by Erik Carter
They didn’t.
He retrieved his bar of Lava brand pumice soap from beneath the sink and scrubbed away. The blood loosened, pink water swirling the drain, and the mystery was solved—the blood was Glover’s, not his. He had no open wounds on his tender knuckles.
As he rubbed suds and water through his fingers, his mind went back to what Glover had said, the critical intel that Silence had gotten moments before chasing Glover into the warehouse and executing him.
I don’t know the location, Glover had said, his voice shaking. I swear I don’t. All I know is the time: eight o’clock.
Silence dried off and hovered a hand above the stainless steel fruit basket that was under the cabinets, next to the fridge.
Peaches, pears, apples.
He chose a nice pear. Mrs. Enfield liked pears. This one was perfectly ripe. Nice scent. Nice color, too, not that the appearance would matter much to a blind lady.
He opened the cabinet doors in front of him, those above the fruit basket. The lower two shelves held dishes—something the Watchers hadn’t provided, something he picked up last week, matte-finish, charcoal gray, little flecks in the glaze—and the top shelf was full of miniature cans of cat food. The brand was ’Malkin Meats, a company that produced 100%-meat cat foods. C.C. had once told him that many dog and cat foods contained a lot of fillers.
His hand hovered over the cans, as it had at the fruit basket, deciding.
Chicken.
He grabbed one.
A few moments later he stepped around the shrubs and onto the porch of Mrs. Enfield’s house, a turn-of-the century home, one of many such in Pensacola. The siding was green, the trim a darker green, and the gabled roof was metal with a dormer window. The porch wasn’t as deep as Silence’s, though it was wider, naturally, as the house itself was wider. To the right of the door was a rocking chair. On the opposite side was another, matching rocking chair and a porch swing.
She sat at the far end of the swing, her designated spot, smiling at him, legs crossed at the ankles, toes barely reaching the floorboards, rocking the swing gently, hands stacked on her lap. She was black, and her hair was as white as her eyes. Her dress was a dark blue floral-print with frill around the collar.
She patted the open area of seat cushion next to her.
He sat down.
Mew. A little noise from the floor.
Baxter was curled up beneath the small table in the porch’s corner, looking up at Silence, eyes squinted with contentment, his little cat motor rumbling away.
He was an orange tabby. And big. Not the most gigantic cat Silence had ever seen—he weighed about fifteen pounds—but he carried his weight on a decently sized frame. His square head, lion nose, and Jay Leno chin made him look not so much a masculine cat than an actual, human man. He looked like he shouldn’t spend his days lumbering on Mrs. Enfield’s sofa but instead be out there somewhere in the workforce, a fuzzy personal injury attorney, a four-legged retail manager.
And he drooled.
Not a little spittle now and then. Not a few bubbles with indigestion. An ever-present line of drool leaking from whichever corner of his mouth was lower. Currently, as he looked contentedly up at Silence, the drool escaped the left corner of his mouth, a thin trail glistening in the muted, early-evening sunlight that filtered out of the gray sky.
Silence reached down and grabbed the small saucer beside Baxter’s left paw, examined it. Flawlessly clean. Mrs. Enfield was good about keeping it washed.
He set it down, pulled the ring on the can of ’Malkin Meats, and tapped out the contents. Baxter dug in, his purring going louder.
As Silence settled back into the swing, he reached the pear toward his companion. “And for you.”
She grasped for it. He took her hands, led them to the pear. She smiled.
“Aren’t you sweet?” She placed the fruit on her lap. “Have you been drinking?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Let me smell your breath.”
“Um…”
“Oblige an old woman. Lean over here.”
Back in his kitchen, he thought she would have been able to detect alcohol on his breath from a distance. He hadn’t imagined she would give him a closeup inspection.
He leaned across the swing, putting his face near hers.
She sniffed. “Good.”
She put her hands on either side of his face, rubbed gently over his temples, his cheekbones. Her palms were smooth but dry. She took his hands, examined his knuckles.
“You’ve been fighting again, haven’t you?”
Silence didn’t reply.
“You have. Your face and hands are all softened up. What is it you do?”
Silence didn’t reply.
“Fine. Better that I don’t know anyway.” She sighed. “In the two weeks you’ve been here, you’ve proven that you’re a good man. That’s all that matters. I can read people.”
Silence could relate. C.C. had always told him he was good at reading people, that it was an excellent quality to have.
“So whatever trouble you get yourself into, it doesn’t change who you are on the inside.” Her hands returned to his face, poked about his jawline. “You feel thin, though. Are you eating?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Could eat more.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
She took her hands back and faced the street, her milky eyes blinking. Quiet sounds from the neighborhood—a single car listing by a couple blocks over, laughter from a cookout, a pair of birds twittering their appreciation of the returning sunlight.
