“You don’t know where you’ve been for the last eighteen months?”
When Gibson stuck to his story, the detective started from the beginning and asked all his questions a second time. Then a third. After that, Gibson stopped paying attention. Someone had burned down Nicole’s house, and he hadn’t been there to stop it. Something else Damon Washburn would answer for. From the corner of his eye, he saw Duke nod in agreement.
“How can you not know where you were?” Bachmann asked for the hundredth time.
Finally, Gibson slipped up and told the truth. “I don’t know. I was locked up.”
Bachmann sat forward.
“Gibson,” Duke said. “Careful.”
“You were in prison? Where?”
“I told you I don’t know,” Gibson said.
“You don’t know where you were in prison?”
“Ask the CIA.”
The detective wore the expression of someone who’d started a conversation at a party with a normal-looking person but found himself trapped arguing whether Jimmy Hoffa had Kennedy killed. Duke wore the same expression but for different reasons.
Bachmann said, “You were in a CIA prison?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Without a word, Bachmann rose and left the room. He was gone long enough for Duke to lecture Gibson on the virtues of silence. Bachmann returned in the company of the uniformed officers. Some kind of decision had been reached.
“If we have follow-up questions, do you have a number where we can reach you?”
“I don’t have a phone.”
“Mr. Vaughn, do you have a home? Somewhere you live?”
Gibson shook his head.
“Is there someone we can call? Who could pick you up?”
Gibson thought about that a good, long while even though the list was good and short. There was his aunt in Charlottesville, but that was a good two hours away, and the idea of mixing her up in any more of his legal troubles did not hold a lot of appeal. She’d been through enough on account of him. Everyone else he knew was dead, missing, or wanted nothing to do with him. Finally, he gave them Toby Kalpar’s name. He didn’t like the idea of getting Toby involved either, but there simply wasn’t anyone else.
CHAPTER SIX
With his slight frame and contemplative, scholarly air, Toby Kalpar looked as out of place in a police station waiting room as he did behind the counter of the Nighthawk Diner. After his divorce, Gibson had moved into a one-bedroom apartment within walking distance of the Nighthawk. The apartment was dreary and depressing, and cooking wasn’t among the skills he’d picked up in the Marines. The diner had become a home away from home. He’d spent countless hours at a booth in the back, job hunting. Somewhere along the way, he and Toby had become good friends. The older man had offered Gibson much-needed perspective and advice, for which Gibson had been grateful, even if he hadn’t always been able to follow it.
He fought the urge to slip out the door. All these strangers judging him were just that—strangers. It would be something else entirely from Toby. Before he could escape, Toby caught sight of Gibson. If he had a reaction to Gibson’s shabby appearance, he masked it well. Toby pushed his glasses high up on his nose, put his arms around Gibson, and hugged him fiercely. Gibson wept bitterly at the warmth of Toby’s embrace, who, misunderstanding the reason for the tears, held him all the tighter. Bear, who had a soft spot in her heart for Toby, stood nearby smiling.
“I didn’t know who else to call,” Gibson said out in the parking lot. It was dusk, and a light, freezing rain had begun to fall.
“I’m glad you did.” As was Toby’s way, he didn’t ask the questions that must have been on his mind, content to let the truth unfold in its own time.
Gibson meant to ditch Toby now that he’d been released, but he had questions that needed answering first.
“Where are they?”
“Let’s talk about it in the car,” Toby said.
“Just tell me.”
Toby held open the car door and waited patiently. “I’ll tell you everything on the way home.”
Gibson eyed the car warily. It felt like a trap. What was home? Where the hell was that? But Toby refused to say anything more, so Gibson got into the car with his duffel bag across his lap in case he needed to get away quickly. Toby started the car and adjusted the heat. The windows had iced over, and light filtered through, ghostly and pale. Ghazal played quietly over the stereo. Toby and Sana Kalpar had emigrated from Pakistan more than twenty years ago, and in many ways had embraced the customs and culture of their adopted country. But Toby’s father had been a ghazal poet and singer of some renown, and it was still the music Toby preferred when he felt homesick in the winter months.
In the car, Toby told the same story the detective had. Nicole’s house had burned to the foundations. Fortunately, no one had been at home. Clear indications of an accelerant. No witnesses.
“The police think I did it,” Gibson said.
“You weren’t here to defend yourself. It looked . . . well, it looked bad.”
“Where’s Ellie?”
“I don’t know.”
Gibson became angry. “Don’t tell me that. Why wouldn’t Nicole tell you?”
Toby sighed. “Because she knew that I would tell you if you ever came back.”
That, and all it implied, hit home. Gibson sat back and looked out through the small patch of defrosted window. Nicole had disappeared with Ellie. Taken out a restraining order against him and run. She believed him capable of doing this thing. It had come to that.
Gibson got out of the car, certain that he would be sick. Toby followed him, urging him to get back in.
“I can’t,” Gibson said. “Appreciate you springing me, but I’m not your problem.”
“You are not a problem. Please, get back in the car.”
“And go where? What will I do?”
“You will need time to figure that out,” Toby allowed.
“He’s right,” Bear said. “You need time to find Ellie.”
“I don’t know how,” Gibson said to both of them. Before the cell, he would have counted planning and decision-making among his skills, but now he saw no way back. Nicole and Ellie were gone, and he was out of time. If he had a gun, he didn’t know that he wouldn’t put it in his mouth. He couldn’t think of a single reason not to—all his reasons had gone into hiding.
“Ellie,” Bear answered. “That’s always the reason.”
“Just leave me,” he pleaded with Toby.
For the first time since Gibson had known him, Toby became visibly angry. “Get in the car, stubborn ass. I will not tell you again.” Toby was famously gentlemanly in his language, and even that much profanity sounded awkward from his lips. “You’ll be a martyr on your own time. But I am not going home to Sana to tell her that I saw you and left you in a parking lot in the rain. No, you will not dishonor me this way.”
“Toby—”