The Short Drop (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Jenn Charles was parked across the street from the Nighthawk in the back of a white unmarked van. She felt pretty damned conspicuous out here—put her on a forward operating base near the Pakistani border and she was right at home, but white-panel vans in Northern Virginia weren’t really her style.

She checked her watch and noted the time in the log. Say what you would about Gibson Vaughn, the man gave predictable a bad name. On the upside, it made surveillance on him simple; on the downside, it got tedious quickly. The daily logs were virtually interchangeable. Vaughn’s morning began at five thirty with a five-mile run. Two hundred push-ups, two hundred sit-ups, followed by a shower. Afterward, he ate the same breakfast at the same diner at the same counter stool. Every damn morning, like it was his church.

Jenn brushed a renegade strand of coal-black hair behind her ear. She needed a shower and a good night’s sleep in her own bed. She could also use some sun. A pale lethargy was creeping over her after ten days in the back of a van, which was beginning to feel unpleasantly like home. It was crammed with surveillance gear that made it a tight squeeze for one. A small cot at the front allowed a team to work in shifts, but, apart from that, the van offered little in the way of amenities.

Living the dream, Charles. Living the dream.

If Vaughn stayed true to form, in twenty minutes, when the rush died down, he would move to the back of the diner to work. He was friendly with the owners, who let him use one of the back booths as a makeshift office during his job search. It had been three weeks since Vaughn had lost his job at a small, failing biotech firm, where he’d been the information technology director. He wasn’t having much luck finding work, and, given his history, Jenn didn’t expect that to change.

Dan Hendricks, her partner, was a top-notch surveillance man. He’d broken into Gibson’s apartment a week ago and wired it in ninety minutes flat. Motion-activated infrared cameras, bugs, the works. It gave them uninterrupted video coverage of the entire apartment, and the starkness of Gibson’s living conditions was informative.

After his divorce, he’d moved into a low-rent high-rise. His living room consisted of a used IKEA table and a wooden chair. No TV, no upholstered furniture, nothing. His bedroom was equally Spartan. Spartan but spotless—eight years in the Marines didn’t rub off. A box spring and mattress sat on the floor beside a reading lamp on a squat end table. An unvarnished chest of drawers with a broken leg that he’d repaired. No other furniture. Interior design courtesy of Franz Kafka.

It was hard to believe that at sixteen this guy had been the most wanted hacker in America. The infamous BrnChr0m—a forerunner to the modern, politically motivated hacktivist movement. The teenager responsible for nearly taking down the then senator Benjamin Lombard. Who stole a decade’s worth of the senator’s e-mails and financial records and turned it all over to the
Washington Post
. Anonymously, or so BrnChr0m had thought—the FBI arrested Gibson Vaughn at his high school and led him from chemistry class in handcuffs. Jenn had taped his mug shot to one of the monitors, and she paused to study his frightened yet defiant face. Twenty-eight now, he’d led an eventful life.

The FBI’s swift apprehension of a sixteen-year-old hacker made for a pretty good story. The documents that Vaughn had leaked, on the other hand, made a great one. They detailed a cynical and criminal diversion of campaign funds to banks in the Cayman Islands. They also pointed the finger squarely at Benjamin Lombard. For a time, the revelations looked to signal the end of the senator’s political career, and the media went crazy for the idea that a teenager had toppled a US senator. Everyone loved a good David versus Goliath story, even if David had broken a score of federal and state laws in the process.

Jenn had been in college at the time of his arrest and remembered infuriating debates about whether the ends justified the means. Abstracted, high-minded crap that chafed her practical nature. Offended by how many of her classmates saw Vaughn as a digital Robin Hood, she’d felt more than a little vindicated when it broke that BrnChr0m had gotten it absolutely wrong.

In the end, many of the most damning documents were either doctored or outright forgeries. A crime had indeed been committed, but the FBI concluded that the culprit was not Benjamin Lombard but his former chief of staff, Duke Vaughn, who had recently taken his own life. Duke Vaughn had not only embezzled millions of dollars but covered his tracks by implicating Benjamin Lombard. It was a Shakespearean act of betrayal, and when the anonymous hacker turned out to be none other than Duke Vaughn’s son . . . well, the story became a sensation and BrnChr0m became a legend.

