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

had instincts, and he came to the right conclusions.

But most importantly, Jake had guts. That’s what mattered most.

It looked like he was using that courage for the wrong reasons now.

Tanner turned his attention past the gasping neighbors, down the street, to the west. The sun had recently set, and the sky was all pinks and yellows, deep violet clouds. Not too far from where Tanner stood, this would be a beautiful sunset on the Gulf.

Tanner ran a hand along his jaw. “Where the hell are you, Jake?”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The adrenaline or the madness or the fog or whatever had been keeping the pain from Jake’s leg had worn off. Now his entire calf felt like a piece of molten stone.

It was as heavy as stone too, and it scraped behind him as he dragged it up the cracked sidewalk. His homemade bandage had soaked through with blood, saturating the jeans, which stuck to his leg, heavy and cold.

He grimaced as he pulled the leg another step farther. The damn thing seemed heavier with each step. Not much farther to go.

The neighborhood was a shithole, the kind of place that still bore signs of life at one in the morning. Laughter in the distance. A bottle clattering on concrete.

At the next crossroad, he took a right onto a short dead-end street with a clump of trees and a buzzing streetlight at the end. Two houses on the right side of the street. On the left side were two more houses and a one-story, ancient-looking brick building with shuttered windows, something that must’ve been a soda shop or a grocery in the neighborhood’s happier days. Now, however, it would seem uninhabited were it not for the single illuminated bulb by the door.

Jake was one of the initiated few people who knew the true nature of the building. Rather, his alter ego, Pete Hudson, was.

He stumbled up to the battered metal door and gave two solid bangs.

A few moments later, the door opened, and Dr. Mayer’s face peered out of the gap, blinking the sleep from droopy yet sparkly blue eyes that sat behind a pair of round, old-fashioned glasses. He was an older man with combed-back, gray hair and a jowly basset hound face. His shirt was a button-up, wrinkled from his sleep.

Mayer regarded Jake’s leg wound. “Oh my. Let’s get you taken care of.” He opened the door farther and looked past Jake. “Just you? Sylvester said to stay here all night because there might be many wounded. I figured you’d be showing up hours ago.” He glanced at Jake’s leg again, scrunched his lips. “I didn’t get a call.”

Jake took his PenPal notebook from his back pocket, and his fingers stuck to the tagboard backing, which had a splotch of soaked-in blood that hadn’t fully dried.

C.C.’s blood. Or his. Or both. He couldn’t be sure.

He flipped to the first of the notes he’d prepared.

I couldn’t call. There wasn’t time

The doctor squinted at the note, then at Jake. “Can’t you talk?”

Jake shook his head.

“Took a blow to the neck, did you?”

Jake nodded.

Mayer put his hand on Jake’s neck, examined. Jake was good at reading people, and he could see skepticism in Mayer’s eyes. He’d caught Jake’s lie.

Mayer stepped back, still squinting at him, hesitant. “I’ll need to call. This is … very unorthodox, you just showing up like this.”

Jake took out the Glock 19, pointed it at him, and flipped to the next note.

You’re not calling this in

He shuffled inside, crowding Mayer back, and shut the door. A jolt of pain in his leg.

Mayer’s eyes went wide, and he put his hands up.

It was a small, dimly-lit space, one unit in the old building—a medical exam area and a tiny bathroom to the side. All of it dingy and utilitarian. Hardly sanitary looking. Hardly even organized. An exam table dominated the center of the room. A cot—for the doctor’s use in all-night situations such as tonight—was at the far wall, blankets messed up, pillow askew.

Mayer’s lip trembled but his eyes burned fire—not fear but shock. He’d been in this game for decades and had surely been though many hairy situations.

“Do you know who you’re messing with, you stupid shit?” Mayer spat. “I’m Joseph Farone’s personal doctor.”

Jake flipped to the next note, showed it.

Get what supplies you need. Then we’re leaving

Mayer read the note, looked up at Jake with eyes that had gone even darker.

“Leaving?”

Jake jabbed the gun toward the back of the room. Mayer glanced over his shoulder and saw what Jake had indicated: the door in the back.

“Oh, I see,” Mayer said as he turned back around. “You’re a damn traitor, aren’t you? That’s why I didn’t get a call. They know you’re injured; you can’t go to the hospitals; so you come here to grab the doctor, but you gotta get out of here as quickly as possible since they might come here looking for you.”

Jake nodded then swiped his gun, a turn around command, and led Mayer to the cabinets. The doctor opened one of the glass doors and started taking out supplies: antiseptic, sutures, gauze.

Jake noted one important omission from the doctor’s gatherings. Keeping the Glock leveled at Mayer, he yanked the mechanical pencil from the notebook’s spiral binding and scribbled out a note.

Grab something for the pain, dickhead

Mayer glowered at him then grabbed a bottle of lidocaine and a sterile-wrapped syringe.

Jake had the Glock pointed at Mayer as the doctor finished his work, wrapping the elastic bandage around the gauze-covered stitches. They were in the wooded patch of earth on the opposite side of the sidewalk where Jake had parked the Grand Prix, a couple blocks away from Mayer’s building. Jake sat on a half-destroyed wooden crate. Bottles and plastic shopping bags and McDonald’s wrappers littered the earth around them.

“You know I’m going to call the moment you leave,” Mayer said as he made the final pass with the bandage.

Jake shook his hand and gave him a look that said, No, you won’t. He