Full Ratchet: A Silas Cade Thriller Hardcover (21 page)

E
lsie had to go to work. Brendt needed his car. Dave offered to drive Elsie to the Super Duper, but Brendt wasn’t having any of that.

We stood on the sidewalk outside Sully’s, watching Brendt drive off in his car, Elsie in the passenger seat. Dave sighed.

“She’s breaking my heart,” he said. Then he turned to Harmony and grinned. “
You
wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”

“Dunno. You drive a better car?”

“A better
car
? Do you know what I
do
?”

“Barista?”

“What?”

“No, that’s not right . . . nursing home attendant?”

Dave frowned. “Of course not!”

“She’s kidding you,” I said. “I think.”

Harmony patted Dave on the shoulder. “You’re just like your brother.”

His frown deepened. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’d have better luck with Elsie,” I said.

Dave finally went off, something about fixing someone’s boat rack. Before he got in the Charger he handed me a small paper sack.

“Elsie gave me this,” he said. “Take a look.”

“What is it?”

“She found it in Brendt’s car.” He looked sideways at Harmony, not sure where she fit in.

“Like, it didn’t belong there? After a more thorough search later?”

“I think she was finally cleaning out all of Brendt’s trash, but yeah, that’s the idea.”

“Good.” I put it in my jacket pocket. “I’ll call you, okay?”

No need to set specific plans while Harmony was listening. Dave waved once, gunned the engine and took off.

The day had warmed considerably. I wasn’t hungry—the pipefitter chicken had been huge and generously seasoned with mayonnaise.

“Let’s go sit on a bench.” The town green was emptier now. Maybe everyone had gone back to work after lunch.

“Sure.”

This time we walked across the street like proper citizens. I saw a Clabbton police cruiser three blocks down, so I steered us down the slope, toward some towering spruce at the lower end of the park. Neither of us spoke while the patrol car drove past, both of us watching it in peripheral vision.

We sat on a weathered slat bench under the evergreen. A faint smell of needles drifted past. Neither of us relaxed particularly. Harmony sat straight, her back not even touching the wood, hands on her thighs. I was angled sideways at my end. Either of us could have leaped into death-dealing action in an instant.

“Funny,” I said.

“What?”

“How the first part of your name is
harm
.”

“Gee, I never heard that before.”

Oh, well. “What are you doing here?”

“I was hired to find you,” Harmony said. “Only that.”

“When?”

“Last Friday night.” The same day I’d done my audit at Clay Micro. “You know, they wake you up at midnight, they want it done by breakfast. I was on a plane an hour later.”

“Commercial?”

She looked at me. “Are we in the same business?”

“You know all about me,” I said. “I don’t know anything about you.”

“You knew my name by the time we, uh, met at Brinker’s barn. Either I’ve been sold or you got some research done. Either way . . .”

I nodded. “They wanted immediate results, but you’re based three time zones away. What does that tell you?”

“They weren’t risking us being acquainted.”

“Right.”

Conflict-of-interest problems arise all the time in the business world, but those are usually handled with contractual provisions. When you’re hiring mercenaries, the issues are more vexing. Even the most coldhearted ex-paras can have trouble shooting their former comrades in arms. I’ve turned down a few offers after I found out who might be on the other side.

Life’s too short, and friends are scarce enough in our profession.

“Who are the Russians?” I asked.

“Russians?”

Uh-oh. “Aren’t you on the same team? I thought they might have hired you, actually.”

“Maybe. All I had was one contact, but he could have been from anywhere.”

“No accent?”

“Midwest generic.”

I leaned back on the bench, relaxing one notch. “How’d you find me?”

She nodded. “They’d given me a picture. Service record, maybe. I started showing it around town yesterday, and most everyone knew who it was.”

My jaw dropped, but a moment later I figured it out. “Dave. They thought you were looking for
him
.”

“That’s right. You don’t live here? No one even mentioned he had a brother, but you two really do look alike.”

“Long story.”

“I told them I was tracing a paternity skip.”

I laughed. “Really?”

“Which they all thought was totally credible.” She glinted a smile. “I kinda see why.”

