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

it, Kim? Another friend of yours?”

She shook her head with that pathetic, scared look on her face.

“Right…” Finley said.

He gave things another moment of consideration. Then pulled Kim’s arm, shoving her to Shaw. She yelped.

“Get her to the van,” Finley said. “And keep her there. Zip-tie her. Knock her ass out if you have to. The Well has been compromised. I’m gonna get her to the boss.”

Shaw hesitated. It wasn’t a moment of insubordination—Shaw wouldn’t dare stand up to Finley—but a moment of stunned confusion.

Then he nodded and tugged Kim away.

Finley started toward the building.

A sharp, loud noise cracked through the overpass, making several of the bums cry out in surprise. Glass. Something shattering. Something big.

One of the building’s windows.

Finley went into a full sprint.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Gavin crashed through the window.

A sudden change in environment. One moment he was struggling with the thugs in the shitty little office—and impressed with himself for how well he’d fought them off—and the next moment, after letting his guard down briefly, after an electric jolt of pain as his head crashed through the glass, he was outside. Halfway. To his waist. Out in the slum again. The smell of burning paper, garbage. Screams from several of the homeless.

Tugging on his shirt. A jolt of momentum. And he was back in the office.

More screaming. Not from the homeless but from the high-class hookers cowering behind the desk.

The black guy had Gavin by the legs. The suited white guy had him by the shoulders. Gavin’s face was tight and burning from the blows he’d received.

The three of them tumbled to the thin, rough carpeting, a tangle of legs and grasping arms.

Something glistened. A shard of glass, still connected to a chunk of the window frame. Gavin grabbed it by the wooden section, swung in a broad arch, catching the white guy across the face.

The man screamed. A trail of blood slung onto the wall. One of the women screeched.

Gavin shook the black guy off his legs, got behind the man’s knees, twisted, and threw him into a rolling pile, sending him to the opposite wall.

And there it was.

His gun, the Bodyguard, still in its holster a few feet away.

When the two men had first converged on Gavin, he’d been able to wrench the black guy’s pistol from his hands, sending it through the open doorway and into the hall. In the ensuing scuffle, his own gun, the Bodyguard, had fallen from the man’s pocket and skittered to the side.

All through the exchange of blows, the three men had stolen anxious glances at the Bodyguard, just out of reach on the other side of the room. Someone was going to grab it, and when he did, that man would have the power.

It was a few feet away, by the wall, on the other side of the room. Gavin dove for it.

But he stopped short, abruptly, his flight suddenly halted. Something had grabbed him from behind. He crashed to the floor hard, sending a jolt through his ribs.

He looked back. The black guy had him by the ankles, his face covered with sweat and twisting in fury.

The Bodyguard was tantalizingly close.

Inches away.

Gavin reached out; his fingers touched it.

Then he heard something.

Beside him. At the doorway.

He looked up.

A man stood over him, someone he hadn’t yet seen.

Blond curly hair, parted in the middle.

He pointed a pistol at Gavin’s face.

Chapter Thirty

Jonah struggled to keep up with Brett’s long strides as they ventured farther into an area of homeless people, the address from Beasley’s notes, some sort of ragtag community of tents and cardboard boxes, blankets and old mattresses. The smell was overpowering, a mixture of human filth, bonfires, and industrial waste.

Brett led them to a building in the back, something dilapidated yet clearly important. Boards covered the windows. A dark rectangular area on the wall beside the main door had evidently held a sign at one point in time. Beneath that was a cross, hanging askew.

There was a shout from the left. “Hey!”

A fat guy in a bright green sweatshirt standing beside a white panel van at the cross street. He slid the van’s side door shut with a thunk, then waved his hands, looking right at Jonah and Brett. The driver's side door was open, and he shut and locked it before lumbering over at a slow jog, dodging tents and huddled forms.

When the guy reached them, he put his hands on his waist, chest heaving, head angled back, sucking in air.

“Shop’s closed for the day,” the man said between breaths.

Jonah turned to see Brett’s reaction. Which was a non-reaction. Brett just pivoted and started for the building again.

The man grabbed Brett’s arm, and in a blur, the hand was gone. Brett had swiped it away so fast, Jonah had hardly seen the motion.

Another one of Brett’s bizarre skills that seemed to materialize out of nowhere, skills that made Jonah realize Brett was a lot more than what he had originally taken him for.

Again, Jonah wondered if he was some sort of government operative.

Open-mouth wonder replaced the sloppy man’s anger, and it took him a moment to regain his courage.

“I said, shop’s closed. Your buddy’s already been here, the guy with the beard.”

Brett looked at Jonah then.

“Gavin…” Jonah said.

Brett nodded. He turned back to the guy in the sweatshirt. “When was he here?”

“Man, piss off. Get out of here.”

Brett jabbed him in the throat.

Once more, the movement was so fast that Jonah hardly perceived it.

Efficient and flawless. Yet brutal. Violence that leaves an echo.

The man wheezed, bent over.

“Talk,” Brett growled.

The man’s hands were on his knees. “He’s…” Wheeze. “He’s still here.”

The man pointed to the boarded-up building with the crooked cross.

Brett started toward the building again, this time running. Jonah sprinted after him.

And as they ran, Brett reached beneath his jacket and retrieved a black pistol. A moment later, he took out a small tube of metal. A silencer. He screwed it onto the end of the pistol.

Holy shit…

They were to the building.

“Stay outside,” Brett said.

Brett kicked in