Their street was in East Hill, a nice area of the city, a desired location. People smiled when they declared, I live in East Hill. Sentiments like these weren’t pomposity, though, because while there were certainly plenty of expensive homes in East Hill—one very expensive one was right across the street from Silence’s—there were also plenty of lesser expensive ones.
East Hill was a way of life, an eclectic mix of the expensive and the expressive and eccentric, all of it peaceful and beautiful. Old oak trees and pristine landscaping dotted comfortable sidewalks. Kids on bicycles. Palm trees. Friendly neighbors. Lawnmowers. The smell of charcoal grills. The smell of propane grills.
And, as Silence lived in the southwest corner of East Hill—right by Old East Hill—he was only blocks from downtown. The Watchers had done a wonderful job when they found this location for him. He literally couldn’t have done better if he tried.
A sound broke the quiet. Rumbling bass. And tires crunching asphalt.
It was the El Camino again. Light blue, dull paint. A long crack in the windshield. Rust had taken nibbles from the door, big mouthfuls of the rear quarter panel.
And inside were the same two punks.
The white guy was behind the steering wheel as the car slowly crept by. His left arm dangled outside, smacking loudly against the door in rhythm with the bass. Tattoos on his skinny shoulder and on his even skinnier forearm. Goatee. White tank top. Fedora. Sunglasses.
In the passenger seat was the black guy. Several years younger, late teens. Light-skinned. Lean, not in the same way as his companion, but in a not-yet-fully-grown way. Dark blue long-sleeve shirt. Beanie cap.
They both looked right toward the porch—the white guy sneering, the black guy trying to match his partner’s bravado, but with a hesitancy in the eyes that couldn’t be completely masked.
The driver removed his hand from the steering wheel, looked away, reached toward the dash. The music quickly faded off.
When he faced the porch again, he sang to the tune of “Three Blind Mice.”
“One blind mouse. One blind mouse. She’s all alone. She’s all alone.” He snickered. “Nice house, Granny! Real nice. We know you be livin’ all alone, Granny. Who’s this? Your boyfriend?”
The white guy snickered again. It was only after he turned to the passenger seat that the other guy joined him in laughing.
Sile
nce had heard enough.
He jumped from his seat, bounded down the steps, down the short sidewalk.
The El Camino’s engine roared, and it bolted off.
It was a futile effort on Silence’s part. No chance at catching them. Just pure hubris, pure rage.
He stopped in the middle of the street as the vehicle shrank in the distance. The driver’s laughter faded away. The El Camino did a rolling stop at the next corner, squealed to the left, and disappeared.
Dammit.
Silence returned to the porch, sat on the swing.
“Same guys,” he said.
“That’s three times now,” Mrs. Enfield said. She rolled the pear between her hands, fingers shaking.
“How find?” Silence said.
Mrs. Enfield’s white eyes looked at him, confused. More and more, Silence was discovering that his new abbreviated way of speaking wasn’t the clearest form of communication.
“How did they find me?” she asked, clarifying.
On instinct, Silence nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see and said, “Mmm-hmm.”
“Mrs. Cooper told me they’re from one of the rough neighborhoods on the other side of downtown. Must have heard about the little blind lady alone in East Hill.”
Anger rumbled through Silence’s chest. He exhaled, his frustration crackling in his destroyed throat.
“Not alone now,” he said.
She smiled, reached for his knee, found it, squeezed. “That was very brave of you, chasing after them like that. Thank you.”
Silence grunted.
“You just hopped right out of your seat, right into danger,” Mrs. Enfield said. She tsked. “Yes, son, I’m quite certain I don’t need to know what line of work you’re in. But may I ask—you seem edgier than usual tonight; why?”
“Have problem to solve,” Silence said. He swallowed, lubricating his throat for more syllables. “By tonight.” Another swallow. “Or consequences.”
Consequences was a big word with a lot of syllables, a painful word. But if Silence’s throat wasn’t faulty, he would have clarified it adjectively.
Major consequences.
Life-or-death consequences.
National security consequences.
Glover had told Silence how consequential Burton’s actions tonight would be.
But Glover hadn’t been able to provide a location.
Just the time, 8 p.m.
Silence glanced at his watch.
Only three more hours.
And Silence had nothing to help him figure out what was going to happen. No additional intel. No contacts to reach out to. No stacks of research materials. The only tool available to Silence that evening was his own mind.
Mrs. Enfield had gone quiet again. Finally she said, “Why don’t you talk?”
“You know.”
