Deadly Silence (Silence Jones Action Thrillers Series) by Erik Carter (fun to read .TXT) 📗

Bradshaw Incorporated is the name. It’s one of the companies that Lowry’s gang was attacking with their protection racket. I mean, that’s what this all started as, ya know—Lowry putting pressure on local businesses to pay cash for ‘protection’ so that bad things don’t happen. Fires, robberies, vandalism. The guy’s got a small army of thugs to make sure those things happen if the money’s not paid.”

She pointed toward the newspaper, now folded on Silence’s knee.

“The papers are too afraid to print it. Slander and all that. Hell, maybe Lowry’s got them under his thumb too.”

“Your son,” Silence said, refocusing her story.

“Benny’s a good boy, but he’s like any other nineteen-year-old. Foolhardy. Stupidly brave. He doesn’t like seeing our factory living in fear, decides he’s gonna do something. He goes to the wrong side of town to find the right people, starts asking questions. Lowry gets wind of this. And … and they took him.”

She paused, took in a shaky breath.

“Now they’re attacking me. And I don’t know what they’re doing to him. They said they’d give him back if I paid. Two thousand. That’s the usual amount Lowry pressures out of companies. Monthly.”

Silence knew this. Nighthaw, his superior in the Watchers, had already given him the background information he needed before sending him to Sarasota.

“I got two thousand out of the bank. It was all I had, my savings.” Her face flushed. She sighed. “I tried to go to the drop point, but I got mugged on the way. Someone must’ve seen me at the ATM, followed me. When I showed up empty-handed, they gave me another week, which was tonight. I didn’t have the money, of course, ’cause the mugger wiped me out. Since I didn’t pay again, they were gonna burn my house and give me one more chance before they … take care of Benny. What the hell am I going to do when they come back in a few days? I don’t have the money.”

Silence reached into his jacket. “You do now.”

He handed her the stack of twenty one-hundred-dollar bills the Watchers had authorized for a scenario like this.

She held it in both hands. Looked at it. “I don’t know what to say.”

Silence nodded.

She finally brought the money closer, laid it on her lap. “Thank you. So much. But Benny. My god, what if they’re torturing him? Or what if he’s…”

Her face returned to her hands. She cried.

Silence watched.

Finally he spoke. “Bradshaw makes?”

“Huh?”

Silence swallowed. “What does Bradshaw manufacture?”

Manufacture hit his throat wrong, an extra bit of pain.

Adriana shrugged. “Oh, well, honestly, I don’t know. Something to do with metal. Big sheets of metal. I just mop the floors at night, you know? But I’m working hard. I won’t always be there. I’m gonna make things better for me and Benny. A person has to do whatever they can to improve their life.”

Silence thought for a moment. Then he stood. “Don’t leave. Stay here.” He swallowed. “Lights on, all night.”

“But—”

“You’re safe.”

“You can’t leave! Not now!”

“I’ll be around.”

She sighed, sank back into the loveseat. The cushion in the seatback sighed as well. “Okay.”

Silence stripped the front page of the newspaper, folded it, put it in his back pocket, and dropped the rest on the chair. He gave her a nod and left.

He stepped off the porch, across the long expanse of the oversized yard, the wet weeds brushing his pant legs, soaking through. He stopped at the sidewalk, pulled out his cellphone, pushed and held the 2 button. Speed-dial.

An immediate response. From one of the Watchers’ on-call Specialists. A male voice.

The Specialist gave the standard greeting.

Silence identified himself by codename and number. “Suppressor, A-23.”

The Specialist confirmed.

“Cleanup needed,” Silence said. “492 Tyron Street, Sarasota, Florida.”

He swallowed, grimaced.

As an Asset, one of the Watchers’ field agents, Silence didn’t know where his Specialist number was dialing. He knew none of the Specialists’ codenames nor where in the country, or world, they were located. All he knew was that Specialists were his superiors, that there was a rotational system in place such that Specialists were available via the Assets’ cellphones 24-7, and he knew the list of services the Specialists could provide.

One of the key services was the removal of corpses. Within hours, there would be no trace of the dead men in the trees outside Adriana Ramirez’s house.

The Specialist asked for the number of bodies.

“Three, sir.”

The Specialist asked if they were all quite dead.

“Yes.”

The Specialist asked if there was any immediate danger, any locals gawking, anyone calling police, any curious canines.

“Just the friendly.”

The Specialist concluded the conversation.

Silence hung up, put the phone back in his pocket, and examined his surroundings. The air was thick with humidity, visible under streetlights and porch lights. Dangling strips of siding. Paint flaking off cinderblock walls. An overturned shopping cart. Most—no, all—of the houses were larger than Adriana’s.

Two blocks down was a busy street, Suez Street, a demarcation line where happier living commenced. This was where Lowry had escaped him. Cars zipped by at a mockery of the forty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit.

Silence had turned off Suez when he first arrived, parking immediately and walking the last couple of blocks. He’d needed the element of surprise, and he hadn’t yet cased the area, having only gotten word of the impending attack on Adriana’s house a half hour earlier through some drunken lowlifes in an alley behind a dive bar ten miles away.

The car was a dark green Ford Crown Vic, a rental that he’d picked up two nights earlier upon arrival in Sarasota. Reflections of Suez Street’s traffic danced on the gloss of its paint, shining in the restaurant's light coming from the other side of the street.

The restaurant was one of those chain places—corporate, diner-style, family-friendly, late-night service, breakfast served all day. It blasted a sphere of light into the haze, a cleaner, bluer light than all the yellows and flickering oranges surrounding it in the neighborhood across the street. A large sign—shiny plastic, illuminated from within, bright blue with yellow, bubbly letters—proclaimed: BOBBIE