Full Ratchet: A Silas Cade Thriller Hardcover by Mike Cooper

Author:Mike Cooper [Cooper, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780670025794
Amazon: 0670025798
Publisher: Viking Adult
Published: 2013-07-02T20:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Someone else was watching the Clay Micro offices.

I’d driven back, the same route Nabors had led me out on, figuring I’d give it one more try. Maybe Brinker would have returned. I could do one more interview and still get dinner before midnight.

The parking lot was emptier now, maybe five vehicles left. Security lights were on at the corners of the building. Small floodlights illuminated the sign at the lot’s entrance. I continued along the canal, past the lot, headed for my spot opposite the iron bridge. With the windows down, I could smell the canal’s dank, brackish water.

But the spot was occupied.

I didn’t notice until I was almost there—the new vehicle was as small as the Aveo, and concealed behind the half wall. Four doors, light-colored, not too old. Only one person visible inside, a shadow in the driver’s seat.

I kept the car’s speed steady and drove past. At the end of the industrial row, where windows were broken and dock bays boarded over, their renovation still long in the future, the canal road ended in a T with another street. I stopped, signaled and turned right, around the corner and out of sight.

Now what?

Whoever was in the sedan had chosen the spot same as I had—for covert surveillance. They couldn’t be responding to a report from Nabors. It was too soon, and in any event he didn’t know I’d picked him up here. So whoever it was, they were watching Clay Micro for some other reason.

It wasn’t the Russian’s panel van. Odds were running strong on Harmony’s team.

No reason they’d have recognized the Aveo, which Dave and I had bought six hours ago, and I’d kept my face turned away after the first glimpse. Their attention would have been on the Clay Micro doors anyway. I could assume I was unnoticed.

No reason to go rushing in. I turned the car around, crossed a bridge farther down and drove back on a parallel road, one block away from the canal. Low buildings—empty garages, deserted warehouses, decrepit light industry—blocked my view across to Clay Micro’s mill block. When it felt like the right place I parked, rolled the windows up and locked the car, then continued on foot.

I came to the canal’s edge between a chain-link fence and a blank cinderblock wall, dark and unlit. The iron bridge was in front of me. Two hundred yards right, Clay Micro’s few lit windows shone over the lot. Across the bridge I could just make out the mystery car, sitting still and quiet in its own shadows.

Not perfect, mostly because I’d had to leave the Aveo. But I couldn’t see anywhere else to park that the new stakeout wouldn’t notice—the canal’s service roads were empty, the parking lot lit. I was confident of my own invisibility, and if either Brinker or the sedan drove away, I could probably get back to my own car quickly enough to follow.

The night had cooled and dampness drifted off the canal. Grime crusted the rough brick wall beside me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.