even knowing he was doing it, he saw no way to stop himself. He would help Jenn no matter the cost.
After all, they couldn’t give him the death penalty twice.