A trio of Harleys rumbled past, keeping it slow through town. Each had the leathers and the vest and the Afrika Korps helmet, but also the gut, plus about twenty years on me.

All the same, I wouldn’t want to tangle with them.

“You haven’t said why you’re still in town.”

Harmony nodded and eased her own posture slightly. “Talking to people like I was, they kept telling me how nice and quiet Clabbton is. Small town, peaceful. Everybody knows everybody.”

“That’s my impression. More or less.”

“But the county—Dave’s welding shop, what happened out there? Sounds like someone drove a tank through. Then something out at an abandoned steel mill, which the news is talking up like a drug war. And last night an armed gang stormed a hospital. A hospital! It’s like we’re in Ciudad Juarez.”

“All since you came to town.”

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “You were here first.”

I noticed a news van parked up by town hall. It was around the side, half hidden, which was why I’d missed it earlier. The telescoping antenna was fully raised, cables spilling out the open rear doors, but no one was visible.

“The Russians are out of control,” I said. “If this is Chihuahua, then they’re the Zetas. They’ll be stringing bodies from that railroad bridge there soon enough.”

“Exactly.”

I studied her posture. “You’re worried about them coming after
you
.”

“Yes.”

“My friend who looked you up—you have a reputation of your own.” I crossed my arms. “Yeah, the guy I’ve seen is a monster, but I think you could take him.”

“Aw, that’s sweet.”

“But if you’re concerned, just fly home to LA. No one’s going to follow you there. You’re just a hired hand, same as me. No one cares.”

“Clay Micro.” Harmony finally sat back. I felt some tension go out of my own muscles. “This is some bullshit commercial dispute. I’ve done corporate work before. At the end of the day, it’s just another deal.”

My interest sharpened. “You know the details? Because I sure don’t.”

Harmony shrugged. “Someone’s buying, someone’s selling, who cares? Whatever Clayco is up to, it’s
not
the sort of thing they start killing civilians for all over the gameboard.”

“So?”

“So if they’re willing to shoot up hospitals and welding shops and horse barns just to make a point, then either they’re not rational or the stakes are way higher than anyone’s bothered to tell me. See?” She frowned. “Either way, I’m still in it.”

“Maybe.”

“And so are you.”

I started to get the picture. “You want an entente here, is that it?”

“My enemy’s enemy.” She opened her hands. “We share some intelligence, we’re both safer, we both live another day.”

I thought about it. Ryan, missing. Russian killers, trying to kill me. Mysterious shell company surreptitiously buying out the American heartland, possibly with the assistance of the most famous billionaire in the country. Zeke, badly wounded.

Blond assassin, asking for help.

I hadn’t exactly signed a nondisclosure agreement.

“All right,” I said.

—

We walked to the railroad bridge. Just a pair of tourists in charming Clabbton, viewing its picturesque sights—anything not to stand around on the sidewalk, drawing attention from locals.

“First thing, more background,” I said. “Some people I know have been looking into this. The paperwork’s murky, but Clayco is owned by Wilbur Markson.”

“The Buddha?”

Again? Whoever did Markson’s image management deserved a big bonus. “Yeah, the teddy-bear savior of capitalism. What’s peculiar is, he
also
owns Clay Micro’s buyer—a shell company called Dagger Light.”

“Huh? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Markson’s not looking too clean on this.”

Harmony frowned slightly, thinking. A light breeze lifted the hair from her forehead. I was a little taller, and I noticed the top buttons of her shirt were undone, pushed by the vest.

“Brinker’s working with the Russians,” she said, glancing up. I quickly moved my eyes to safer territory. “And they seem most interested in eliminating a potential roadblock to closing the sale.”

“Namely me. Yes.”

“But they could be on
either
side of the deal. The contact that hired me—”

“Midwest generic.” I repeated the phrase she’d used.

“Yeah. Like, maybe, Ohio.”

We thought about that.

“I’m not sure where to go with this,” Harmony said finally.

“Me neither.”

We leaned on the bridge rail, looking down the cut. Tracks curved around a long bend, trees in spring bloom overhanging the right-of-way.

I wondered how much of what Harmony told me was true. Part of me said
everything, you suspicious cretin!
And I sure wanted to think so.

