The Drifter

After eight years as a soldier, Peter Ash came home from Iraq and Afghanistan with only one souvenir: what he calls 'white static', a buzzing claustrophobia due to post-traumatic stress that has driven him to spend a year roaming the US Pacific coast's mountains and forests, sleeping under the stars. But when a friend from the Marines commits suicide, Ash returns to civilization to help the man's widow and two young children.

While repairing her dilapidated porch, he makes two unwelcome discoveries: the first is a dog, the largest, meanest, ugliest dog he's ever laid eyes on; the second surprise is what the dog is guarding – a suitcase containing $400,000 in cash and four slabs of plastic explosive. Just what was his friend caught up in during his final days? Ash will find that the demons of war aren't easy to leave behind...

About the Author

Nick Petrie received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington, won a Hopwood Award for short fiction, and his story At the Laundromat won the 2006 Short Story Contest in the The Seattle Review.