The Suppressor by Erik Carter (best free novels .txt) 📗

She didn’t break a smile, but she couldn’t help but warm to his disarming, unassuming quality, which paired well with his humble good looks and tall, broad-shouldered body.

No wonder the Farone chick had gone gaga over him.

“Burton’s been using the Farone counterfeiting presses to fund some really bad dudes,” she said, “like the one who wrote that manifesto. That’s why I’m … um, undercover.”

Rowe reached into his pocket and took out a small notebook. It had a bright yellow plastic cover with white lettering that labeled it as a PenPal.

She snorted. “You’re taking notes?”

He popped a pencil from the spiral binding and started writing. “Trust me. I need to.”

“Do you just carry that thing around with you?”

He didn’t look up. “Continue, please.”

“Nine months ago a guy named Keith Sutton tried to used counterfeit bills to buy a shitload of weapons in Boston. Caught in the act. Escaped police. A couple days later, on a different side of the country, here in Pensacola, of all places, he was found dead—two bullet holes in his chest and weighted ropes around his ankles. Someone tried to sink him in the bay, but ol’ Sutton was more buoyant than they’d counted on. Since the Farone crime syndicate is known for counterfeiting, a connection to the Farones was obvious.”

Rowe scribbled away. “Why the Farones? There’s gotta be plenty of decent counterfeiters up north.”

“It’s more complicated than just counterfeit bills. That’s why I staged the break-in tonight. There’s also…” She trailed off. She was giving him too much. A moment of consideration, and she pivoted. “Just understand that everything is tied to Burton.”

Rowe studied her, wanting the extra info she wasn’t sharing. She could see him weighing his options. Finally he said, “And all of this relates to tonight’s hit on the Rojas?”

“In a manner of speaking. Burton told me tonight’s the night he’s taking over the Farone family.”

Rowe’s pencil came to a sudden stop. He looked away.

The guy’s long undercover investigation had surely consumed him—his time, his energy, his mental health—and the deep lines on his forehead said that the information she’d just shared had hit him hard.

He’d been at this for several months.

That was a hell of a long time to be undercover.

She should know.

“Which means you need to be especially careful tonight,” she said. Rowe’s attention returned to her. “And we need to figure out all we can.”

“We?”

“You and me. We’re a team now.”

Rowe shook his head. “I’m not going.”

“Come again?”

“I’m not going to the Roja hit tonight. I promised C.C.”

She forced something resembling a smile onto her face. “C.C.? Cecilia, you mean?”

Rowe nodded. “My lieutenant planned to pull me out in the event of something like this, to ‘arrest’ me at the next big hit. I was getting out tonight anyway. C.C. has a bad feeling about the Roja hit; I promised her I wouldn’t go.”

She could no longer muster a mediating smile.

“Listen, Rowe, you are going tonight.” She glared at him. “This is much more important than a promise to your little girlfriend.”

She paused and again weighed how much she should tell him. She went with her gut instinct.

“Burton has something else in mind, something even bigger than funding anarchists. This past week, he’s been telling me about a bigger vision of his, an idea of using other Farone family resources to get into activities more lucrative than printing fake money.”

“What resources are those?”

She shrugged. “That’s what we’re gonna find out, teammate.”

She turned and headed for the door.

Without looking back, she said, “Now, come on. We gotta get you back into town.”

Chapter Twelve

An hour later, Jake was back in Charlie’s musty old Taurus. Charlie guided the car to a stop behind the other parked vehicles, then gave a quick flash of his brights before extinguishing the headlights entirely.

The car in front of them flashed its brake lights.

A moment later, so too did another car farther up the alley.

Three vehicles in position, and they’d acknowledged each other, a three-car train idling in a dark alley with Charlie’s Taurus as the caboose.

The two-story brick walls loomed high on either side, only a few feet away, marred by mildew and fissures. The broken windows were dusty and dark. Lighting was scant and came from a single fixture above a utility door, left on undoubtedly to curb off intruders, though the patches of graffiti said the tactic hadn’t been entirely effective.

The bluish light from this simple security precaution was in contrast to the street beyond, which glowed a faint yellow-orange. Past the street was the wide-open parking lot where the Rojas’ truck was to arrive. A beat-up chain-link fence surrounded the lot, and in the distance was the abandoned school, a sprawling two-story brick building, completely dark and overgrown with untended plant life.

Jake took his cellular phone from his pocket, illuminated the green-colored screen to check the time: 6:27.

He pressed the 1 button and held it for a moment. Speed-dial.

Charlie leaned over. “Who ya calling?”

“C.C.”

Soon Jake would need to call Tanner, let him know he was in position. But first he was going to come clean to C.C., tell her he’d broken his promise, that he’d had no choice but to break it, that he’d come to the Roja hit.

Charlie chuckled. “Not even married yet, and she’s already got you checking in with her. Man, you’re whipped. Wah-PSSH!”

Jake shook his head and held the phone to his ear.

Chapter Thirteen

Burton approached the backside of Wagner High School—two stories of brick with a grand, tiered entryway, all of it eaten by ivy and surrounded by unsightly bushes and crape myrtles and a few wretched palms. Tangles of weeds crawled out of the deep crevices in the sidewalk.

He trotted up the three limestone steps to the main entrance, which had been covered by a section of chain-link. Someone had cut a gap through the fence large enough for a grown man to fit through, and evidently this had been done some time ago, as the cuts in the wire were as rusted over as the