Hush Hush by Erik Carter (best short novels of all time .TXT) 📗

Silence expectantly, wanting more.

So Silence added, “Beasley will lead us…” Another swallow. “To our answer.”

Something deep inside Silence was talking to him, screaming at him, telling him to get to Beasley. Amber had written his name, his derogatory nickname, “Weasel,” along with his prior address at the homeless shelter. After all these years. She’d reached out to him, and he hadn’t been a corrupt member of C11.

Beasley was the key to it all.

Jonah’s mouth opened in a kind of bewildered astonishment, as though he trusted Silence but his mind wouldn’t process the fact that he might soon learn what happened to his dead wife.

There was no time to dwell. Silence brushed past him, and he was about to turn onto the sidewalk leading through the lush green lawn to Beasley’s townhouse when there was a voice.

Someone shouted from behind.

He stopped. Turned.

It was Kim Hurley, the woman who’d been following them, the one who claimed she wasn’t in cahoots with the other person following them.

And she was running right for them.

Chapter Twenty-One

An open-air sports bar on a sunny afternoon. There could be worse places to work.

Finley stole a look across the street at Beasley’s townhouse then stepped through a wave of refreshing mist from the outdoor cooling lines in the ceiling. The main bar was on the far wall, stools with shiny plush cushions butted up against a foot rail and a high counter, big screens hanging above rows of liquor bottles. Two bartenders wearing sunglasses and green, water-stained T-shirts freshened drinks, took orders. Crowded tables, many of them outside the open retractable walls. Laughter. Cheers and jeers. A big game was playing on the screens.

He approached the hostess stand behind which a cute, short, ponytailed young woman waited, smiling. She wore a T-shirt matching the bartenders’, though hers fit much tighter.

“Help you?” she said.

He gave her a grin, a sports-bar-guy grin. He could fit in well at a place like this when he needed to. Blending in with the crowd, whatever that crowd might be, was a talent he’d carefully honed. Here, he was another weekend warrior, another accountant, another Nick or Brian wanting to see the game, get a little fresh air and a beer buzz.

“Yeah,” Finley said through his Brian grin. “I was hoping to get a table out…”

He trailed off.

As he was speaking, he’d turned toward the outdoor tables—one of which he wanted to snag for an unobstructed view of Beasley’s place—and he’d spotted Jonah Lund and the tall guy. They were walking along the sidewalk in front of the townhouses.

And someone was running up to them, from behind, shouting for their attention.

Kim Hurley.

What the goddamn hell?

He stepped in that direction.

The hostess’s voice behind him. “Were you wanting a table or … Sir?”

Kim stopped a few feet from the other two, breathing hard. And then she just stood there in front of them, panting like an idiot, looking up at them like she wanted to say something but the words wouldn’t form.

A situation was materializing, congealing before Finley’s eyes. Another situation that he was going to have to take care of.

He stepped away from the hostess stand, toward the sunlight, twisting around a table, hypnotized, not believing what he was seeing.

Behind him, the hostess called out. “Sir?”

Shit!

Kim Hurley again.

Goddamn her.

Finley needed to do more than simply take care of this new situation.

He had to take care of her.

He ran out of the bar.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Gavin verified the address written in Amber’s adult handwriting at the top of page seventy-three of The Secret of Summerford Point.

941 Falconer Street

And then he glanced through the car window again.

A drooping signpost bore a rusted strip of green metal with the name FALCONER STREET.

Yes, the address was correct.

He’d arrived.

Across the street was an overpass under which was a collection of tents and other ramshackle abodes, all of it cluttered, filthy, and desperately clinging to life. Tatters of cardboard and cloth and huddled masses of people. In the back, against the embankment, was a small, decrepit building with boarded windows. A dangling cross showed that the structure had been a mission or church in a previous life.

Had Amber been here?

Here?

Not his Amber. Not Amber, with her naïveté. Amber, with her wide eyes. Amber, with her kindness.

And—as he remembered the news report—Amber, with drugs in her system.

Drugs.

Was Amber really as naïve as he remembered?

She was seventeen the last time he’d seen her. Ready for the future, her face still glowing with youth and optimism, about to pounce on the world.

Eight years ago.

A girl. A young woman but not yet an adult.

Maybe twenty-five-year-old adult Amber had come to places like Falconer Street.

And purchased drugs.

And gotten high.

He pictured a needle piercing the pale flesh at the inside of her elbow, her finger depressing the syringe’s plunger.

His mind went to the note Jonah and Brett had shown him, the word at the top, the name.

Weasel

Ray Beasley. The Weasel. A former police officer who worked with Gavin’s brother in District C11. A man with a penchant for heroin and prostitutes.

Gavin searched his memory for what little else he knew about the man. Brief encounters—Christmas gatherings, summer cookouts, Amber’s birthday parties. So many years ago. Before Beasley had been kicked off the force and, Gavin presumed, before his forays into illegal sex and hard drugs.

The address that had been written below “Weasel” on the sticky note—Gavin couldn’t remember it, hadn’t considered committing it to memory. God, he wondered if that address belonged to another shithole like this overpass. Had Amber gotten back in touch with her other “uncle,” asked him to show her all the best places to get heroin?

Had Amber’s life really sunk that low?

He thought of the notes Amber had written in The Secret of Summerford Point. She’d written “refined” twice—on page seventy-three with the address that had led him here, and also in the notes at the back of the book, where she’d written it alongside “crude.”

He looked into the slum surrounding him.

Refined and crude drugs. Undoubtedly. Compliments of the Weasel.

Gavin would have thought that