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

all independent contractors he couldn’t say no to any offer of work. But maybe he was busy, or just didn’t feel like leaving New York for a few days. Instead, he asked around and subbed it out to me.
    Normally I wouldn’t step a foot from the city either, if I could avoid it. But I had personal business in Pittsburgh, business I’d been avoiding for months, and when Ryan called, it felt like the universe had decided enough was enough. So I said yes, and here I was, dodging eurotrash muscle in the fallen wastelands of western Pennsylvania.
    I dialed again, and again got no answer.
    In the middle of heavy traffic, all four lanes filled, a city bus appeared. The electronic sign over the driver had a pleasant LED glow, but the lighted interior carried only a few passengers, slumped in the plastic seats. It trundled past, groaning with effort on the incline, doubtless irritating drivers behind it.
    I dialed another, more familiar, number. This one picked up after one ring.
    “What?”
    “It’s Silas.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    Zeke’s an actual friend, and another specialty contractor. “You in the clear there?”
    “Call you back.” Click.
    He wasn’t necessarily in a bad mood, though it could be hard to tell. Zeke tends to be economical with his words. The army calls what he did for them MOUT—“military operations in urban terrain”—or even better, “kinetic response.” He never talks about it. Clients basically hire him when fucking-around time is
over
.
    We knew each other back when we were both in uniform. Well, Zeke never wore a uniform, but you know what I mean—running into each other on the sort of ad hoc, deep-black missions that policy makers love.
    Zeke has some issues, but so do we all.
    The phone in my hand buzzed. Zeke hadn’t dialed it direct, of course—I couldn’t be updating my entire contact list every week or two when I switched to a new disposable. Instead he called my permanent number. I use an electronic forwarding service to switch incoming calls to Canada, where an anonymizing server scrubs the metadata and forwards it again, to whatever phone I happen to be using. Canada, because for now they have real, enforceable data-privacy laws.
    Zeke would have switched to a more secure line, perhaps his own prepaid disposable. Kind of a pain in the ass, like most op-sec procedures, but neither of us wanted someone listening in, however remote the possibility. I suppose the NSA wouldn’t have any trouble, but local law enforcement is generally stymied by cross-border wiretapping.
    Or so the theory goes. So far it’s worked.
    “What’s going on?”
    “Not much. Seen Ryan lately?”
    “No.”
    “He’s not answering his phone,” I said.
    “Uh-oh.”
    Like I said, abnormal behavior. It’s a small world, our little corner of the informal economy, and we all know one another.
    “Don’t suppose you’ve heard anything,” I said.
    “Nope. Why do you need to reach him?”
    I gave a brief and elliptical explanation. “And now someone’s following me.”
    “They a problem?”
    “Nah.”
    “I’ll ask around.”
    “Thanks.”
    “What do you want me to do if I find him?”
    “Tell him to answer his damn calls.”
    “I’ll see what I can do. Sure you’re good?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Pittsburgh.” Like it was Ulan Bator. “Didn’t know people still lived there.”
    “It’s not so bad.”
    “I’ll get back to you.” He hung up.
    I sat another five minutes, studying a paper map I’d picked up at the AAA office on 62nd Street in Manhattan before coming on this bumfuck jaunt. The rental car had GPS, but I’d turned it off the moment I got in—as bad as a telephone, for privacy.
    I had a half-dozen other maps, too, including Ohio, Buffalo and Washington, D.C. If some suspicious meddler found them, I didn’t want to give the center of my interest away.
    The route looked easy enough. I folded the map, checked the road once more and eased the Malibu back into traffic.
    —
    Clabbton was