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

shorter one, enough time to release a long, slightly exasperated sigh. “What’s he calling himself?”

“Silence Jones.”

Briggs pulled his piercing blue eyes away from the wall and brought them to Laswell. “Silence?”

“He insisted.”

Briggs turned toward the desk again, tugged at his navy blue suit jacket. He straightened up in his chair. And grimaced. His ass must have been falling asleep too.

Briggs was tall, large, and very fit for someone his age, a dynamic silhouette that paired well with his classically, timelessly handsome face. Excellent posture. Immaculate grooming.

“So Jones would be Asset…” Briggs scrunched one cheek, looked up, searching his mental files. “Asset 23, yes?”

Laswell nodded. “Correct. He’s A-23.”

“Codename?”

“Suppressor.”

“A silencer. I get it. Very clever, Falcon.”

“Thank you, sir. I was fairly proud of myself for that one.” Laswell shimmied his shoulders, pumped his eyebrows, and twitched his upper lip in a way that made his mustache bounce mischievously.

Briggs was not amused. He never was.

Briggs leaned forward, put his elbows on the desk, getting closer. The cheap desk chair squealed in protest. His blue eyes penetrated Laswell.

“He’s too damn old,” Briggs said.

“Old? You’re one to judge, ya fossil. Besides, if you think Jones is old, what must you think of me? I qualify for AARP now, ya know.”

Briggs scowled, didn’t respond.

Never, ever amused.

“He’s in his thirties,” Laswell continued, his tone more serious.

“Well into his thirties.”

“We have Assets in their forties, their fifties, and—”

“Yes, and all of those individuals began in their teens and twenties. They had time for training.”

“He’s been trained. He was law enforcement.”

Briggs scoffed. “City cops aren’t trained assassins.”

“You know Nakiri trained him as well.”

“So you said. And for, what, four weeks?”

Laswell looked away from Briggs’s intense stare. “Three weeks.”

Briggs shook his head, the disappointed father figure. “This is your experiment, Laswell. And it’s on you when it implodes.”

“My experiment is going pretty well so far, wouldn’t you say? Now that he’s eliminated Glover, Suppressor is one kill away from completing his first assignment.”

“So our new Asset was a local cop, working undercover in the Farone crime family, when he crossed paths with our very own Nakiri, yes?”

“Correct. The Farone crime family that has since become the Burton gang.”

“What was our man’s name before?”

“Jake Rowe. He killed four men in eight hours.” Laswell paused for a half moment, for dramatic effect. “After being shot.”

Briggs nodded, put a hand to his chin. “Mmm-hmm. That might impress me had Rowe not been caught.”

“They murdered his fiancée. The man deserves his vengeance.”

“I don’t disagree. But you should have made him a Benevolent Cause. That’s why we do what we do, isn’t it? You could have let Rowe slaughter those men, called it a BC assignment for Nakiri, and then we could have put him in witness protection. Yet you turned a local cop into an Asset. What the hell were you thinking?”

“He has it. You should trust my judgment.”

Laswell wasn’t often defiant with Briggs.

But he was now.

Briggs was right, though—Silence Jones was Laswell’s experiment. A long shot. And, yeah, maybe Laswell had overstepped his bounds a tad. So he would restrain his swagger, tame his playfulness, be respectful.

Briggs’s attention returned to the wall, and the small office was quiet again. No sounds from the hallway past the closed door behind them; the sixth floor of the building was nearly untenanted. Laswell could hear his and Briggs’s wristwatches.

Briggs turned. “And now you’ve turned his vendetta of revenge into his first assignment.”

“A test run, if you will.”

“The last one remaining for Jones to eliminate is Burton himself?”

“That’s correct.” Laswell checked his watch again. “And if he doesn’t do so soon, we’re all going to be in for a world of hurt.”

Briggs nodded, steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “I want you to tell me exactly how this Jake Rowe turned from a workaday police officer to a methodical killer overnight.”

“Yes, sir,” Laswell said humbly.

And he started in on the story of Jake Rowe’s transformation.

Chapter Four

Three months earlier.

Tension pulsed at the man’s temples, pinched the back of his neck, as he sprinted down the alley, his mind flooding with conflicting thoughts—this gruesome chore he’d been tasked with; how the hell he was going to get out of doing the chore; and if he was going to get shot in the process.

His name was Jake Rowe.

The man who would become Silence Jones.

The change that was to come wouldn’t be solely a reconstructed identity. There were massive physical differences too.

Jake’s face was rounder, less defined. Unlike Silence, Jake bore a prominent mole on the right corner of his jaw, which was not sculpted at a sharp angle to his neck like Silence’s. Jake’s physique was toned—from many self-indulgent hours in the gym—but not yet chiseled.

And Jake Rowe could speak. Clearly and without pain. And he did so fervently, especially when his words tried to keep pace with the tumultuous storm of thoughts in his overactive mind.

In the final months of Jake’s existence, he was known by a different name, Pete Hudson, the identity he’d assumed for his undercover assignment within the Farone crime family, an organization that added even further to his list of monikers, gifting him a traditional mobster nickname, one based on his tendency toward loquaciousness.

Loudmouth.

Pete “Loudmouth” Hudson.

The Farone family had changed Jake’s life in a short time, and it was the reason he currently found himself bounding down an alley of crumbling asphalt lined with dumpsters and littered with garbage and potholes, the sky sliced and diced by utility lines.

Jake’s chest heaved, and his feet ached as they pounded the pavement. His toe caught in a pothole. A splash of water on his shoe. His arms windmilled as he stumbled forward a few steps before regaining his balance.

Ahead was his target: Mr. Ranga, owner of the laundromat on the other side of the alley. Indian American. Forties, short, and doughy, in a flannel and cords. But even though Jake was in far better shape, Ranga had spotted him early and gotten a jump on him.

Jake looked back. His partner on this job, Charlie Marsh, was