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Zusatztext 62514888 Informationen zum Autor Nick Petrie Klappentext The first explosive thriller featuring Peter Ash! a veteran who finds that the demons of war aren't easily left behind... "Lots of characters get compared to my own Jack Reacher! but Petrie's Peter Ash is the real deal."-Lee Child Peter Ash came home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with only one souvenir: what he calls his "white static!" the buzzing claustrophobia due to post-traumatic stress that has driven him to spend a year roaming in nature! sleeping under the stars. But when a friend from the Marines commits suicide! Ash returns to civilization to help the man's widow with some home repairs. Under her dilapidated porch! he finds more than he bargained for: the largest! ugliest! meanest dog he's ever encountered...and a Samsonite suitcase stuffed with cash and explosives. As Ash begins to investigate this unexpected discovery! he finds himself at the center of a plot that is far larger than he could have imagined...and it may lead straight back to the world he thought he'd left for good. Chapter 1 There was a pit bull under the front porch and it didn’t want to come out. Young Charlie Johnson said, “That dang dog’s been there for weeks, sir. It already ate up all the cats and dogs around here. I can’t even let my dang little brother out the front door no more.” The hundred-year-old house sat on a narrow lot on the edge of a battered Milwaukee neighborhood that, like the house, had seen better days. It was early November, not warm, not even by Wisconsin standards. The leaves had already fallen from the skeletal trees that towered overhead. But the sun was out, which counted for something. And the sky was a high, pale morning blue. Not a morning for static. Not at all. Peter Ash said, “Just how big is this dog?” Charlie shook his head. “Never seen it up close, sir, and never in daylight. But it’s awfully dang big, I can tell you that.” “Didn’t you call animal control?” “Oh, my mama called,” said Charlie. “Two men came, took one look under there, got right back in their truck and drove away.” Charlie wore a school uniform, a light-blue permanent-press dress shirt, dark-blue polyester dress pants, and giant polished black shoes on his oversized feet. He was the kind of skinny, big-eared, twelve-year-old kid who could eat six meals a day and still be hungry. But his eyes were older than his years. They didn’t miss a thing. He was watching Peter Ash now. Peter sat on the closed lid of a wooden toolbox, his wide, knuckly hands on the work-worn knees of his carpenter’s jeans, peering through the narrow access hatch cut into the rotted pine slats enclosing the space under the porch. He had to admit the dog sounded big. He could hear it growling back there in the darkness. Like a tank engine on idle, only louder. He had a .45 under the seat of his pickup, but he didn’t want to use it. It wasn’t the dog’s fault, not really. It was hungry and scared and alone, and all it had was its teeth. On the other hand, Peter had told Charlie’s mother, Dinah, that he would fix the rotting supports beneath her ancient porch. She hadn’t mentioned the dog. Peter really couldn’t blame her. Her husband had killed himself. And it was Peter’s fault. ** Peter was lean and rangy, muscle and bone, nothing extra. His long face was angular, the tips of his ears slightly pointed, his dark hair the unruly shag of a buzz cut grown wild. He had the thoughtful eyes of a werewolf a week before the change. Some part of him was always in motion—even now, sitting on that toolbox, peering under that porch, his knee bobbed in time to some interior metronome that never ceased. He’d fought two wars over eight years, with more deployme...
