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

moment of relative stillness. Just Cecilia trembling, slowly turning in a circle, looking at the faces.

Then Knox backhanded her hard, spinning her around, sending a line of blood flying into the library.

Hudson screamed.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The woman calling herself Christie Mosley was in her Cutlass Supreme outside the beach house that belonged to the man to whom she’d been posing as a girlfriend for months. The beach road was quiet and dark, very little traffic moving past to interrupt her view as she looked through her binoculars at the massive banks of windows on the first floor of the house, the main tier of its staggered geometric design.

The scene she’d been watching for several minutes play out in Burton’s sprawling living room was illuminated by two faint light sources—the moonlight pouring in through all the massive panes of glass, reflecting off the waves beyond; and the projector screen at the far wall of the living room, where a video was playing.

A pillar blocked her view of the screen, and the interior of the house was so dark that she saw everything in shadows, silhouettes. Four men on their feet; one bound to a chair.

Though she couldn’t fully distinguish his features, the man in the chair was clearly Jake Rowe. And what was happening to him looked horrible.

Her cellular phone was on the passenger seat. She placed a speed-dial call, turned on the speakerphone feature, left the phone where it was.

“Yes?” Falcon said, scratchy through the speakerphone.

“They’re torturing him.”

“How so?”

“It’s hard to tell. He … He’s clearly tied to a chair. Thrashing all over the place. Violently. They’re holding him back, but…” She squinted. “But they’re not beating him. They’re hardly touching him, just the occasional slap.”

“Electrocution, perhaps.”

“Maybe. Or maybe poisoning, but … Oh, god. It’s getting bad. He’s convulsing like crazy.”

She checked the clock on the dash.

“It’s been ten minutes of this. I need to do something.”

“You’ll do nothing. This isn’t your fight. You won’t jeopardize everything we’ve worked for.”

“They’re gonna kill the guy!”

“So be it. Stand your ground.”

She watched as one of the figures stepped behind Rowe, both hands on his head, which had fallen to his chest. The man yanked him back up straight, and Rowe began to shake again, even harder, the entire chair thrashing.

Oh god…

Falcon must have been correct. Electrocution. It had to be.

Rowe continued to thrash.

Her stomach roiled. Her legs twitched, wanting to bolt. She didn’t know how much more of this she could take.

More importantly, she didn’t know how much more Rowe could take. Whatever they were doing to him, he wasn’t going to last much longer.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Jake couldn’t tell how much time had passed. In his training at the academy, he’d learned that in times of high stress, the perception of time can be distorted.

Maybe an hour.

Maybe five minutes.

Maybe half an hour.

Knox had struck her first. Backhanded her.

She’d spun around, twirling to the opposite side of the circle of men, where Gamble had caught her, grabbed her arms.

McBride approached. An uppercut to the stomach that folded her.

Gamble pulled her back upright. Shoved her away.

Hodges grabbed her next, hands moving up and down the sides of her dress, grabbing her breasts. Burton shouted at him, anger replacing his smile momentarily. Hodges cowered, shoved C.C. away.

She’d avoided the next man’s grasp, Odom’s, and she punched him in the mouth. Her strength was clearly zapped, and her form was pitiful, but she’d caught him by surprise, a blow that snapped his head back.

The other men laughed.

And Jake welled with pride, somewhere deep within the swirling mass of pain in his gut.

Odom looked at the others as they laughed, mortified. He swung his blackjack at her face, crushing her eye socket, tearing the skin.

Jake screamed at this. Turned away. Someone punched him hard in the ribs. Saliva exploded from his mouth.

Someone else grabbed his head from behind, forcing him to face the screen, callused fingertips pressing into the corners of his eyelids, prying them open.

Blood dripped from the side of C.C.’s face.

Cobb next. Broke her nose.

She fell.

They picked her up.

McBride.

Gamble.

Hodges.

Glover—he was given extra time with her, benefits of being Burton’s second-in-command.

They threw her to the left side of the circle.

Then the right.

Burton watching. The smiling supervisor. Shouting encouragements. And also shouting the occasional admonition when the men touched her just so.

To the left side of the circle. Right. Back and forth.

On the floor. Lifted up.

Laughter.

Wet sounds of flesh-to-flesh, progressively wetter.

An arm around her neck, choking her out. She smacked blindly at the man.

Hodges slapped her. He’d only slapped. No punches, no kicks, some distorted sense of chivalry.

Gamble wasn’t afraid to punch. He gave her a blow to the forehead that sent her back to the floor.

They didn’t lift her up this time. Instead they kicked.

Jake yelled out again.

A searing burn across his cheek as someone backhanded him.

Glover embellished his kicking routine—more of the benefits of being Burton’s primary lieutenant—turning it into an Irish-style dance, laughing. He and McBride, the two Irish members of the group, shared a chuckle.

Odom loped over to C.C., raised his blackjack—

And Burton caught his wrist, gave him a shake of the head, pushed him back to his place in the circle.

“That’s enough,” the on-screen Burton said to the other men.

C.C. was nearly motionless. Slow rising and lowering of her torso.

Alive.

Somehow that was a comfort to Jake. Why? He knew how this ended.

Surely she’d been unconscious by then. He prayed she was.

For several minutes, there had been terrible screams. Then there had been nothing but the dull thuds of the blows as she’d been thrown among the men, on her feet, alive but dead.

Now there was no sound coming from her. Not even moaning.

Burton stepped away from the others, closer to the camera, looking right into Jake from the screen. He smiled.

Then he went to C.C., squatted. He brought his face inches from her ear. Whispered something.

He took out his revolver and placed it against the back of her head.

Somehow Jake’s voice returned.

“No!”

Burton fired his weapon. C.C.’s body went limp. The other men laughed.

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