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

That was all he needed. He’d already erased it. He was fine now.

Footsteps behind him. He turned.

A rotund nurse entered the room. “Is there something I can—”

“Hurry!” Burton said, waving frantically. “He stopped breathing! Please hurry!”

She rushed past him. “Oh my goodness, Mr. Farone!”

She pressed another button. An alarm blared. She looked at Burton. “You need to leave. I’m sorry.”

He nodded solemnly.

Three more personnel rushed into the room, and he stepped out of their way, pressing himself against the side of the wardrobe by the door.

A final look into the room. Six people crowded over the Jaguar’s bed. Shouting at each other. One of the nurses performed CPR. Burton caught brief glimpses of the old man in the small gaps in the action.

Then he turned the corner and entered the hallway.

Yes, he’d shed a tear for dear ol’ Father.

Now it was time to celebrate.

He was free of the old man’s presence. Unworthiness no longer tainted Burton. He’d been purified, and now he was ready to proceed. Onward to the future.

Forward movement.

Progress.

He smiled.

Chapter Fifty-Five

Nakiri, the woman who had been calling herself Christie Mosley, looked at this man lying in the hospital bed before her, the man who had been calling himself Pete Hudson, who had actually been Jake Rowe, who was now calling himself Silence Jones, to whom Falcon had given the codename Suppressor.

And he disgusted her.

What the hell was Falcon thinking bringing in a thirty-something-year-old inexperienced local cop as an Asset, knowing there was less than a month to train him?

Foolishness.

Falcon was a good man and a good Prefect, but he often made reckless choices that aligned with his cavalier, smartass, goofy-uncle attitude. Someday, one of his off-the-cuff decisions like this was going to get somebody killed.

It hadn’t happened yet. But it would.

Maybe Falcon had recognized the rashness of his decision and put Nakiri in charge of training to counteract his imprudence. An attempt at checks-and-balances. If so, she was taking that responsibility seriously, if not personally; she was doing her damndest to fail the trainee.

On his very first evening of training.

Suppressor stifled a scream as Nakiri pressed into the bandages on his right shoulder.

“Wrong! Eight-zero-six-four-five-four-one-six-two-nine.”

Suppressor’s forehead was wet with exertion “Eight-zero-six…” He swallowed. “Four-five-one—”

“Wrong!”

She clamped down.

Another silent scream as he bit down on his lip. Sweat dripped from his nose.

She released the pressure. “Eight-zero-six-four-five-four-one-six-two-nine.”

“Eight-zero-six...” He panted. Swallowed. “Four-five-four-one…” Panted. Swallowed. “Six-two-nine.”

She tensed her fingers. Stopped.

He’d gotten it right.

Well, what do ya know?

“Good,” she said. “Did you notice something about the number I gave you?”

Suppressor just stared at her, chest heaving.

“You need to be perceptive, Suppressor. That’s something else for you to work on.” She narrowed her eyes. “Ten digits. Just like U.S. phone numbers. You need to be able to memorize ten-digit numbers the first time you hear them.”

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

Suppressor pulled back into his pillows, eyes going wide beneath his sweaty brow.

Nakiri smirked. “Relax. I’m not that mean.”

She cut the plastic handcuff on his right wrist, leaned over the bed, pressed herself against him just so, batted a pair of bedroom eyes in his direction, then cut the right handcuff.

Suppressor rubbed his wrists.

She yanked back his cover and sheets, glanced at where she’d busied herself a few minutes earlier, below his waistline, gave him a salacious grin, then undid the large strap restraining his legs.

“There,” she said. Other than the IVs, you’re completely untethered. But don’t go getting any ideas. You’re three stories underground, and this place is monitored.” She held up the loose strap. “Just consider this like getting the training wheels off your bike.”

She flipped her eyes to his crotch again.

“This undying thing you’ve got for Cecilia Farone—you know you’ve just projected a perfect image onto her because of your own low self-image, right? Weak people do shit like that. You would’ve become anything she asked you to become. Pitiful.

“But you liked our lesson in touch. You can’t possibly deny that. The proof’s in the, er, pudding. Keep a dead woman rattling around in your brain for all eternity if you want, but it won’t change what’s happening in the present, in the real, living world. You’ll find there are lots of gray areas within morality. That’s where we exist, all the Watchers, but especially us, the Assets. We live in that gray area.”

She gave him another one of her coy grins and walked to the door, opened it, looked back.

“Get some rest. Training resumes tomorrow, bright and early.”

The next day.

Suppressor was walking well, better than she would’ve expected. When Falcon had told her the guy had fortitude, he’d clearly been referring to Suppressor’s mental toughness. But evidently he had physical resolve as well. His knees were rather weak, and he squinted a lot, but otherwise he was walking around fairly normally.

They were in the crumbling area outside the building where the underground medical facility was housed: a tower in an abandoned attempt at a commercial park off the interstate in Alexandria, Virginia. All broken concrete and weed-filled cracks and untrimmed trees.

Squinting, Suppressor looked about the surroundings. “I’ve been…” He stopped to swallow. “Here?”

Nakiri grinned at him. “What, did you think you were under the Pentagon or something? We work where we have to.” She looked him over. “How’s the pain? Are your legs holding out?”

He pointed to his throat, frowned.

“Your throat hurts worse than your legs?” she said.

He nodded.

“You’ll have to learn to live with that one, buddy,” she said. “Time for your next lesson.”

She stopped. And he did too.

With their last turn, they were now in an abandoned alley full of trash and downed power lines and overturned dumpsters.

“You seem like a quality guy. A future family man, had you not murdered a handful of people. But even if Cecilia was still alive, you wouldn’t be having a family. Falcon told you, didn’t he?”

Suppressor gave a confused shake of the head, shrugged.

“All us Assets have been spayed or neutered.” She pointed at his crotch and made a pair of scissors with her