But Gibson Vaughn hadn’t gone by that alias in a long time and was a long way from legendary now.

Since Vaughn was spending his days at the diner, Hendricks had proposed wiring the diner too. Jenn vetoed the idea, but it left a sizeable gap in their eyes-on surveillance that they had to live with. At six p.m., Vaughn would go straight to the gym for an hour and a half. Home by eight, frozen dinner at the computer, lights out by eleven. Rinse and repeat. Day after day.
Christ.
She appreciated the importance of self-discipline and structure, but she’d take a merciful two in the head before she let this be her life.

Her report already noted that Vaughn’s entire world was organized around providing for his ex-wife and kid. What was clear to Jenn was that the man was punishing himself. But was he trying to win the woman back or simply atoning by living a forsaken life? First he cheated on her, then turned into Saint Francis of Springfield, Virginia. Jenn couldn’t figure men out in general and Gibson Vaughn in particular. He didn’t spend penny one on himself, his only luxury the gym membership. Although, to be fair, that was money well spent.

Not that Vaughn was her type. Far from it. Sure, he had a rough-around-the-edges charm about him, and the way his pale-green eyes stared through people fascinated her. But she could still see the chip on his shoulder that had landed him first before a judge and then in the Marines. No matter what he’d been through, there was no excuse for the way it continued to haunt him. You couldn’t allow your past to define you.

She ran her tongue over her front teeth. It was a nervous habit. It irritated her whenever she caught herself doing it, but she couldn’t make herself stop. Which only irritated her more. Where was Hendricks with her coffee?

As if on cue, Hendricks appeared at the door with two coffees and a cruller. He had to have twenty-plus years on her; she guessed he was north of fifty, but it was only a guess. After working with him for two years, she still didn’t know his birthday. His hair had receded to the crown and vitiligo had carved out white patches at the corners of his mouth and around the eyes that stood out sharply against his black skin.

“Still in there?”

Jenn nodded.

“Like clockwork, that boy,” Hendricks said. “Regular as a bowel movement.”

He handed Jenn a coffee and took a big bite of his cruller.

“They ran out of jelly doughnuts. Believe that? What kind of bakery runs out of jelly doughnuts before nine a.m.? This whole state needs a chiropractor.”

Jenn contemplated mentioning Virginia was technically a commonwealth and thought better of it. Needling Hendricks only provoked him.

“Today’s the day,” she said instead.

“Today’s the day.”

“Any idea when?”

“Soon as we hear from George.”

They were on standby and were finally going to make the approach to Vaughn. Their boss George Abe would handle it personally. She knew all this, of course, but steering the conversation back to business usually kept Hendricks from going off on a rant.

Usually.

Eight years in the CIA had taught her the art of working with men in close quarters. The first lesson was that men never adapted to women. It was a boys’ club, and you either became one of the boys or you became a pariah. Anything regarded as feminine was considered soft. The women who thrived were the ones who cursed louder, talked more trash, and showed no sign of weakness. Eventually, you got branded “one tough bitch” and earned a grudging tolerance.

She’d earned her “tough bitch” merit badge the hard way. On some of those forward bases in Afghanistan, she’d gone weeks without seeing another woman. Out there alone, you could never be tough enough. You were always going to be the only woman for a hundred miles. She’d seen men’s eyes go from hungry to hostile to predatory, and she’d learned to sleep very, very lightly. It was akin to prison, everyone sizing you up, sniffing for vulnerability. It had gotten so bad on one base that she had contemplated sleeping with the CO in the hope that his rank might shield her. But the idea of being someone’s prison bitch hadn’t sat well with her.

Jenn ran her tongue over her front teeth again. They felt real enough, although her tongue remained unconvinced. The dental surgeon had done good work once she’d been medevaced to Ramstein Air Base. The experience would have been even more traumatic if she’d known that it was her last real day in the CIA, but that took months to dawn on her. She missed the Agency more than her teeth.

