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

It was a grenade.

He leapt to the side as a massive explosion destroyed the car. His ears rang, and a wave of heat flushed his skin, his hair. A fireball lit the darkness.

Pieces of metal and plastic and safety glass fell from the sky, peppering him, as he crouched in the sand at the side of the road, arms clasped protectively over his head.

He panted. Slowly uncovered his head.

The heat was intense, and his forehead broke out in sweat. Crackling, snapping sounds mixed with the sound of the distant waves, like the world’s largest beachside bonfire.

He slowly stood up.

The Jag was in flames, a roaring metallic candle lighting the empty road and beach.

He loved that damn car.

Glover stumbled toward him, coughing, his face black with soot. He bent over, put his hands on his knees, looked up at Burton.

“A grenade?” Glover shouted, exasperated. He tried to stand, and a coughing fit bent him over again.

Burton looked off into the distance. The taillights of the Cutlass grew smaller as it zipped away, returning to the lights of Pensacola Beach.

Okay, maybe she was a federal agent.

“Who the hell are you, Christie?” he said.

Chapter Forty-Four

Jake’s eyes opened.

His visibility was a thin strip bordered with a white, crosshatched texture. Bandages. He felt them on his forehead, nose, the tops of his cheeks.

He was in a tiny hospital room. Very dark. The walls were close on either side of him, and the space was cramped with beeping machinery, whose various lights—LED greens and reds and blues—were the only illumination.

He looked down, and his chin nearly fell to his chest like a sphere of steel. His neck was weak, helpless against the weight.

From his downcast position, he saw that his lower body was covered with white sheets and bordered by the handrails of a hospital bed. There was pressure across his thighs, like something heavy lying across them. His arms were outside the sheets, covered to his fingertips with bandages. His left forearm was in a brace.

Something brushed his chin, his lower cheek, and as he moved his jaw, he realized that his hearing was muffled, ears covered with bandages. His entire head must have been covered. He raised his right hand to investigate.

And it came to a halt, sending a medicinally numb current of pain through his arm.

His heavy head drifted downward again. He looked.

His arm was hovering a few inches off the bed, ascending no farther, tethered like a kite to the handrail by a thick, double-looped cable tie, a style that Jake recognized from the police department—it was a plastic handcuff. A flex cuff. The other arm was secured to the opposite handrail.

He took in a shuddering breath.

The EKG monitor beeped more rapidly.

His eyes fluttered.

And then they closed.

He returned.

To C.C.

Months earlier.

They sat on a bench in the shade of a massive live oak tree with massive branches that drooped from the combined effects of weight and time. Tendrils of Spanish moss lilted in the gentle breeze. Behind them, past an expanse of bright green grass, was the Farone mansion, bathed in sunlight, its towering walls partly covered with creeping ivy and lined with palm trees and manicured hedges and shrubs.

They’d been discussing something of supreme importance: the films of Mel Gibson. When C.C. had placed Bird on a Wire higher than Lethal Weapon, Jake could continue the conversation no further.

Jake turned to her with a smile. “For someone so quiet, you’re awfully opinionated.”

“Quiet people can’t have opinions?”

“I would think if someone had an opinion, he or she would voice it.”

“A ‘loudmouth’ like you would think that. Ghandi said to, ‘Speak only if it improves upon the silence.’”

Jake gave her that smug, incredulous look that frustrated her so: one raised eyebrow, a superior twist at the corner of his lips. “Ghandi was one of the most outspoken individuals of this century, ya know…”

She shot him her own look of superiority. “Exactly. Think about it.”

Jake opened his mouth but couldn’t form a retort. As she did so often, she’d taken him aback, and he wasn’t certain whether he was admiring her quirkiness or impressed by her steadfastness.

“Never underestimate quiet people, love,” she said. “Mouthy people like you assume the quiet ones aren’t listening. But we are. Quiet people are the ones you need to watch.”

“You must not have been paying attention all these months if you think I’ve underestimated you. If you haven’t noticed, I kinda like ya.”

She rolled her eyes then looked across the grounds. “That’s what worries me about the world now. It’s getting so loud. So many voices. So much chatter. Sowing division. There’s no time for quiet anymore. Self-reflection has become a punchline.”

Jake put his hand on her knee. “Don’t feel like you need to change the world all on your own, C.C.”

She turned back to him, happiness and warmth returning to her face. “I have something important to tell you.”

“Doesn’t that negate what you just said about being quiet?”

“Shut up, smartass,” she said but smiled softly.

When a moment passed and she hadn’t told him this important thing she needed to say, a rush of anxiety shivered through him.

Maybe she was about the give him bad news. The worst news. The news he’d been dreading.

The whole time they’d been together, he’d had a nagging feeling that someday she’d wise up, realize how disproportionately amazing she was, leave him.

But what she said then was, “I love you, Pete.”

He released the breath he’d been holding. And waited a moment before he replied.

“I love you, too.”

“You do?”

He nodded.

“Then why the pause?”

He studied his knees, hesitated again. “Because there’s something important I need to tell you also.”

He picked an oak leaf off the bench, pinched it between his fingers.

“I’m not who I’ve told you I am. My name isn’t Pete Hudson.”

Chapter Forty-Five

When Jake woke again, things felt different.

Somehow he knew that time had passed.

A lot of time.

The visual, too, was different. While his environment hadn’t changed—the same dark hospital room cramped with beeping machinery—now there was