They drove like hell to Slaski’s house, the Scion caroming across lanes on unlit back roads, headlights throwing meandering shadows that lit the way they’d already been. Swonger took the wheel while Gibson navigated from the crude map Parker had drawn them. It had been a long time since Gibson had been anywhere without GPS, and it cost them three wrong turns. He needed a damned sextant to make sense of this place, and Swonger’s driving didn’t help. The tension mounted each time they were forced to double back, losing still more time. Somewhere Dan Hendricks was laughing at him for his overdependency on technology. Hendricks’s road-map brain would be damned useful right about now.
“Turn when I tell you to turn.”
“Give me a little warning, then.”
“Stop. Stop. What did that sign just say?”
Gibson craned his head back as Swonger slammed on the brakes, threw the car into reverse, and backed up the hundred yards to the sign. What the actual . . . , Gibson thought. How are we back here?
“Turn around. We went too far.”
Swonger pulled a U-ey, accelerated to eighty, then slammed on the brakes to make the turn that they should have originally taken. Gibson gripped the hand strap to keep from clattering into Swonger. Last call at the Toproll was three a.m. What time would that put Lea at Slaski’s place? He checked the clock. Anytime now, really. If they were too late, then they might as well go home.
Swonger pulled up at Slaski’s like the Road Runner stopping at the edge of a cliff, throwing Gibson forward into his seat belt. Slaski lived in a small white Cape Cod on a bare plot of land that had been mowed to within an inch of its life. On the side of the house, a vegetable garden, protected by more chain link than Niobe Prison, grew wild inside its enclosure. A solitary deer, gorging itself through a gap in the fencing, watched them while it chewed. Dinner and a show.
Across the street, Lea and Margo sat in a red pickup truck. Swonger had stopped directly between the pickup and Slaski’s house—a move loaded with unfriendly symbolism. The two sets of passengers stared each other down. No one moved. Gibson hadn’t really had time to formulate a strategy that didn’t lead to bloodshed. The standoff stretched for more than a minute. Margo, in the driver’s seat, turned and asked a question, but Lea didn’t reply.
“Stay here,” Gibson said, opening the passenger door.
“Oh, hell no.” Swonger graced him with an adrenaline grin. “I got your back.”
Swonger popped the mag on his gun, checked it, and slapped it back into place. For all the good it would do, since the firing pin was in Gibson’s back pocket.
“Don’t wave that around,” Gibson said.
“Guns don’t wave—people do.”
Gibson had been impressed with how Swonger had handled himself at Parker’s, but the drive had cranked him up and now he was writing his own little action movie.
“Just be cool.”
He was halfway across the street when Margo stepped out of the pickup, baseball bat resting on her shoulder, an unseasonal ski mask pushed back on her head. Swonger hung back, keeping his distance.
“Little late for baseball, ladies,” Gibson said.
“Hospital’s open all night,” Margo countered.
“Just want a word.”
“Which one?”
Lea didn’t look happy, and Gibson couldn’t blame her. Strangers crashing your home invasion had to be disconcerting. But she wasn’t panicked; she was calm and managing to seem unsurprised that they were there. A neat trick, given that Gibson was still a little surprised himself.
“Hello, again,” he said.
“Something I can do for you?”
“I talked to Parker.”
“Who?”
“The guy who drew me the map of where you were.” He held up Parker’s map and watched a lightning storm pass across her eyes.
“Did you hurt him?”
Gibson was encouraged that her first question was about the well-being of her man. It said good things about her. A soul was alive and well under her hard-ass exterior.
“He’s fine. All we did was interrupt his movie.”
“So he just told you where I was—”
“And why.”
“—out of the goodness of his heart?”
“Well, I may have given him the impression that we work for you.” He shrugged. “You didn’t pick him for his independent thinking. Look, can we cut the crap? You’re here for the phone Merrick used.”
“And what? You and bunny rabbit there are going to take it from us?” Margo demanded.
Behind him, he felt Swonger take several angry steps forward. Gibson held up a hand. The footsteps stopped, but Swonger’s shadow loomed on the asphalt.
“No,” Gibson said. “We’re not taking it.”
“Damn right,” Margo said.
“But neither can you.”
“I knew you were an asshole at the hotel,” Lea said.
“That might be, but you still can’t take it.”
“And why’s that?”
He explained SIM cards and how Merrick would keep his own card on him, per Swonger’s prison experience. Lea listened, working the corner of her lip between her teeth. She was taking him seriously, at least.
“The phone’s worthless,” he finished. “It’s just a shell.”
“You don’t know that.”
“If you go in there now, all you’re doing is tipping Merrick off. He’ll shut everything down, wait out his sentence, and disappear. You’ll kill our only shot at breaking into his communications.”
“Why? Because some white-trash ex-con says so?”
“Hey,” Swonger said, stepping forward again. “I ain’t afraid to hit a girl.”
“You ought to be.” Margo tightened her grip on the bat.
Gibson could feel the situation spinning away. If it were Lea and him, there was a chance of talking her into it. But Margo and Swonger knew only escalation, and they were headed to blows.
“I’m trying to help,” he said.
“I don’t need your help.”
“Don’t be this stubborn. You can’t afford it.”
Margo poked Gibson in the chest with the baseball bat. “You two need to get up out of here.”
Gibson shoved the bat aside. There was a moment of silence, before the four of them set to cursing each other in the street. In the heat of the moment, they all forgot where they were, and as their tempers rose so did their voices. They were all exhausted. Maybe that explained their collective stupidity.
“Would you all shut the hell up!”
They all froze and then turned slowly toward the voice. Tim Slaski was standing on his front porch in a threadbare bathrobe, squinting in their general direction.
They fell silent and stared at him, openmouthed.
“I mean, it’s four in the goddamn morning. What the hell is the matter with you?”
Gibson and Lea looked at each other. He shrugged as if to ask, What’s it gonna be? She wouldn’t even need to break in now—the lamb had come to the lion. He watched her calculate her options.
“Sorry,” she called to Slaski. “Thought there was a party out this way.”
“Ain’t no damn party. It’s four in the morning. Go on and get before I call the police.”