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

wanted. You know that, right? He’s the big cheese. All us guys gotta do what he says.”

Jake raised the Glock. The weapon was now several inches longer with the addition of the suppressor, which he pressed into McBride’s forehead. He felt the other man shake through the gun’s handle.

He looked McBride in the eye.

Then he squeezed the trigger.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Glover hated the look and feel of Burton’s beach house.

It was so jagged and uncomfortable. Everything was lines and planes and flat surfaces and glass and metal. Sure wasn’t cozy.

Yet Burton loved the place, took great pride in it, as though it was an extension of his success. And, of course, it was. No one else outside the immediate Farone family could afford a place like this.

Glover leaned against the smooth marble countertop in the kitchen, a phone receiver to his ear. The house felt even more uncomfortable than usual because no lights were turned on. There was only the moonlight coming in through the copious glass, reflecting off the waves and sand beyond. Just past the kitchen, in the living room, Burton stretched out on a vast, angular sofa, tumbler of scotch in hand, staring out to the beach. His stillness was disconcerting.

When they’d arrived a few minutes earlier, they discovered that there’d been a break-in. They immediately cleared every room, switching on lights as they went. Afterward, Burton had him turn all the lights back off.

Burton was like that—when he got pensive, he liked darkness. Glover supposed that jived with the cold nature of his home.

For several minutes they’d sat together in the long, uber-chic sofas in the living room, in the darkness, looking out into the waves. When the phone rang, Burton had waved Glover away to answer it.

Glover hung up, rushed into the living room. Burton didn’t turn away from the waves.

“Someone blasted Odom in his apartment,” Glover said. “And McBride at Old Reno.”

“Someone?” Burton scoffed. “It’s Hudson. And he came here looking for me.” Burton pointed to the floor, indicating the break-in on the lower level. He took a sip. “What about Cobb?”

“Never reported back,” Glover said.

Burton thought for a moment.

Glover waited. It was best to remain quiet when Burton got like this. And Glover had never seen him this bad.

Finally Burton said, “Bring everyone in.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Tanner popped three chewable antacid tablets into his mouth.

Tropical fruit.

None of the three were the same color, and supposedly each had a different flavor, but he chewed them all together into a disregarded mush. It all tasted like chemical shit anyway.

Tanner’s stress level had steadily climbed all night, which meant that so, too, had his stomach acid.

Why were things always so much worse when there was a personal element?

And why, when there was a personal element, would your brain not give you a damn break?

Tanner’s brain kept reminding him of that thirty-second moment, in the break room, three months after Jake had joined the force.

A half-minute slice of life.

Jake had told him that his father had never been a bad man but had never been a great man either. That when Jake’s mother had died, his father crumbled, turned to the bottle. That Jake had been emotionally on his own since he was nine years old. That his father’s half-absence and eventual death left him searching for strong men from whom to model his own development.

That Tanner was one of those male role models.

Tanner sighed. He took another sip of stale coffee, sloshed it around his mouth to clean the chemical pineapple taste from his teeth.

Jake, goddamn you. What the hell are you up to?

Tanner put the coffee mug on the scratched laminate of his desk and leaned back in his chair, interlacing his fingers behind his head.

His office was a gray box with a single window. The desk filled most of the floorspace. Frames covered the side walls—certificates, his college diploma, training class photos, ceremonial photos.

The corkboard on the rear wall had, for months, been plastered with photos and notes about the Farone investigation. Increasingly, in the last two months especially, the right-hand side of the board became dedicated to Burton’s schism within the Farones.

Which now constituted the entire gang, it would seem, after the massacre in the alley.

There was a sucking sound.

A damn annoying sucking sound.

Pace.

Sucking air between his two glossy, blazingly white front teeth.

He sat on the corner of Tanner’s desk, and he was using Tanner’s phone. Argh! Tanner didn’t appreciate having this fed’s face pressed up against the phone he used every day, and he sure as hell didn’t want his fed ass smashed against his desktop.

This close, Tanner could smell the guy’s cologne. It was as clean and shiny as his teeth.

Cocky son of a bitch.

Pace hung up. “Odom’s lady friend found him dead in his apartment, broken neck. Cobb, McBride, and now Odom. That’s three of Burton’s men confirmed murdered.”

Tanner sat forward, removed his hands from the back of his head. The old office chair squealed as it straightened, and it squealed a second time as he pivoted the chair to look at the photos on the Burton half of the corkboard behind him.

“Shit,” he muttered.

“It’s because of the Farone girl,” Pace said through that smartass grin of his.

Tanner narrowed his eyes. “How do you mean?”

“Rowe was in love with her, and everyone in the Farone organization knew it. Someone anonymously calls us, tells us that Rowe was the one who beat her to a pulp tonight, and yet the members of Burton’s gang start showing up dead, on the same night, murdered one by one. Rowe didn’t kill Cecilia Farone. It was—”

Tanner stuck up a hand, looked away from him. “It was the Burton contingent, and now our man is out getting his revenge. Thank you for the wonderful insight, Mr. Federal Agent. How did I ever get by without you?”

Paced chuckled, unfazed. “Then tell me this: why didn’t Rowe go for Burton first?”

Tanner pointed to the photos behind them. “Because they had a rivalry. That’s why Burton killed his lady.” Tanner ran