The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(90)

Dinah ground the truck into gear without taking her eyes off Lewis.

And Lewis still couldn’t do a thing.

The cop shouted again and Dinah gunned the engine and pulled the Mitsubishi out of the loading dock and onto the street like she’d been driving a truck all her life.

She turned right, up the street and away from Lewis, and the cop Lipsky stepped off the running board, walking toward Lewis with his pistol held down at his side like Wyatt fucking Earp.

The truck was at the end of the block now and turning behind the bulk of the warehouse. Lewis reached for the 10-gauge and Lipsky raised his gun and started firing steadily.

Lewis stood behind his door, which gave him some protection, but it didn’t feel like it when the slugs started punching into the Yukon, spiderwebbing the glass. The guy wasn’t just emptying his clip, he was aiming. For fifty yards away and walking, the guy was accurate as hell.

Lewis wanted to step out with the 10-gauge and put some holes in the man. It’s what he should have done. Put the man down. But the boy was right beside him, Dinah’s boy. And the boy didn’t ask for this. The boy didn’t have a choice.

So he ducked into the driver’s seat, threw the Yukon in reverse, and roared backward up the street, steering with his mirrors and hoping like hell he wouldn’t hit anything.

Maybe everyone else would die when that bomb went off, but not this boy. Not the son of Jimmy and Dinah, the woman they had both loved.





46





Peter


The white sparks rose up in him like something alive. Peter focused instead on the pain of the plastic handcuffs biting into his wrists as the truck lurched around the corner, picking up speed. Whoever was driving wasn’t fucking around.

Something was very wrong. When the big diesel started up, he expected the next sound to be the hard crack of the charge detonating on the engine block. Instead the truck rolled out and he heard the pop pop pop of pistol fire.

He had to assume Lewis was dead. He was on his own.

The white sparks grew until he thought the top of his head would come off. His lungs were barely functional, sweat running down his face. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Midden stood on the other side of the cargo box, one hand looped easily through a cargo strap, blank as an unchiseled tombstone. Was there something in there?

“You think you’re going to walk away from this?” Peter’s voice sounded strangled in his throat. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Midden didn’t react in any way. As if Peter was already a ghost.

“They’re going to kill everyone else, you know. Felix. Me. Dinah and Miles. Boomer. And you. It’s going to be Lipsky and Skinner. They need someone to blame, and you’re on the list.”

The truck slowed slightly, then turned again. Peter swung at the end of his handcuff tether, his muscles clamping tight as the white static filled him. Where were they going? How long did he have? The truck gathered speed again, the tires thumping on the potholes. Midden stood like his feet were bolted to the floor.

Peter said, “You think you’re ever going to get out of this truck? Boomer has the detonator, and it’s armed. Have you even checked to see if that roll-up is unlocked?”

Midden just stared at him, his face a barren field. The soil so toxic that nothing could grow for millennia. But there was something going on inside that implacable mechanism. Peter knew there was. He just had to get access to it.

The white static roared in him, louder, higher. Wait, friend, please wait. The bands around his chest tighter and tighter. It was all he could do to speak.

“Listen, I don’t know what you’ve done in your life. But nothing could be worse than what is about to happen. And it doesn’t have to happen.”

Midden just closed his eyes, as if profoundly tired. As if to pray. Or to weep.





47





Charlie


He held on with both hands as the SUV flew around the corners. Mingus crouched between the seats, digging in with his toenails, tongue flapping.

“Do you see it?” said the driver, Lieutenant Ash’s friend. He drove like he was playing a video game, but this was not a game. “Do you see the truck? With your mom and your brother.”

Charlie twisted in his seat, looking all around them. “I don’t see it, I don’t see it.” Horns blared as they slid between the cars, cutting across lanes. His mom would kill him if she saw him like this. His feet on the seat, safety belt barely on. But he had to find her first. Once he got her free she could kill him all she wanted.

After zooming backward away from the guy shooting at them, they’d circled around to catch the big truck his mom was driving, but it had somehow gone a different way. And no matter where they went now, Charlie still didn’t see it.

“Keep looking,” said Lieutenant Ash’s friend. “Guess I head for the freeway.” He roared around a Volkswagen and took a right on Locust, then slowed past the district police station. “You know where they’re going?”

“No,” Charlie said, shaking his head. Did the guy think he wouldn’t have mentioned it? But he kept looking. “Tell me who you are again?”

“Name’s Lewis. Friend of your mom and dad, from a long time ago.” He looked sideways at Charlie for a moment, his face gone funny. “You look like him, you know. Like your dad.” He turned back to the road. “Sorry about him dying.”