The man who kicked them out hadn’t needed a dentist. Hadn’t needed much of anyone except maybe a priest. His partner had made it home, though. He was still on her to-do list, along with one or two of the higher-ups who’d turned on her when she refused to play ball. She’d wanted her attacker tried, but it would have meant disclosing a sensitive Agency operation. Lying in a hospital bed in Germany, jaw wired shut, she’d listened to one of her superiors explain the reality of her situation: “Unfortunately, it’s the price of doing business in this part of the world,” he told her, as though she’d been assaulted by a couple of Taliban fighters and not a pair of sergeants in the United States Army.

But it wasn’t until he patted her hand like he was doing her a favor that he went on her list.

Her tongue ran across her teeth again.
Never leave accounts unsettled.
Her grandmother had taught her that.

By comparison, Dan Hendricks was an excellent partner. Twenty-two years in the Los Angeles Police Department showed in the simple, assured way he went about his business. Especially in close quarters, since he was only five foot seven and weighed maybe one thirty if you strapped a Thanksgiving turkey to him. Beyond that, he was tidy and wasn’t incessantly vulgar. And best of all, he didn’t need her to be a tough bitch, just good at her job. The problem, she was discovering, was that once you learned to be a tough bitch it was hard to turn it off.

Not that Hendricks couldn’t take it. The man could teach a master class in bad attitude. He was, without question, the most relentlessly negative person she’d ever met, and if he knew how to smile, she couldn’t testify to it. She had no doubt that being black in the LAPD—an organization with a historically awful record of race relations—could embitter even the most resilient person. But George Abe went way back with Hendricks, and he’d assured her that her partner’s negativity had nothing to do with being black in the LAPD. It was just Hendricks.

A phone rang, and they both reached for their cells. Hendricks answered his. The conversation was brief.

“Looks like that time is now,” he said.

“He’s here?”

“On the way. He wants you inside. There’s no telling how Vaughn’s going to react.”

That was the truth. There was history between her boss and Gibson Vaughn.

None of it good.

CHAPTER THREE

The rush had died down enough that Gibson could hear himself think. He glanced in the back and saw the last table preparing to leave. When they were gone he would commandeer a booth and spend another frustrating day looking for a job. It was Sunday, but he took no days off from job hunting. The mortgage on the house where his ex-wife and daughter lived was due in fifteen days. Fifteen days to find a job.

At least he couldn’t have asked for a better place to work. The Nighthawk Diner reminded him of home. His father had considered himself something of a diner connoisseur and passed it on to his son. To Duke Vaughn, diners meant independence and small-business owners, not franchises and corporations. The American commons, he called it. Land owned by one but to which the community holds an indisputable right. Not a romantic populist ideal, but a place where the mythology of America met its blacktop reality—for better and for worse.

His father could, and would, opine at length about the great diners around the country, but the Blue Moon on West Main in Charlottesville, Virginia, had always been home base. If Duke Vaughn had been a professor, his classroom would have been its pockmarked counter. Father-son talks over breakfast had been a hallowed Sunday morning ritual going back to when Gibson was six years old. He’d learned the birds and bees over a slice of cherry pie—and remained embarrassed to admit how many years passed before he got his father’s joke.

Duke Vaughn had been royalty at the Blue Moon. Gibson never once saw his father place an order, but it came the same way every time: two eggs sunny side up, hash browns, grits, bacon, sausage, and white toast. Coffee. Orange juice. A man’s breakfast, his father called it, and there was no metaphor that Duke couldn’t conjure from the meal. Gibson hadn’t set foot inside the Blue Moon since his father’s death. His father’s suicide. Call it what it was.

But after some time had passed, Gibson found he never felt at home in a new place until he located a diner that suited him.
Home on the road,
his father had called it. Gibson thought Duke would have approved of the Nighthawk and its proprietor, Toby Kalpar.

