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

pointed at the doctor’s waistline, where a cellular phone was clipped to his belt, and made a little gimme motion with his hand.

The doctor fumed as he handed the phone to Jake, knowing full well what was about to happen.

Jake smashed it on the sidewalk.

He hobbled off the crate. The Glock felt unduly heavy in his hand, and he stumbled to the side, regained his balance. Naturally, Mayer hadn’t given him a blood transfusion, and from Jake’s bit of medical training as a police officer, he estimated that he’d lost several hundred mils of blood.

He was gonna be woozy for a while.

He kept the Glock leveled on Mayer as he limped to the Grand Prix and got in.

“You stupid shit,” the doctor said before Jake shut the door and peeled off.

Twenty minutes later. A different shithole part of town. Somewhere he could disappear for a few minutes. Gather himself. Rest his leg briefly.

Before he tracked down and murdered the rest of Burton’s men.

He was parked beside an abandoned factory, its chain-link fence rotting and falling over like the fence he’d seen earlier that evening at the abandoned parking lot outside Wagner High School.

That felt like a year ago.

He leaned his head back and exhaled. Closed his eyes. A long moment passed, so long that he realized he might have even fallen asleep.

Eyes open.

He took out his notebook, fingers sticking to the bloody back cover, removed the mechanical pencil, and wrote a list of names, then crossed out the first one.

Cobb

Gamble

Hodges

Knox

McBride

Odom

Glover

Burton

His eyes lingered on the list, then he flipped to a fresh page and scratched out a quick note.

My name is Jake Rowe

He faced the rearview mirror and held the notebook beside it.

His eyes flicked from the note to his reflection. He tried to speak, breaking it down to the first couple words.

My name… 

Nothing. His lips moved silently.

My name…

Nothing again.

It wasn’t that the words just wouldn’t come to him. He literally couldn’t speak. He was giving it his full effort, but no sounds would come out.

He slapped the notebook shut, shoved the pencil back into the binding, and dropped it on the passenger seat where it landed beside the microcassette player.

His hand went to the player. Stopped. Hovered over it for a minute. And then grabbed it.

He reached into his pocket and retrieved the tiny tape he’d taken from his answering machine. He put it in the player. Hesitated. Pushed the PLAY button.

There was a beep. And then the message began.

C.C.’s voice.

“Hey, it’s—”

He pressed STOP.

Her voice.

Oh, my god.

Deep breaths. His eyes went up, staring into the headliner, and his head returned to the headrest. He closed his eyes.

And his mind went to a memory, took him back several months.

He and C.C., hand-in-hand, nighttime on the beach, a favorite spot of theirs, a literal common ground for two people who were very different but couldn’t get enough of each other.

The moon lay a long, shimmering  trail on the black water. The waves weren’t choppy, but they were steady and loud. The glistening condos and hotels were ahead of them in the distance. They’d walked to the national seashore—a long stretch of natural, untouched beach—and were now returning to civilization. C.C. had asked him what was on his mind.

And he’d answered her, letting all the disordered, tumultuous thoughts in his head spew from his mouth.

“…which is why I just don’t know about all these new diet trends, you know?” he was saying. “It seems to me that if they put something in a green box, say it’s low-fat, then people gobble it up. Is that how easily people are persuaded? Green packaging? I mean, come on. Those things are loaded with sugar, and sugar is what’s gonna make you fat, not dietary fat. It’s like people just assume fat is gonna make you fat because the word’s the same. Word-choice, packaging—people are so easily manipulated. It’s mind-boggling. And—”

C.C. waved a hand to cut him off, her fingers pinched. “Maybe that was a bad question on my part, asking a ‘loudmouth’ what’s on his mind. You use ten words when three will do.”

Jake chuckled. “You did it again.”

“Did what?”

He upturned one of his hands and pinched his fingers together like she’d just done. “You did the Italian hand. For as quirky and individualistic as you are, you still go full pizza pie every now and then.”

She smiled, shrugged. “We all take bits and pieces of our experiences to become what we are, consciously and subconsciously. And you’re changing the subject, mister. We were talking about that wild mind of yours. You’re a smart man, love. You really are. But you—”

“I’m not that smart. I was an average student at best.”

“Whatever you say, Professor. Book smarts aren’t everything, anyway. You ponder things. You see the whole picture. That’s intelligence. But you think too much.”

Jake looked at her, raised an eyebrow. “How can a person think too much? You just said I see the whole picture. Isn’t that kind of synonymous with thinking too much?”

C.C. shook her head. “Not at all. Confucius said that life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. Try taming your thoughts.”

“And how do I do that, exactly?”

“You can start by taking some deep belly breaths. From the stomach, not the chest. Diaphragmatic breathing, like I taught you. It’ll calm you down.”

“Like this?” Jake took a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks, crossed his eyes.

She just looked at him, not granting his idiocy a response.

Jake let the breath out, chuckling. “C’mon, babe. I don’t see how breathing is going to ‘tame my thoughts,’ as you say. I think a lot, yes. I know it’s a problem, but, I mean, breathing? Maybe I could get one of those calming drugs that’ve been in the news. I’ve already had my department psych exam, but maybe Tanner could—”

“Jake!”

He turned to her.

“Shhhhhh. Give silence a try. Just be quiet sometimes, love. Shhh. Silence.”

They continued down the beach, not speaking. Just the two of them, just their two sets