The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(38)

He started with the back door, the worst one, damaged in the break-in. The hundred-year-old glue had basically given up, and the jamb stops were so flimsy that little Miles could have kicked his way through. Peter pulled off the trim with a flat bar, used the Sawzall to cut the nails holding the jamb in place, and the whole assembly came out in one piece. It was a challenge getting the new door into the crooked old opening, especially with one eye on the dog and one hand on the .45, stopping to eyeball the street whenever a car drove by. A white minivan. A rusted-out Mustang.

He’d done harder work under more difficult conditions.

When he had the new doorknob and deadbolt in place, it was time for lunch. Cheese and crackers, a blueberry yogurt, and cold coffee.

Six cars drove by while he ate. No scarred man. No assault rifles.

Then the tan Yukon swung by again, and Peter was off the steps and into the street.

Lewis wore his suede jacket and starched white shirt and tilted smile.

Peter walked to the driver’s side. The window hummed down and a puff of heated air escaped. He said, “See anything?”

Lewis shook his head. “No guy with scars, no black Ford SUV. But I’ll keep driving. Give you another day, maybe two. After that I got paid work.”

“Thanks,” said Peter.

“Not doin’ it for you, jarhead.”

Peter nodded. “I know. But thanks, anyway.”

The window hummed back up and the Yukon rumbled away.

Peter gulped down his coffee and moved his tools to the new porch and took out the old front door. This one was a sixties retrofit with a rotten sill and a funky glass insert patched with tape. This replacement door went in more quickly than the last, and with no shots fired.

The last part a disappointment, really.

He put away his tools and went to buy a phone.

—

He’d gotten rid of all electronics when he went to the mountains. Cut up his credit card, too. It seemed symbolic at the time. But now it was just a pain in the ass.

He found a Best Buy store, where he broke the world’s record for fastest purchase of a prepaid phone and a cheap laptop, making it out before the white sparks flared too badly.

He didn’t have much cash left. Not after the Sig Sauer and Best Buy. He didn’t want to dip into Jimmy’s money unless he had to.

Best Buy needed a few hours to configure the laptop, so he sat in the suburban parking lot with the uncharged phone plugged into the cigarette lighter and called Dinah at work. The woman he spoke to at the nursing station told him Dinah was with a patient and she’d call him back, but it would probably be a while.

The wind blew cold through the broken window of his truck. He went into the cargo box and brought out the box of Jimmy’s things he’d gotten from Dinah. He found the yellow flier for the missing Marine, tapped in the grandmother’s number, and took out the stainless-steel Lake Capital Funds pen to take notes.

The phone rang six times before voicemail picked up.

A young man’s voice.

“Hello, you’ve reached Mrs. Aurelia Castellano, but she’s not home at the moment. Please leave a message and she will call you back.”

It was a good voice, quiet but confident. Peter looked at the flier, wondering if that was Felix Castellano’s voice. It probably was.

He wondered if the grandmother called her own number just to hear his voice. If she thought of her grandson every time she played her messages.

Peter thought of his own mother. He hadn’t spoken to her or his dad since he’d gotten off the plane.

At the beep, Peter opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

He looked at the Lake Capital Funds pen in his hand. It was a nice pen. An expensive pen.

Then he knew what the next step was.

He walked back into the store to use one of their demo computers as the white static flared and his shoulders cramped up. He needed to get online, just for a minute.





19



Peter pushed the truck hard toward downtown, the city roads rough with potholes, trying to get to Lake Capital before they closed the doors for the day.

One eye on the rearview, watching for the black Ford. But it would be easy to miss in heavy traffic. And Peter’s truck would be easy to follow. Unless he was willing to rent a beige sedan, he couldn’t do anything about it.

He didn’t have a plan for Lake Capital. But the principle wasn’t complicated. It was the same principle he’d operated under for years.

Poke a stick into something and see what happened.

The hedge fund’s headquarters was in the U.S. Bank building at the edge of downtown, overlooking Lake Michigan and the art museum. The tall, rectangular tower’s white aluminum cladding over the steel structural grid glowed in the pale autumn light. Peter remembered taking a tour of the building as part of a high school field trip, and the profound surprise that something like an office building could be beautiful. Designed in the late 1960s by Chicago’s Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, it stood forty-plus stories and was still, he was fairly sure, the tallest building in the state.

It seemed about a million miles from Dinah’s little house.

He parked at a meter and walked in through the high glass atrium that was transparent to the outside. He felt it again walking past the broad window panels that went directly to the ceiling. That sense of expansion, like anything might be possible.