The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(54)

Skinner glared at Peter as if memorizing him. “Whatever you are, the next time we talk, I’ll ask the questions.”

He turned and stalked out of the coffee shop.

Peter shook his head. It was an odd conversation.

He’d thought he would intimidate Skinner, scare him a little. But something else had happened. He’d peeled back the charming veneer and seen what lay underneath. Something very different indeed.

No, Peter wasn’t done with Jonathan Skinner.

But when he walked out of the coffee shop into the relief of the open air, he saw the black Ford SUV parked on the far side of the busy street. The man with the scars looking right at him.





25



The black Ford was parked on the far side of the one-way street, right at the corner, half a block upstream to traffic. Not obvious unless you were looking for him, but Peter was looking. Not a bad position, either, with a good line of sight through the windshield and side window. A wider view, and a wider field of fire. So the man wasn’t dumb and maybe had some training.

Or maybe he got lucky with the parking.

Traffic was heavy and fast, two lanes, a city artery. Peter’s truck was half a block away on this side of the street, in full view of the black Ford.

Buying time, Peter looked up and raised a palm to the sky, as if checking for raindrops. He was acutely aware of the chrome .32 the man had shown before, and Peter’s own lack of ordnance.

Lewis’s .45 was locked in the cargo box with the dog.

The adrenaline surged in his blood, giving rash advice. Peter felt a powerful urge to sprint across the street and pull the scarred man out of his truck.

What he didn’t want to do was get shot on the way over. Alone and on foot, he wouldn’t be in any position to control the play.

He weighed his options in a hurry.

He could walk toward his truck, which was probably what the scarred man expected him to do. This way, Peter would find out what the man had planned and do his best to defend against it. He’d always been pretty good at that.

Maybe the guy would just follow Peter, as he had before, keeping him in sight.

But maybe he’d open up with an automatic weapon, in which case a lot of other people might get hurt. And Mingus was in the back of the truck. That mahogany plywood wasn’t stopping any bullets.

If the man really wanted to kill Peter, though, wouldn’t he have set up outside the coffee shop door? It would have been a simple thing to shoot Peter at close range when he walked outside.

So walk in the opposite direction, against the traffic, and maybe get the man out of his vehicle. If he stuck in his SUV watching Peter’s truck, Peter could circle behind him. Find something to hit him with. Then have a conversation.

Which actually sounded like a plan.

Peter turned and started walking. At a decent clip, as if he had a destination in mind.

He came even with the black Ford but kept his face turned away, watching the scarred man’s reflection in a shop’s plate-glass window. The man tracked Peter’s path with his head but didn’t get out of his Ford. He wore the same black leather coat and Kangol cap.

Peter kept walking, turned the corner, left the man behind. Picked up his stride to a higher gear.

It was a decent city neighborhood, sidewalks and midsized residential buildings, but not exactly an upscale commercial area, although it was trying. He passed a couple of bars, a loading dock, a chain pizza place, and an all-night restaurant. Nobody behind him as he rounded the next corner, circling to come back on the scarred man.

He walked past a skateboard shop, a hairdresser’s, and an old movie theater, looking for a piece of pipe or scrap lumber but finding nothing to hit the man with but a trash can. That would not qualify as a concealed weapon.

Moving faster still, he turned the third corner by an upscale sports bar, then a short dead-end alley, and he wasted twenty seconds scouting for a piece of chain or an unbroken bottle, anything, but there was nothing but windblown trash, beer cans, and fast-food wrappers. Then a boarded-up building, yet another fatality of the shitty economy.

Before the last corner, he stopped and took off his jacket. Turned it inside out to change its color, then balled it up under his arm to change the shape of his body from a distance. Hunched over, he walked slowly into view of the black Ford, letting the traffic slow to flow around him as he made his way across the street. The SUV still parked, the window still down, the shape of a man still visible inside almost a block away.

But now Peter was on the same side of the street, and unobserved.

He angled past a fast-food Mexican place to head into the big parking lot that took up most of the block. It wasn’t full, but there were enough cars to provide decent cover. Still nothing to use as a weapon.

He put his coat on again. He was even with the Ford now. It was about forty yards away, across the parking lot and sidewalk. The scarred man indistinct through the passenger window.

Then Peter was past. No longer visible from the driver’s seat. He cut across the lot toward the Ford, staying out of the side mirror’s view. Objects may be closer than they appear. No weapon but his hands.

Then an old bike, shackled to a railing. A heavy cable lock, nothing he could get open without tools. But the seat. The seat post was quick-release. Peter flipped the lever and lifted it free from the bike. Which gave him a metal tube sixteen inches long. With a bicycle seat at one end. It had some weight. Gave him some reach.