Drift
Authors: Jon McGoran
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For Elizabeth, and for Will
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing is often called a solitary pursuit, but by the time a book is finished, and even before it is started, there is a long list of people whose contributions have made that book possible. At the top of my list are my wonderful wife, Elizabeth, whose love and support sustain me; my son, Will, who fills my life with laughter and joy (among other things); and my mom and dad and my siblings—Maeve, Alison, and Hugh—who allowed me to grow up believing I had something worth saying.
I am fortunate to be part of an amazing community of writers, and I would have been lost without the boundless support and friendship of Jonathan Maberry, Dennis Tafoya, Don Lafferty, Greg Frost, and the entire Liars Club: Merry Jones, Ed Pettit, Solomon Jones, Marie Lamba, Kelly Simmons, Keith Strunk, Chuck Wendig, Stephen Susco, Keith DeCandido, and, of course, Leslie Banks, who is with us always. That community also includes the Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers, and the folks at Bouchercon, Thrillerfest, NoirCon, and the Liars Club’s Writers Coffeehouse.
Others who have been indispensible include Anne Dubuisson, for her help with
Drift,
but even more so for her invaluable advice, support, and friendship over the years. Special thanks from my characters go to beta reader extraordinaire Tanya Rotenberg, for making sure they are eating right (and for everything else), and to Robb Bettiker, for helping me make sure they are dying right. Thanks also to Lincoln Brower, Bill Johnson, Bruce Castor, Adam Silverman, and Irv Rotman, and to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, for help and support, and for being a very cool place with crazy big dinosaur skeletons and an amazing butterfly exhibit.
Massive big thanks to my incredible agent, Stacia Decker, at the Donald Maass Literary Agency (
GO TEAM DECKER!);
and to my excellent editor, Kristin Sevick; publisher, Tom Doherty; and everyone else at Tor/Forge.
Finally, I’d like to thank the communities of Weavers Way Co-op, CreekSide Co-op, and food co-ops everywhere, as well as groups like Just Label It, the Non-GMO Project, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Food Democracy Now, the Center for Food Safety, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. These groups don’t agree on everything, but they all advocate for more research, better regulation, and labeling of Genetically Modified Foods. They know, as do more than 90 percent of the American public, that if you are what you eat, it’s important to know what it is you are eating.
This book is a work of fiction, but much of what happens in it is only slightly exaggerated. These are interesting times, as they say, and for better or for worse, we now have access to powerful technologies that are often not fully understood. We are in the midst of a food revolution that offers great promise, but while it’s important not to be reflexively resistant to new technology, it’s also important to understand the potential for far-reaching consequences that, once realized, cannot be undone.
C
ONTENTS
P
ROLOGUE
The pain was everywhere—in his eyes, his throat, his chest, his head. His hands and feet were shreds. All Renaldo could remember was running and trying to breathe. And pain. He didn’t know what he was running from. It was not the pain. It was something worse.
The sun was hot and so bright he could barely see. Stumbling across the field, he came upon a figure, small and frail, wearing pale purple, like jacarandas, and carrying a handful of books. He closed a hand on her arm and she pulled away. His fingers left a green smudge. He tried to ask for help, but he could only cough, a deep cough with no breath in between, just the gray-green taste of dirt and decay and death from the inside out. He followed her, a tiny speck of purple hope getting smaller and smaller. When the coughing finally stopped, she was gone.
He tried to find her, tried to keep going. But after a while, he found himself lying on the ground, and he knew he would never get up again. A rock dug into his back, but he was too weak to move. There was little of him left.
An orange blur fluttered in the air, and he knew it was important, but he couldn’t remember why. Then it was gone, too. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he was no longer alone. A figure stood over him, massive, blocking out the sun. It had no features at first, no face. Then he saw sunlight glinting off the metal on its brow and its lips, and a darker light glowing in those gray eyes.
This was what he was running from.