Gibson’s eyes drifted to the woman at the end of the counter. Not because she was beautiful or because she was wearing a tailored business suit in a diner on a Sunday morning. It wasn’t even the slight outline of a shoulder holster under her left arm—this was Virginia after all. Concealed carry was about as rare as a collar on a dog. It was the fact that although she never looked his way exactly, he could feel her attention on him, and not in a flattering way. He forced himself to look away. Two could play that game. Just a couple of strangers . . . not looking at each other.

“You drink more coffee than a busload of bad poets,” Toby said, refilling his cup again.

“You should have seen me in the Corps. I about lived on coffee and Ripped Fuel. By 1800 hours you could fry an egg on my forehead.”

“What in the name of God is ‘Ripped Fuel’?”

“It’s a supplement. For working out. Not exactly legal these days.”

Toby nodded philosophically. He and his wife, Sana, had emigrated from Pakistan twenty-six years earlier and bought the diner during the recession. Their daughter had graduated from Corcoran College of Art and Design in DC, and Toby had picked up a love of modern art from her, renaming the diner after the Edward Hopper painting. Framed copies of midcentury American artwork—Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko—hung throughout the diner. Toby himself, thin with a neatly trimmed gray beard and wire-rimmed spectacles, looked like a man who should curate a rare-books collection, not take breakfast orders. But appearances aside, Toby Kalpar had been born to run an American diner.

Toby lingered at the counter, his expression turning to one of mild embarrassment. “I am sorry to ask again, but I could use your help with the computers. I’ve spent two nights trying to figure it out, and I am at a loss.”

Six months earlier, Gibson had offered his help after overhearing Toby complain about the Nighthawk’s computers, which were a morass of malware, spyware-tracking cookies, and assorted viruses. Turned out, Toby desperately needed saving from his compulsion to click “OK” to anything that popped onto his screen.

Gibson had spent a few hours sorting Toby’s system out, installing a network, antivirus software, and a restaurant software suite. They’d become friends in the process.

“No problem. Want me to take a look?”

“Not now. I do not want to take you away from your job search. That is most important.”

Gibson shrugged. “I’ll need a break after a couple hours. Can you survive until lunch?”

“I would be in your debt.” Toby extended a hand across the counter. The two men shook. “How is Nicole? Ellie? Both well?”

Nicole was Gibson’s ex-wife, Ellie his six-year-old daughter—a four-foot perpetual-motion machine of pure love, shrieks, and dirt. He felt his expression brighten at the sound of her name. Ellie was about the only thing that had that effect on him these days.

“They’re both good. Real good.”

“Seeing Ellie soon?”

“Hope so. Next weekend, maybe. If Nicole can stay with her sister, I’ll go out and stay at the house.”

Gibson’s accommodations postdivorce weren’t very child friendly, and Nicole didn’t like the idea of Ellie staying there. Neither did he. So, periodically, Nicole would visit family, and he would spend the weekend at the house with Ellie. One of the many small kindnesses his ex-wife had done him since the end of the marriage.

“See that you do. Little girls need their fathers. Otherwise, they wind up on reality TV.”

“Reality TV isn’t ready for her. Trust me.”

“They would need a very nimble cameraman.”

“What you said.”

Gibson stood and threw his messenger bag over a shoulder. The woman at the end of the counter was still there. As he passed, her eyes picked him up in the mirror behind the counter and tracked him across the diner. It was unsettling that she didn’t give a damn if he knew it.

The back of the diner was empty apart from a solitary man sitting at Gibson’s regular booth. The man had his back to Gibson and was jotting notes on a legal pad. There was something familiar about the man, even from behind.

The man sensed someone behind him and stood. He wasn’t big, but there was a muscular athleticism to the way he moved. Thirty-five going on fifty. A whisper of gray at the temples, a strong face with only the slightest sagging along the jawline. Otherwise there was little to gauge his age. Also, the man looked unreasonably sharp. Blue jeans and an immaculate button-down so white it belonged in a commercial for bleach. Even his jeans were ironed, and the black leather cowboy boots were spit polished.

