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

a fake tear. “That would be the assignment you stole from me, Falcon.”

Silence was impressed with how cool Falcon was remaining, how impassive in the face of Nakiri’s overt insubordination. He didn’t scowl or frown or even issue one of his trademark smartass smiles. He just stared back at her.

“I have one more assignment, then I’m out,” Nakiri continued. “But, by all means, take your sweet time arranging it, leave me dangling as long as possible while you coddle the rookie.”

She bolted up, the chair legs screeching on the old flooring.

“When you have a new assignment for me, you just let me know.”

She whipped around, headed for the door.

“Oh, I have an assignment for you,” Falcon said.

Nakiri halted. Turned on her heel. A pause. Then she took a couple cautious steps back toward the table.

“You do?” A quivering smile came to her lips.

“Well, not so much an assignment as a bit of consultant work,” Falcon said. He flicked his eyes in Silence’s direction. “You’re going with him.”

“What?”

“He’s only had three weeks of training. He needs support and a watchful eye. From his teacher.” Without turning around, he pointed to the window behind him, toward the idling vehicle. “The Caddie’s waiting to take you both to the airport.”

Nakiri stormed around the table, heels snapping tiles, stopping inches from Falcon.

“You…” she said and trailed off. When she continued, her voice was quieter. And it cracked. “You are an asshole.”

Nakiri’s chest heaved. She stared down at Falcon, and her lower lip moved as though she was about to say something else. No words came out. A moment passed. Then she spun around and stormed to the door.

She glared at Silence as she breezed past him.

The door heaved open so hard the doorknob punched through the drywall.

And she was gone.

Falcon turned to Silence with that smile of his, shrugged.

“You kids have fun,” he said.

Chapter Sixty

Two weeks later.

Glover was giddy with anticipation as he sat in the leather seat of his Acura. He shifted anxiously. His pants were getting uncomfortable.

He drummed his fingers on the leather-wrapped steering wheel of the brand-new vehicle and wondered who they might be providing tonight. Candy or Tiffany or Tina? Candy was his favorite, and he liked the wordplay that came with her name. She really was a tasty treat.

This was yet another perk of his continued ascendency. A massive perk. The one time he’d done something like this in his previous life, before meeting Burton, the chick had horrible acne, sunken eyes, and a bony figure—a damn crackhead. Glover had been certain she was diseased, but he’d proceeded anyway and spent a few fretful months wondering what if.

This, though … this was a whole different world, the difference between McDonald’s and a five-star steakhouse.

He looked out the window.

Well, it wasn’t all glamorous, not the environment, anyway. There was an empty parking lot, and beyond was the warehouse, closed for the weekend—a well-kept and clean place, if not blandly utilitarian. By contrast, the surrounding neighborhood was urban waste. Shitty houses. Litter-speckled gutters.

It wasn’t the most inviting of environments, and it certainly wasn’t sexy, but this was the sort of place you had to go sometimes for this sort of thing. No matter how sophisticated.

There was a rap of a knuckle on the passenger window, and he turned, smiling.

The smile dropped.

A man’s torso, on the other side of the window, face hidden by the car’s roof.

What the hell?

Every other time, the handler would sit in a car parked down the street and let the girl out. She would then take the sidewalk to the Acura, give a quick tap to the passenger-side window, and get in. A safe and secure transaction, assuring both his safety and that of Candy or Tiffany or Tina.

He hadn’t dealt directly with any of the handlers since first setting up this arrangement. This initial transaction had occurred at an upscale cocktail lounge, not in a car parked by a warehouse in this gross part of town.

Glover growled, and he tried to maintain his professional countenance as he pressed the window button and leaned across the center console.

The man wasn’t the one he’d met at the cocktail lounge, nor was he Ramone or Gus, the other two guys who sometimes dropped off the girls. This man was quite tall, well over six feet, with chiseled features, olive skin, and dark, choppy hair with bangs falling into his eyes.

“Who the hell are you?” Glover said.

The man raised a pistol and pointed it through the window.

Chapter Sixty-One

Nakiri sighed out her frustration.

Why was she here?

She was in a rented Honda Civic, a block away from the action, in a cruddy industrial area of town on an equally cruddy, gray day.

If she had to come back to Florida, it could at least be sunny. Gah! The sun was out, like, ninety percent of the time in Pensacola this time of year.

There weren’t even any palm trees in sight. It was just a rundown, decrepit, could-be-anywhere part of the city.

Worst of all, she was here as a babysitter.

Falcon had betrayed her. Humiliated her. Not only was this Pensacola job to have been her final assignment that would have completed her debt, but now she was being forced to watch as someone else—a complete rookie, hardly trained—took over. She just had to sit here and watch, making her not an assassin but a glorified nanny. That big son of a bitch down the street was costing her in more ways than she had ever considered.

And now she watched as the lumbering doofus kept his Beretta pointed through the open passenger window of Clayton Glover’s Acura.

Suppressor hadn’t said anything; he’d just pulled out his suppressed pistol as soon as Glover had rolled down the window. That much was good. She’d taught him the power of intimidation, and with his destroyed voice and big frame, he was naturally intimidating. She told him to use his devil voice sparingly, at choice moments.

Of course, since speaking was painful for him, he was quick to agree