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

or at Silence; instead her eyes scanned a copy of Cosmo, cradled in her free hand. Her feet were crossed, and she tapped the toe of her left Doc Marten while she read.

“There are lots of different types of muscular strength,” she said, thumbing to the next page. “We’re training you for endurance and stamina. All those fitness-center-sculpted muscles you had looked really hot, but we need something a lot more practical. And deceiving. I mean, take me, for instance. 110 pounds … give or take a little, ya know. You would have never guessed how strong I was when I kicked your ass at Burton’s beach house, huh? Christie Mosley, Burton’s fiesty, sexy little girlfriend.”

She gave a Betty Boop pout, brought up her shoulders, stuck her ass out.

Silence thought back to how easily she’d taken him down at Burton’s. There had been a few quick exchanges, and then he was on the floor, squeezed between her thighs in a move that had completely incapacitated him.

No, he certainly hadn’t anticipated that from Christie Mosley.

His arm gave out.

Nakiri squeezed the stopwatch.

Beep.

She looked at the watch’s screen and couldn’t conceal a small, impressed grin. She’d given him almost no credit for his achievements through the weeks, so he was going to take her smile as a compliment, despite how quickly she removed it from her face.

She flipped a page in the magazine, popped a bubble between her teeth. “Next arm.”

That evening.

Silence sat at the edge of his bed, wearing a pair of flannel pajamas and facing a Macintosh computer that was set up on a small table and connected to a phone jack. A diagonal strip of light from the crack in the doorway sliced over the bed and his legs.

The Internet connection speed, Nakiri had told him, was 56K. Silence wasn’t much of a tech head, but he knew that 56K was blazing fast. The Watcher’s technological advances were staggering, ahead of the curve, already with a foot in the twenty-first century.

He’d been staring off to the wall, lost in thought, and the computer’s flying toasters screensaver had kicked in. Refocusing, he moved the mouse, and the Netscape browser reappeared. It was open to the website he’d navigated to moments earlier: the Atlanta FBI Field Office. He was supposed to be working on a practice After Action Report—an AAR—but instead he’d logged onto the Internet to sate a personal hunger.

Falcon had spoken in code the previous night: It would be just peachy if you figure out who I am, but don’t be a sad sack if you can’t.

He’d put heavy emphasis on peachy and sad sack.

And Silence had figured it out.

Peachy: the Peach State, Georgia.

Sad sack: SAC, Special Agent in Charge.

He clicked the personnel page hyperlink. And immediately found Falcon.

A vertical column of photos cut down the center of the page—headshots of men and women in dress clothes posed in front of a blue backdrop with an American flag to the side. At the top of the column was Silence’s Prefect.

He clicked the image and opened Falcon’s individual page.

On the left side of the screen was Falcon’s photo. He wore a sharp, conservative suit jacket with a bright red tie, sitting bolt straight. There was a slight grin under his mustache, but nothing like the flippant smirk to which Silence had become accustomed.

Opposite of the photo was a list of biographical information.

ANTHONY LASWELL

SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE

B.A. Philosophy, University of Iowa, 1962

Juris Doctorate, Cornell University, 1965

U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps, 1965-1969

Vietnam Service Medal

Special Agent, FBI

Columbia Field Office - 1969–1970

Indianapolis Field Office - 1970–1977

Dallas Field Office - 1977–1988

Special Agent in Charge, FBI

Atlanta Field Office - 1988–present

Silence smirked.

A sharp voice made him jump.

“Hey!”

Nakiri looked through the gap in the door.

“What’s with the grin, dummy? Lookin’ at pornography? Back to work!”

She left.

Two days later.

They were in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by snow. As a California boy turned Florida boy, this was as close to a frozen tundra as Silence had ever been. The temperature was somewhere around the freezing point, and the fact that the snow wasn’t very thick—only about an inch of fresh powder that had fallen through the night—made things even more bleak, as everywhere mud brown showed through the white.

He and Nakiri trudged across a desolate cornfield, empty but for a few rotten stalks. There were dark outlines of forests on the distant horizon. Another woods was much closer, only a few feet ahead of them. Their destination. They’d walked half an hour to get there.

Nakiri wore a long, stylish coat, to her knees, cinched in tight, hugging her notable curves. A toboggan hat and gloves—matching—completed the look. Over her shoulder she’d slung a duffel bag, and propped against the other shoulder was a scoped Remington rifle, flawless and brand-new looking. She cupped its butt with a gloved hand.

Silence carried nothing.

And he wore only a pair of boxer briefs.

He took another look at his quivering arms. They’d turned a grayish blue. Through his skin, a network of veins and muscular striations were clearly visible.

He felt a disconcerting confluence of pain and numbness. If he kept moving forward steadily, kept an even pace and rhythmic motions, his body seemed almost detached from his senses, teasing him with a reprieve. But if he moved even a little in the wrong direction—say, by stepping on a clod of earth hidden in the snow or tripping over a frozen cornstalk—icy pain jolted through his entire body.

His skin prickled, felt ready to crack. His nipples had constricted into tiny, taught dots on his quivering pecs. Even his eyelids and eyeballs were cold. He spasmed every few steps.

The only saving grace was that his feet were so frozen and wet that he no longer sensed anything from them, not even the ice-pain. At least part of him wasn’t hurting, though the numbness itself was getting painful.

They reached the edge of the forest, and as Silence glanced down, he saw briars and sticks and branches poking out of the thin layer of