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

exploded. He screamed. She squeezed twice more, putting two rounds through his chest. He collapsed a couple feet away from Gamble.

Burton and Glover had crossed the room, running up the floating staircase to the second floor.

She fired three more times, the rounds cracking into the steps, the wall, sending debris clattering into the room.

Instinct and training pulled her after Burton and Glover. For only a split second, not even enough time to move her feet. Because there was a more pressing objective.

She ran to the chair, dropped to her knees.

“Shit!” she screamed and fought the urge to look away.

Rowe was in goddamn horrible shape. She’d seen a lot in the last twelves years of this “job” of hers, but this was the worst. That unassuming, handsome, aww-shucks face that she’d known for the last several months as Pete Hudson, and more recently as Jake Rowe, was simply gone.

Gone.

They’d kicked it into nothing. Tissue and blood and flaps of skin.

But he was still alive. Unconscious with slight movements in his chest and horrible puttering, wheezing noises coming from his lips.

The guy was a freaking survivor.

His skin was turning blue. She looked at his throat. It was collapsed, a deep indentation in the center.

Only moments left to save him.

She frantically scanned the room for something she could use.

There.

A legal pad and pen on a small table in the back.

She sprinted to the table, grabbed the pen, sprinted back to Rowe, dropped to her knees.

The pen was metal—a gold Cross pen. A godsend. Metal was better than plastic for what she had planned.

She fought to keep her hands from shaking as she disassembled the pen.

Then she traced her finger along Rowe’s throat and found his Adam’s apple, a task that should have been simple but was a challenge with the mangled condition of his neck. From there, she slid further down to the cricoid cartilage.

The spot between the two—between the Adam’s apple and the cricoid cartilage—was her objective.

She took her pen knife from her jeans pocket, snapped open the blade.

And sucked in a quick, deep breath.

She’d never done this before.

An emergency tracheotomy.

She brought the blade to Rowe’s battered flesh and pressed down with a good amount of pressure. The sharp blade pierced the flesh cleanly. Blood raced out, snaked down the side of his neck.

A horizontal incision, a half inch long and a half inch deep.

His neck now open to her, she saw the yellowish cricothyroid membrane. She placed the blade on the membrane, pierced it.

Blood spurted on her face.

And a horrible wet gasp came from Rowe’s open throat.

She stuck the metal tube from the pen into the now accessible airway, put her lips around it and sucked to verify that air was moving through the tube and into Rowe.

Lumpy, warm fluid filled her mouth.

She turned, spit. Blood and nastiness speckled the rug.

Airway clear.

She’d done it. Shit, she’d actually done it.

No time to revel in glory. There was still very imminent danger in her environment, on the floor above her. She looked back to the stairs where Burton and Glover fled, mangled by the rounds she’d squeezed off.

She sliced through the nylon ropes, swiped them off Rowe’s arms and legs, then hooked him under the armpits and dragged him to the front door.

Chapter Forty-One

Glover had been in a lot of crazy situations in his life of petty crime, especially in recent months since joining up with Lukas Burton.

But he’d never been in a situation this crazy, one so crazy that even Burton took a moment to calm down, to develop a plan. Glover hadn’t seen the man like this—so lost, so out of control.

They were in a darkened spare bedroom on the second story of Burton’s house. A guest room with, like the rest of the house, large floor-to-ceiling glass. This room was on the north side of the house, and so it looked out on the water of the sound as opposed to the Gulf on the opposite side of the island. There was a queen bed with dark gray bedding, perfectly flat and smooth. A sleek dresser.

And a gun locker.

Burton unlocked it and pulled the metal doors open, reached inside and grabbed a pair of Heckler & Koch MP5K submachine guns, handed one to Glover.

Glover looked at the weapon in his hands then looked at Burton. “Goddamn, man! Christie… I mean, what are we gonna—”

Burton shoved him to the side. “Shut up!”

He looked away, thinking, fingers playing on the banana-shaped magazine of his HK.

Finally he said, “All right, we can’t just go running back down there. We’ll take the side route.” He pointed to the sliding glass door and the balcony beyond where there was a set of steps that led down to the sand. “The way she took down our guys … She’s been trained.”

Trained?

“You think she’s a cop?” Glover said. “Christie? Like, undercover?”

“That’d be my guess. Which means—”

There was a muffled sound of a car engine firing up outside, followed quickly by the chirp of tires.

“Shit!” Burton said and ran out of the room.

Glover chased after him.

Glover squeezed the HK between his legs, needing both hands to grasp the Jaguar’s leather passenger seat as Burton jerked the car around traffic on the quiet, sand-strewn street, honking at the lackadaisical nighttime traffic and beachgoers. The tires squealed. The smell of hot rubber filled the cab.

Burton swerved around another car, and a set of taillights appeared farther down the street—another car that was driving fast, erratically.

“That’s Christie’s Cutlass,” Burton said. “She’s going for the bridge, headed back to Pensacola proper.”

The street in front of them was now open. Burton smashed the gas pedal. The Jaguar howled. The gap between the vehicles shrank.

The Cutlass swung right, onto a cross-street.

Burton continued straight, flying past where Christie had turned.

Glover looked out the window as they passed the street. “What the hell are you doing? She went that way.”

The Jaguar’s engine roared as Burton gave it more gas.

“Setting a trap,” he said.

Glover looked at the submachine gun pinched between his thighs. “How