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“Is that it?”
“Yep. Ain’t that enough?”he added, with a chuckle.
Gibson thanked him and clicked off.
What in the hell?
CHAPTER51
GIBSON SAT THERE FOR Abit after ending the call. Langhorne seemed to really be having fun with all of this from-the-grave crap. The man’s first cryptic message had been “Look harder. It’s worth it.” And now this.
She had a sudden thought. Hadhewritten the phraseDo as I say, not as I doon the wall of the room where he’d died? Perhaps writing with one hand and then the other to make it look like two people had done it? No, that probably couldn’t be. The same phrase had shown up at Oxblood’s home,afterLanghorne was dead.
Gibson looked at the words again that she had written in her notebook:Now you see it, but then you don’t.
It felt off to her somehow. She looked it up online.
The common phrase actually was: “Now you see it,nowyou don’t.” Although she found other references that had it as “Now you see them, now you don’t.” But the origin seemed clear: It referred to a magician’s trickery and sleight of hand. You wanted to hide something, so you did something interesting with one hand to get the audience’s attention, while you secreted what you really wanted to hide with the other hand while people weren’t looking. And then what did it mean to take away the eight? What eight, and from what was it supposed to be taken away? And then Sesame Street with the leftovers?
Trickery and deceit and hiding shit. Langhorne had definitely chosen the right phrase to use.
But then her spine stiffened.This is what you do for a living. And you got to Tremayne and he told you what Langhorne wanted him to tell. That was more than you knew five minutes ago.
Which is why Clarisse picked you in the first place.
What Gibson still didn’t get was that if she got there first, Clarisse wouldn’t see a penny. So why bring her on if Clarisse could just find the stuff on her own? There was another thing. Gibson wasn’t sure she would share this information with Sullivan, either, because her cop radar was telling her there was something off about the man.
So whatisyour goal here, Mick?
She looked around the modest room in the modest home she lived in. Two kids, no husband. Her working life would be a nonstop grind until the kids were grown and off to college or wherever their lives were going to take them.
But what if you found the treasure? College funds taken care of. Helping her parents. Another house in a nicer neighborhood, not having to juggle a million things at the same time. Having a life. All of that could be accomplished with…
Gibson stared into the screen at her reflection, suddenly unsure of who she was seeing there.
You’re getting into dangerous territory, lady. You were a cop, for God’s sake. An honest one. And youdon’twant that asshole’s blood money.
Her phone rang, jarring her out of these disturbing thoughts. It was Wilson Sullivan.
“Prints came back on Daryl Oxblood. FBI has already called.”
“Let me guess. They got pinged on the database search because Oxblood was WITSEC?”
“Yep. In fact, his whole family was. His name was Bruce Hall. His father, Tony, was a midlevel enforcer for a mob boss in New York City. Turned informant and got put in the program with his wife and son.”
“So how did the mother and son end up in The Plains, Virginia?”
“Tony Hall had a heart attack and died. Bruce and his mother opted out of the program after that and literally disappeared. No word from them since.”
“Where were they located when they were in the program?”
“That I don’t know. FYI, I got a call from an FBI Special Agent Cary Pinker. He’s coming in from DC to talk to me about the case.”
“Any idea why?”
“Nope. But just so you know, I did tell him about you.”
Gibson said, “Okay, what are the odds of my sitting in on the meeting with him?”