Gibson felt a bitter hand dig its nails into his heart. He knew this son of a bitch. Knew him well. George Abe, in the flesh. Smiling at him. Gibson flinched like someone had taken a swing at him, stopping inches from his face. Why was Abe smiling? The man needed to stop smiling. It looked genuine but felt like a taunt. Gibson took a step toward him, not sure what he was going to do but wanting to be ready the second he made up his mind.

He checked himself as the woman from the counter swept into his field of vision. She circled with speed and grace, keeping her distance but making him aware of her presence. What was it they said about Ginger Rogers . . . ? She did everything Fred Astaire did only backward and in heels? Her jacket was unbuttoned, and she’d pivoted to offer him her profile in case she had to draw on him. Her face remained relaxed and expressionless, but Gibson had no doubt that would change if he took another step.

George Abe hadn’t moved a muscle.

“I really was hoping for a friendly chat, Gibson.”

“She come to all your friendly chats?”

“Hoping, not expecting. Can you blame me?”

“Can you blame
me
?”

“No,” Abe said. “I can’t.”

The two men stared at each other while Gibson considered Abe’s response, his initial hostility replaced by a deepening curiosity.

“So what brings you by this morning? I haven’t even had time to dust myself off since your boss got me canned from my job last month.”

“I know. But I haven’t worked for Benjamin Lombard in some time. I was . . . let go. The week after you began basic training.”

“Is that a fact?” Gibson said. “You do his dirty work and then he shows you the door? There’s a kind of poetry to that, you think?”

“If you like poetry.”

“Well, if you’re not here for him, what do you want?”

“As I said, a friendly chat.”

George Abe handed him a business card. It listed a downtown DC address and phone number. Beneath his name, it read, “Director, Abe Consulting Group.”

When he was a kid, Gibson had mispronounced George Abe’s name until his father corrected him: “Ah-bay. More Japanese, less Lincoln.” As Benjamin Lombard’s head of security, George had been a fixture in Gibson’s childhood. The man in the background. Polite, courteous but professionally invisible. It wasn’t until Gibson’s trial that he’d paid close attention to him, but by then George Abe had been neither polite nor courteous.

“Fancy,” Gibson said.

“I have a job offer for you.”

Gibson searched for the wherewithal to reply, curiosity segueing to disbelief. “I’ve got to hand it to you, George. You’ve got a mighty, mighty large set on you.”

“Hear me out.”

“I’m not interested.” Gibson handed the business card back.

“How goes the job hunt?”

Gibson froze and appraised Abe coolly. “Be a tiny bit careful.”

“Understood. But know I mean nothing by it except to outline the situation,” Abe said. “The fact is, you are unemployed and your history will make it hard to find a job commensurate with your skill set. You need work. I have work. Work that will pay better than any job you’re likely to find. If you’re able to find a job at all.”

“Still not interested.” Gibson turned and took four steps to the door before Abe stopped him cold.

“He’s not ever going to let it go. You know that, don’t you?”

The bluntness of the words shook Gibson. It summed up fears that dwelt and rutted in the dark of his mind.

“Why not?” He couldn’t keep the pleading tone out of his voice.

Abe looked at him pityingly. “Because you’re Gibson Vaughn. Because he treated you like a son.”

“Did he get me fired?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? Probably. It doesn’t matter. If I were you, I’d be worried about what he’ll do if he becomes president. You’ll be lucky to find a job in Siberia.”

“Haven’t I paid enough?”

“It’ll never be enough. There are no bygones here. His enemies? Enemies for life. And his enemies pay for life. That’s how Benjamin Lombard plays the game.”

“So I’m fucked.”

“Unless you give him a reason to let it go.”

“What reason is there?”

Abe sat back down at the booth and gestured for Gibson to join him.

“Is this the friendly chat part?”

“I think it would be in your interest to hear me out.”

Gibson weighed his options: tell George Abe to go to hell, which would feel really good, or hear him out and then tell him to go to hell.

“You want a friendly chat, tell your lady friend to stand down.”

Abe motioned to the woman, who rebuttoned her jacket and withdrew to the far side of the counter.

“Shall we?” Abe asked.