The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(82)

“I just figured it out,” said Midden. “He’s living out of his truck, so it’s got to be somewhere in that vehicle. At some point he was overseas, and probably working a checkpoint, searching cars. He knows all the best places to hide something. But I had that duty, too. And I used to have a truck like his, a ’67 Chevy, although mine was a short bed. I know that truck inside and out.”

He took Peter’s keys from the table and headed toward the door. “Give me twenty minutes.”

“You’re killing me, Midden,” Lipsky called after him.

Breathe in, Peter told himself. Breathe out. He tried to relax in the chair and live with himself for another day. He thought of Lewis, waiting outside. He closed his eyes and reached for another plan.

Lipsky’s phone rang. He took the call, walked away, and began to talk.

Peter opened his eyes and turned to Felix, still working furiously at his laptop.

“Hey, Felix.”

“They call me Cas.” The skinny kid didn’t look up. “I’m not Felix anymore. They call me Cas.”

The missing Marine was impossibly skinny. Shoulders like a coat hanger. Damaged somehow, and exploited by Lipsky.

“Your nana is worried about you, Felix. She asked me to find you. She wants you to come home. She’ll take care of you.”

At the mention of his grandmother, Felix’s head jerked up from the laptop. But he wouldn’t look at Peter. He looked at the bare brick walls, at the heavy wood ceiling timbers, at the pallets of fertilizer.

“Your nana loves you more than anything,” said Peter. “She’s afraid for you. She wants you to come home.”

Felix’s voice was loud. “There is no more home. The bank is taking her house.” Shouting now, his gaunt face contorted with pain. “The banks are taking everything.”

“Your nana is moving in with her sister,” said Peter. “There’s room for you, too, Felix.”

“I’m not Felix, I’m Cas. I’m Cas.” He rocked his body back and forth, eyes fixed and staring. The kid had his own white static, and it was worse than Peter’s. Maybe he was just off his meds. Or Lipsky gave him something to keep him off-balance.

“You can stop this now,” said Peter. “Walk away. Close up your computer and go home. Your nana loves you. She’ll forgive you. She’ll forgive anything.”

Lipsky walked over, phone call finished, the hard soles of his shoes scraping on the floor. “He doesn’t care about you, Cas.”

He stood behind Felix and put his hands on the man’s impossibly skinny shoulders. He winked at Peter and kept talking in a low, soothing voice. “He doesn’t understand the plan, Cas. He doesn’t understand what you’re about to accomplish. You’re going down in history, Cas. You’re going to change the world.”

Peter kept pushing. “What about your nana, Felix? When this comes out it’s going to be very hard for her. What’s going to happen to her?”

Felix shook his head wildly and rocked in his chair, the veins in his forehead and neck standing out like snakes under the skin. “I’m already dead! Watch the video! I’m already dead!”

Lipsky bent so his lips were at the younger man’s ear and talked. He spoke slowly, softly, lower than Peter could hear, and all the while working his hands gently on the younger man’s shoulders, calming him, soothing him like a wild animal caught in a trap.

Peter saw Lipsky in a new light.

It wasn’t only about the money.

It was also about breaking something fragile.

And burning down the world just to warm his cold, hungry hands.

—

Lipsky rose and clapped Felix on the back. When the younger man stood, he seemed taller than Peter remembered. Maybe it was just how very thin he was. He strode without a glance past Peter to the white bags of fertilizer on their pallets, and bent to stack the fifty-pound sacks on the hand truck. He lifted one in each hand as if they weighed nothing, and worked with a focused, manic energy. Peter knew that if he tried to talk to Felix now, the younger man wouldn’t even hear him.

Lipsky watched with an odd smile on his face as Felix moved his heavy load out of the room.

“What kind of meds are you giving him?” asked Peter. “Something to really fuck him up, right?”

Lipsky’s smile widened, and Peter knew he’d guessed it. Lipsky had pushed the young Marine over the brink. But Lipsky would never admit it. “Hey, the man’s a patriot,” said Lipsky. “That’s all there is to it.”

“No, he’s zonked out of his gourd,” said Peter. “Delusional and damaged. So what’s your excuse?”

“You really should read your own manifesto,” said Lipsky. “Modern banks have wrecked the economy. They’ve grown so large they can gamble everything on a roll of the dice, and the government has no choice but to bail them out. They’re sucking money out of the middle class. They’re set up now just to profit themselves, rather than facilitate production and innovation, which is the role they’re designed to perform. Something has to change.”

“And you’re actually into this?” asked Peter. “Lipsky the revolutionary?”

Felix came in and stacked eight bags of fertilizer on the hand truck while Lipsky watched silently. After Felix walked back out, Lipsky turned to Peter.