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

to be this: one day, far down the line, you’re going to come to me and tell me who you are, what you’re all about. That’s it. Of course, you could give me an answer tomorrow. Hell, you could come up with something right this second. But I know that’s not your way. You have integrity, and you’re a thinker, two of the many reasons I chose you. I know you won’t give me an answer until you have a real one. Until then, you’re going to kill people and right wrongs in this world.”

Silence only nodded.

“Speaking of sticking to your word, you haven’t visited her grave, have you?”

Laswell had made Silence promise not to visit Cecilia Farone’s grave before he put him on a plane back to Pensacola a couple weeks earlier.

Silence shook his head.

“Good. I’m sure you’re itching to go, but no matter how different your appearance is to the old Jake Rowe face, there are only so many six-foot-three guys who’ll visit her gravesite, and the Farone family surely has enemies still in the area. Give it some time.”

“Okay,” Silence said.

“How was it, your first assignment?”

“Challenging.”

“Good answer.” Laswell stopped, put his hands on the railing, and looked out into the dark water. “And the revenge? Killing Burton?”

A dark look swept over Silence’s face. “Satisfying.”

Laswell grinned. “I figured it would be.”

He leaned off the railing, put his hands in his pockets, and faced Silence.

“I told Nakiri what she needed to hear to get you trained. A bit mischievous, but it got the job done. I did something similar with you when I brought you aboard. I offered you a choice: join the Watchers, or I’d turned you into the authorities.”

He paused.

“I was never going to turn you in. Should you have turned down the offer, I would have made you a Benevolent Cause, changed your identity, and given you a new life. Killing four men in one night was brutal, but so was what they did to Cecilia. I did what I had to do to get you to join. Maybe you want to rip my face off now, but I hope that shows how much I wanted you on the team, the faith I have in you.”

Silence didn’t respond.

Laswell took that as a good sign. So he just nodded.

He couldn’t help but feel a tad guilty. He remembered what Briggs had said earlier in the day.

You can be a real manipulative son of a bitch, you know that?

Yes. Yes, he could.

His mustache twitched impishly.

“Chances are, this is the last time you’ll see me in person. Assets rarely see their Prefects again beyond the initiation process. Nakiri only fell back into face-to-face contact with me again because of the weird circumstances that brought you to us. Most likely, from this point on, you’ll know me as nothing but a voice on the phone, a valediction at the bottom of an email. Any final questions?”

“No.”

Laswell nodded. “You’ve proven me right. You’re an Asset. But you won’t be just any Asset. There’s something special about you. I can feel it. You’re going to be a legend.”

And Laswell wasn’t exaggerating. No hyperbole. No embellishment. No sarcasm, for once.

Of all the Assets Laswell had pulled into the Watchers, this guy—this former teacher, this short-term police officer, this love-struck, heartbroken fool—was a step above. He had the X factor. The dark depths of tragedy and an endless pool of resourcefulness. He was the perfect storm, a giant mass of intangibilities.

Valuable, dangerous intangibilities.

“Good luck, Suppressor.”

Laswell turned and left, leaving Silence Jones to his new reality.

Chapter Seventy-Six

The sun was too bright. The sky was too blue. The temperature and humidity were too ideal, and the breeze felt too pleasant.

For what Silence was about to do, there needed to be solemnity. The sky should be gray with a bitter chill and nagging drizzle.

He drove along the cemetery’s neat, well-packed gravel path. When he left Virginia two weeks earlier, Falcon had told him he wasn’t to visit C.C.’s grave. Last night, at the Auditorium, Falcon had reiterated the command, and, in the same conversation, had said he appreciated that Silence was a man of his word.

Silence was a man of his word. It was true. But Nakiri had said that bending rules was as useful a skill as any of the others she’d taught him when it was used judiciously and in situations that were entirely necessary.

This was necessary.

In the two weeks since he’d returned to Pensacola, he’d yet to visit C.C.’s grave. He’d been telling himself that it was because of the true-to-his-word quality that so defined him, that so impressed Falcon.

But that wasn’t it. Not entirely.

There was also hesitance.

Dread.

He turned a corner and saw the fresh grave ahead. He pulled the car to the side, parked, and took out his binoculars.

Falcon was right. A six-foot-three guy shouldn’t be hanging out at Cecilia Farone’s grave site when a six-foot-three guy was wanted for her murder.

So he just observed it from a distance, seated in a vehicle, where no wandering eyes could discern his height.

A simple, unassuming gravestone. Granite. Sparkly new. Her full name at the top, CECILIA NICOLE FARONE, and dates at the bottom—a late 1960s date on the left and an early 1990s date on the right. The only other word was DAUGHTER.

The most special soul he’d ever known, summed up by DAUGHTER.

She spent most of her time in her books and in her mind. She had almost no friends, and her criminal family existed in a different realm than the one she soared upon. Her father hadn’t known how special she was, not in his cogent days and certainly not after he slipped into dementia. Her brother loved her, but he was a lunatic.

Silence was the only person who would ever know who Cecilia Farone had been.

He stayed for two minutes looking through the binoculars. Then he left.

That evening, quiet had returned to East Hill. There were no festival noises from a few blocks over, no jet flyovers.

And no rattling, bass-pumping