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

smacked his dry lips and prepared to speak, a pulse of discomfort came from his throat. It felt like a thicket of thorn bushes had sprouted there during his medical slumber, swelling his esophagus, the thorns slicing into him. He worked up some saliva, swallowed, and then spoke.

“Testing,” he said.

As soon as the word left his lips, he recoiled. The thorn bush sliced him up.

The mustached man’s eyebrows drew together, vicarious empathy.

“Hurts like hell,” Jake said, which was a stupid thing to do. A fresh thrashing from the thorns, pain sharp enough to water his eyes.

The other man’s mustache twisted into a little grin. “And it will continue to hurt. The medical staff tells me it’ll get somewhat better with time, but you’ll always feel it.”

Jake rolled his head back. “Great.”

A shot of pain. He grimaced. Swallowed.

Just shut up, he told himself.

The man stepped closer. “I haven’t introduced myself. You can call me Falcon. My organization saved your life. We’re the ones who run this facility.”

He pulled a hand from his pocket and gestured to their surroundings.

“And we want to offer you a second chance at life. Or, to put it more accurately, we’re offering you a second life altogether.

“I’ll cut to the chase. As you’re someone who works in bureaucracy, I’m sure you can agree that there are plenty of ways individuals elude justice, plenty of cracks to fall through. If a person knows the right people, if a person has enough money, he or she can get away with murder. Literal murder. But other horrible things as well. Often it’s the system itself that allows it. Corruption.

“And so individuals like me have set up an underground operation to right wrongs, to dole out justice to people who have escaped it. A secret group hidden in plain sight, watching it all, monitoring the government’s actions—local, state, and federal, even foreign affairs, things like CIA operations. When someone eludes the justice they so sorely deserve, we go in an administer that justice. Usually as a death sentence. We call ourselves the Watchers.”

Falcon looked at Jake now, awaiting a response.

It was a lot to consume at once, this concept of a secretive group embedded throughout American government with a mission of righteous murder, and Jake’s immediate reaction was one of loyal skepticism.

He worked up some saliva, swallowed. “Treason.”

The word hurt his throat, but not as much as the previous times he’d spoken. He’d lubricated the thorn bush more effectively.

Falcon chuckled. “Treason, you say? The first case I worked was a small-town mayor in North Carolina who tortured and killed the brother of his political opponent and had the police chief—his father-in-law—pin the murder on his opponent. One of our men broke his neck. Is that treason?

“Just last month, we uncovered a human-trafficking ring in Oklahoma, operating out of a Native American reservation, using legal loopholes regarding what is and isn’t federal ground to transport people. This had gone on for almost a decade. We ended it in one night. With two bullets. Treason?”

The man had a point. Even in Jake’s brief tenure as a law enforcement officer, he’d experienced the foggy gray areas within the law—people who should have been arrested but weren’t; corruption and injustice.

“What do you…” Jake said and stopped to swallow. “Want…” Another swallow. “From me?”

His throat crackled with pain. He needed to learn to use less syllables.

Falcon rocked on his heels and mugged broader. “We want you to be an assassin, Mr. Rowe. What we call an Asset. You’ve proven that you can kill. Four men in one night. Shit, man.”

Even with all the pain in his throat and the numb quality throughout the rest of his body, Falcon’s request made Jake’s stomach instantly roil with anxiety.

An assassin?

When he killed four of C.C.’s murderers, it was an act of passion-fueled rage. One night. And it ended with Jake himself being killed.

Since then, he’d been brought back to life—a life drifting in and out of drug-filled memories and dreams. He’d had no chance to come back to himself, to reacquire reality.

But he didn’t need to have his full wits about him to understand that he was no professional killer.

The very thought of it…

Insane.

There was a look of recognition in Falcon’s eyes, as though he could see Jake’s hesitancy, and before Jake could respond, he continued.

“There are four tiers to the Watchers’ organization. Let me show you.”

He stepped to the side of the bed, to a table, and picked up a small book. Jake recognized it. It was his PenPal notebook—yellow plastic cover, inky bloodstain on the back. He hadn’t seen it yet during any of his conscious moments in this medical room, as the table was hidden behind one of the larger pieces of medical equipment.

Falcon made an eww face at the bloodstain, carefully avoiding it as he opened the notebook with only two fingers. He took the mechanical pencil out of the spiral binding and started writing.

Jake didn’t appreciate him marking up his personal belongings. But given the situation, he decided he should remain quiet. It was good practice, anyway. He would need to stay silent as often as possible with this painful throat of his.

After a moment of writing, Falcon put the pencil back in the spiral binding, smiled at his handiwork with over-the-top pride, and handed the notebook to Jake. There was a simple diagram with words connected via lines.

It reminded Jake of the mind mapping technique C.C. had taught him.

Falcon put his hands back in his pockets. “Everyone in the Watchers, aside from the lowest tier, the Assets, has a day job. ‘Hidden in plain sight,’ remember? At the top of the pecking order, we got the Captains, the big guns. There are only a few of them, and they all work in government.

“Beneath the Captains are the Prefects, like me.” He patted his chest, smiled with more of his animated pride. “Also members of government. We supervise the Specialists and the Assets. If we do well enough, and if a