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

sprinted up to Jonah, splayed on the sidewalk, eyes squinting.

“Keys,” Silence said.

Jonah didn’t respond, either hesitant or dazed from the blow.

“Keys!”

Jonah complied, digging in his pocket and holding the keys up to him.

Silence snatched them from his hand, already reaching a run once more. The Fiero was ahead, a block away, a splash of faded red paint. A few strides of Silence’s long legs and he was there. Door unlocked. Into the driver’s seat. A look through the windshield.

Ahead, the Accord screeched around a corner, disappeared behind a squeaky-clean hardware store bounded by a line of oversized terra cotta pots brimming with flowers.

Silence fired the engine, which belched out its stank again. He slammed the stick into first, dropped the clutch, and the Fiero hurdled off.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Finley looked to the rearview mirror as he flew down the street, pressing the gas pedal harder.

No Fiero.

But he’d seen the tall man run to the car, hop in. And just before Finley had taken the corner, the Fiero had rocketed in his direction.

Finley jerked the Accord to the side when a hatchback backed onto the street from a parking lot, not noticing the other vehicle coming right at it, going twice the speed limit.

Kim screamed again. Whiny bitch.

“Slow down!” she screeched.

“Shut up.”

Finley yanked the steering wheel, whipping around a pickup truck parallel parking, its backup lights aglow, which sent the Accord toward the opposite side of the road, where a trio of women stepped off the sidewalk, about to cross the street. They pulled back, screamed.

Kim screamed too.

Finley maneuvered the Accord around the women, their arms interlocked protectively, bewildered faces, saucer eyes.

“What the hell is this, Finley?” Kim said. She had both hands clenched on the passenger seat cushion, eyes straight forward and wide.

Finley didn’t answer. He checked their six.

There it was.

A streaking red splash in the rearview mirror.

The Fiero peeled around the corner he’d just taken. The tall man loomed in the driver’s seat, his dark hair, the dark void of his eyes on a face that was tilted forward, determined, both hands gripping the steering wheel.

Shit.

The gap between the cars was shrinking. Rapidly.

This guy could drive.

Shit, shit, shit.

“Where are you taking me?” Kim whined.

“I said shut up!”

Another corner, just ahead and to the left. The one he’d been anxiously waiting for.

The corner that might get him out of this mess.

Finley wrenched the steering wheel. The force threw him into Kim’s shoulder and plastered Kim to the passenger door. More screams. The Accord shuddered, tires squealed.

He smashed the gas pedal, stole a glance at Kim, who was scrambling to fasten her seatbelt.

The Fiero closed in, filling the rearview.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Silence watched the Accord turn.

And he cursed.

Because the blond man had just given himself a major tactical advantage. He’d entered an urban hedge maze.

An auto salvage yard.

A sprawling affair with hundreds of vehicles. And it wasn’t one of those nice, corporate chain, you-pull-it sort of places with rows of evenly spaced vehicles organized by make in fields of thick gravel. No, this was a real-deal, old-school behemoth with corroded piece-of-shit vehicles piled on top of each other in teetering towers that surely violated any number of municipal codes. Tires and sheets of rusty metal. Barely maintained paths riddled with oil-slicked puddles.

The Accord flew into the lot, between two of the car towers. It immediately turned right, disappearing.

Silence hit the brake, downshifted, brought the Fiero into the lot, and immediately was jolted hard, his teeth cracking into each other. Water fanned out of the pothole he’d struck. The impact made an awful noise from the Fiero’s undercarriage. A pang of guilt. You don’t hurt a guy’s car. He’d reimburse Jonah if there was any damage.

Second gear. A surge of gas. A high-pitched whine as the tires spun momentarily before grabbing hold. A man in coveralls appeared from behind one of the vehicles, screaming at him, waving his arms, pissed off. He jumped back when Silence zoomed the Fiero past him.

No sign of the Accord.

He peeled left, around the skeleton of a Pinto. Another empty path in front of him, long and muddy.

Around a pile of tires and rims.

Another empty pathway.

He turned again.

Nothing. No Accord. Just a father and son prying an alternator from an Oldsmobile and staring at him in confusion.

Silence eased his foot onto the brake, dropped a gear, slowed the Fiero.

And exhaled.

Dammit.

He gave the father and son a snappy wave as he passed and then turned left, heading toward the exit. Though his circuitous path had taken him deep into the belly of the automotive graveyard, his rigorous training ensured he’d maintained his bearings. He knew which way to go to get out.

Goddamnit.

He’d lost them.

And, as if on cue, he glimpsed the street through a gap in the spires of rusty metal and saw the Accord, far away, taking off, its engine roaring.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Prostitution.

Oh, God. That’s what all this was about.

Amber had been trying to become a high-end prostitute.

Gavin had to stay in character, but standing there in that horrid office with the slimy-grinned man and the two prostitutes leering at him, the realization that Amber had been pursuing this life nearly made his knees give out.

It all added up…

The revelation she’d gotten from her husband, two weeks after marrying him, the devastation she must have felt.

The word refined.

Her search for the Weasel, her other “uncle,” the one who liked hookers. 

The drugs in her system, probably heroin like Uncle Weasel’s drug of choice.

And though Gavin’s mind had formed the dark connections, forcing him to picture his niece here in this creepy building, this ramshackle structure that had been renovated into a hooker office, his impulses quickly brought his thoughts away from Amber and to self-preservation.

Because Gavin had to get the hell out of there.

If Amber had gotten herself in way too deep, he’d gotten himself in equally deep by following her footsteps.

The door was still open behind him. But before he could turn, there was a noise.

A man approached, stopped in the doorway. He was black, on the short side,