But that particular part of me was also the part keenly interested in looking down her shirt. Untrustworthy, perhaps, in some matters.

“Okay,” I said, pulling out the paper sack Dave had given me. “Here’s our new clue.”

“What’s that?”

“The Russians borrowed Brendt’s car when they attacked the welding shop.” I held up my other hand. “I know, I know, but I really think it was coincidence.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We checked the car that morning, but there was so much crap lying around Elsie didn’t see anything unusual. I guess she found this later.”

“Doesn’t look like much of a clue,” Harmony said, shaking the paper sack open to peer inside.

“The best ones never do.”

“What?”

“Because if they were obvious, they’d have been noticed already.”

She gave me a look. “That’s like a detective koan.”

“Don’t touch anything in there.” With a
may I?
gesture I took the bag and set it on a waist-high girder in the middle of the bridge. “Might be prints.”

“Got a dusting kit?”

“No.”

“Friends at the FBI lab?” Harmony was off and running. “Think the locals have a forensic team waiting to go? We’re not quite CSI Pittsburgh here.”

“Yeah—”

“Not to mention I don’t think brown paper even picks up fingerprints.”

She had a point but I was too far in to concede. “Are we going to do this right or wrong?”

“Fine.” Harmony walked to the end of the bridge, studying the ground, then picked up a small stick and returned.

“Let me.” She used the twig to poke around in the bag. “Okay,
Murder She Wrote,
here we go. Ready to bust the case wide open?”

She withdrew a roll of duct tape. It was clearly new, the edges of the roll still sharp and clean, but a jagged tear indicated at least some had been used.

We looked at it.

“Lots of uses for that,” I said. “Friction grips. Taping magazines. Covering gun ports.”

“Uh-huh.”

I sighed. “Or possibly taping up boxes for the post office. I know.”

“Yeah.” She let the roll slide off onto the girder. “On the other hand . . .”

She abandoned the stick, reached in and came out with a scrap of white paper.

“No way. A
receipt
?”

“Maybe they’re not so smart after all.”

We looked at the thermal-printed strip. Duct tape, “Misc Hardwr” and “Snack Item” for a total of $18.37. Paid in cash of course, off a twenty.

And the name of the store: “Rankin Avenue Hardware.”

“It can’t be this easy.” Even Harmony was skeptical.

“Where’s Rankin Avenue?”

“Let’s find out.” She handed me the receipt and pulled a slick-looking smartphone from somewhere inside her vest.

“You have the internet on that thing?”

“Well, duh.” Typing away already, two thumbs flashing.

I thought about my crummy, prepaid basic service. “Is that safe?”

“What?”

“Don’t you worry about being tracked? The government listening in? The permanent data trail?”

Harmony stopped long enough to give me a you’re-not-serious look. “Type 1 encryption tunneled through either local wifi, packet radio or, if necessary, public GSM. The gateway’s proprietary and offshore—I buy time from some Ukrainian hackers. How do
you
do it?”

“Never mind. What’s the number?”

“Why?”

“I won’t write it down, I promise.”

She thought for a moment. Cautious.

“All right.” She read it off.

“Thanks.”

Harmony went back to the search, which took only another fifteen seconds. Less time than I probably would have needed at home, on Verizon FIOS.

“Eight miles south of Pittsburgh.” She showed me the screen, with a map displayed. “What do you think?”

—

We took two vehicles.

“We’re partners now, aren’t we?” Harmony said. We stood beside my hand-me-down pickup. “You should ride with me. I’m not sure you’ll even make it to the city—that tire looks halfway flat.”

“Nah, it’s fine.” I hoped. “But I was followed at least once already. With two cars, we can keep an eye on each other, see if either of us picks up a tail.”

“You just don’t trust me.”

“Of course I do.” Not. “But the point stands—we’re safer in two cars than one.”

“Think you can keep up?”

“Stay under forty and we’ll be fine.”

She had an Escalade around the corner—a monster. Oversize spoked wheels, blackout glass, chrome racks on the roof, rear
and
front ends. The paint was dark gray with a silver lightning bolt down each side.

“Holy shit,” I said.