The man with the metal face smiled. “Where did you think you were going?” He shook his head, looking back the way Renaldo had come. “Was a good chase,” he said, looking almost sad. “But long. Much to clean up.”
The man pulled the magazine out of his weapon, his lips moving slightly as he counted the bullets, then he looked at his watch before sliding the magazine back into place. “Guess we have time for a little more fun,” he said, smiling as he raised the gun.
Renaldo knew the smile meant pain, but ultimately it also meant salvation. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the white-hot sky, praying to a god he could no longer remember. And when the final bullet came, he welcomed it.
1
The surveillance van smelled of old cheeseburgers, coffee, and me. Parked in front of a vacant storefront in North Philly, I was watching on a little screen as my partner, Danny Tennison, made a buy from a scumbag named Dwayne Rowan just around the corner.
We’d been trying to nab Rowan’s supplier, see if we could swim upstream and get the next guy up the chain or the guy above him.
Rowan was almost out of stock, and Danny was trying to find out about the re-up. Rowan didn’t have the faintest idea Danny was a cop, and he wasn’t trying to be discreet, either. He was just a dumbass.
“So, you getting any more of this?” Danny asked him.
“Yeah, this stuff or something else.”
“Same guy, or you got somebody new?”
“Nah, always the same guy.”
“Oh yeah? When’s that going to be?” Danny asked, keeping it casual.
That’s when my phone rang. The whole thing was being recorded, but I still needed to be paying attention. No chance in hell a guy like Rowan was going to start trouble, but I was still Danny’s backup.
The call was from Frank, my mom’s husband. She was pretty sick by then, between the cancer and the chemo and the infections. I’d been trying to wrap up the case so I could visit her, but things were conspiring to keep me in Philly. Things like this asshole Rowan.
I’d only seen her twice since the diagnosis, but my guilt was tinged with annoyance at her and Frank for moving so far out in the sticks.
“Oh, you know, like, in a couple days,” Rowan told Danny.
“So what, you mean like Tuesday?” Danny asked, without a trace of the exasperation I was feeling. “Or like Wednesday?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Rowan replied.
“What is it, Frank?” I said, answering the phone in an exaggerated whisper so he’d know this was not a good time.
“Well, which is it?” Danny asked. “Tuesday or Wednesday?”
“Wait,” Rowan said. “What day is it today?”
“Monday,” Danny told him.
“Right … so probably later, then.”
“It’s your mother,” Frank said, his voice strained.
“You mean, like Wednesday or like Thursday?” Danny said, finally revealing a hint of aggravation.
“What about her, Frank?”
“It’s another infection. A bad one. She’s back in the hospital.… I think this is it.” His voice cracked, and I thought I heard him sob. He cleared his throat. “If you’re going to come up, you need to come up now.”
Rowan was babbling on in the background, sounding suddenly far away. “Could still be Tuesday, man. I forget. What night is the wrestling on?”
As the phone fell away from my face, I thought: My mom is going to die while this fuck-head tries to get his days straight. I don’t remember thinking much after that. I got out of the van, a cardinal sin in the middle of surveillance, and I walked around the corner, straight up to where Danny and Rowan were standing.
Danny’s eyes widened, then his face fell back into the same heavy-lidded suspicious gaze as Rowan’s. We’d been working pretty hard the past few days, so I looked rough enough to pass for someone making a buy. As Rowan looked over at me, ready to take my order, Danny flashed me one last glare to remind me how much time and energy he’d invested in his cover.
The first thing I did when I came up to them, I planted a left in Danny’s face. I didn’t pull it, either—I popped him and dropped him. If I was going to pull something, it had to look real.
Rowan yelped like I’d stepped on his tail. He tugged a gun from the back of his pants, but he couldn’t seem to get a grip on it, bobbling it like some half-assed juggler until I snatched it out of the air between his hands and pressed it against his temple.
“When’s the re-up?” I asked quietly.
“Tuesday,” he said with great certainty. “Um … six o’clock.”
I was about to ask him where when he said, “In the parking lot behind Charlie B’s.”