Full Ratchet: A Silas Cade Thriller Hardcover Read Online Free Page A

to the left, then right, and the door finally swung shut. The driver got himself straightened out, the wheels caught, and they shot off down the road about three times the speed limit.
    I watched them disappear. The burnt-rubber smell was strong and acrid.
    “What was
that
all about?”
    A guy in a ball cap had come up behind me, staring at the tire marks, then at the street. I lowered my hand, ruffling the jacket to make sure the Sig was covered.
    “Skipping out on his bill, maybe? I got no idea.”
    “Assholes.”
    “No kidding.” I shook my head. “I’m leaving.”
    “Yeah.” He kept peering down the road. I went back around the restaurant—better that no one saw me go directly back to the motel—reholstering the pistol on the way. The busboy had finished up and lit a cigarette, sitting on a pile of wooden produce crates. I nodded at him, but this time he didn’t say anything.
    I waited for a pause in traffic, crossed back over and went straight to my own car, keys in hand. I slid in, shifting around as the Sig jammed into my lower back, and started up.
    The first stoplight was a hundred yards down the street, green when I got there. I picked up speed going through.
    A hundred bucks blown. I wouldn’t be sleeping
there
tonight.

CHAPTER THREE
    I felt uncomfortable and out of place.
    Pittsburgh was better than I expected. A lot better than, say, East St. Louis. People still lived here, went to work, kept the streets clean. The industrial collapse had happened, manufacturing jobs evaporated, then somehow the city picked itself up and moved on. Some of the architecture was beautifully preserved, and the rivers looked like you could swim in them even without a tetanus shot.
    But it was . . .
empty
.
    Streets were wide and barely occupied, with parking anywhere. The industrial districts—Lawrenceville, the Strip, areas down the Monongahela—looked like vast metal sheds had been dropped into scraggly open fields, with just enough truck traffic to keep the weeds from completely taking over.
    I missed New York, with all its bustle and noise and people in your face. I missed decent food and coffee shops on every corner. I missed the comforting anonymity of the crowds, the squealing rush of the subways, the constant nonstop chatter of the streets.
    Which is funny, considering I grew up in rural New Hampshire. I joined the service before high school even ended, a week before graduation, right to Fort Benning. Then I spent several years in remote parts of the world, mostly living in shipping containers and dugouts and bivvy sacks. Pittsburgh was Paris compared to that.
    Maybe I’d been too long in the city, gotten too used to life in Manhattan. Maybe I needed to get outside the loop, spend time in real America.
    Maybe I needed to finish this damn job and go home.
    I pulled into an empty lot a few miles later. A sagging fence at its edge surrounded an abandoned construction site—excavation had started, one curtain wall poured, then nothing. Weeds grew in the piles of dirt, and a pool of black water had accumulated in the bottom of the hole. In the dusk I couldn’t read the fading sign wired to the chain-link.
    Parked by the fence, facing the road, I had a nice view in either direction. Plenty of time to see someone coming. I started to switch off the engine, then changed my mind.
    My crummy phone was still plugged into the dash. A twenty-dollar disposable, but it worked fine. I pick them up two or three at a time. This one came from a bodega on 108th that still hadn’t installed security cameras. I stretched the power cord, leaning back, and dialed a 917 number.
    It rang five times and clicked into silence. No invitation to leave a message.
    Not good. Ryan
always
answered his calls.
    See, I wasn’t actually the principal on this Clayco job. When the board of directors—or whoever—decided they needed the swamp drained at Clay Micro, they’d hired a different guy. Ryan had the same sort of line I did, and like