“Because of the pain. Yes, I know why you say so few words. What I’m asking is why don’t you talk? You say so little with those few words you speak. This ... event you mentioned, the thing that happened to you—why not share it with someone, maybe an old, blind widow with no kids, no family, not much longer for this world. You’ll feel better. Come, now, share with me.”
Cecilia.
C.C.
A pool of blood filled with long, dark hair.
Body still warm, getting colder.
“It was … very bad,” Silence said.
Mrs. Enfield smiled painfully. “On your time, son. On your time.” She held up the pear. “Did you rinse it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Enfield nodded and took a bite, then used the pear to make a sweeping gesture at the neighborhood before them. “How did you end up here, Silence?”
Silence looked beyond the porch. Directly across from them was a house he’d learned was built in the ’20s, though the average person wouldn’t know it to look at it, so thorough were the updates. A two-story addition was in the back, and through the windows there were glimpses of high-end furnishings and a happy family in the living room, a conversation full of laughter.
Beside that was the street’s largest house, two stories of modern design—sharp angles, towering windows.
On the corner was another newer house, more traditional, smaller and a bit more modest.
The street was empty but for a woman pushing a baby carriage and talking on a cellular phone. Her conversation was as pleasant, as laughter-filled as that of the family beyond the window on the other side of the street.
“Lucked out,” Silence said.
But he said it figuratively. It hadn’t been luck that had brought him there. It hadn’t been luck that stole C.C. from him, that stole his voice, his name, his future, and his past.
Cruelty had done it.
Cruelty had beaten C.C. to a bloody mess.
Cruelty had murdered her.
And every bit of that cruelty, all the reasons for Silence’s new, destroyed life, were connected to Lukas Burton.
Silence considered once more that he had only one tool that night—his own mind—with which to find Burton.
And stop him.
Chapter Three
A thousand miles away.
Virginia. Somewhere in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, the National Capital Region.
A windowless office, smaller than a child’s bedroom. White walls with copious scuff marks, particularly around the vinyl base molding. The desk was metal and also less than gently used.
It was a room treated with careless disregard, like an unloved, long-suffering rental car, one of many such nondescript offices in a cluster of glass office buildings surrounding an artificially green pond with a fountain in the center. A business park, conveniently located off the interstate highway.
Far away from any governmental facility.
It was the latest of their meeting places. A six-month lease under the name Clocktower Enterprises, LLC. They didn’t stay anywhere for long.
The seat facing the desk was hard, small, and the cushion was less a pancake than it was a crepe, covered with soiled red cloth that felt like burlap. Tony Laswell shifted again, recrossing his legs, taking the pressure off his left ass cheek and putting it on the right.
As he looked at the older man sitting on the other side of the desk—in the slightly posher yet equally budget-friendly swivel desk chair—he considered clearing his throat, obnoxiously, overtly.
But he didn’t need to, because finally Briggs responded. “And when did we get this intel, Falcon?”
Ugh. Falcon. Briggs was insistent on using their codenames, even when it was just the two of them. Briggs got frustrated when Laswell called him by his real name and furious if Laswell addressed him by the title he used in the outside world.
Still, Laswell suspected this was less about sticking to protocol as it was a power trip on Briggs’s part. After all, the guy had named himself Jupiter, as in the Roman king of gods.
Ego, ego, ego.
Laswell checked his watch. “An hour ago, Jupiter,” he said, giving the name a two-handed shove of annoyed sarcasm. “He squeezed the information out of Glover then put a pair of bullets between his eyes.”
Briggs nodded, ran a hand through his bone white hair, and steepled his fingers beneath his nose, squinting slightly. He looked to the side, as though through a window, a spot on the wall where a window might be in a grander office.
Shit. Another one of Briggs’s pauses.
Laswell crossed his legs again. A futile attempt. His entire rear end and his lower back were tingling, falling asleep. If Briggs didn’t stop mulling things over so much, Laswell was going to get permanent nerve damage; he just knew it.
But that’s how Patrick Briggs acted within this organization. Deep. Reflective. Pensive. Out in the real world, Briggs also had to make monumental, life-and-death decisions. Those decisions, however, were seen in the light of day. They were filtered through public scrutiny. Here, Briggs didn’t have the resources he had out there, nor did he have large numbers of associa
tes with whom to share both ideas and accountability.
And for some reason, this made Briggs move slowly.
Very, very slowly.
Thank god Laswell had a flight to catch. Otherwise, this could last all night.
He drummed his fingers on his watch face, willing time to move faster.
Finally, Briggs took his hands from beneath his nose, placed them on his lap. Still looking out the phantom window, he spoke. “And all we have is a time, no location?”
“That’s correct, sir. 2000 Central Time, 2100 here.”
Briggs eased back a French cuff, glanced at his Rolex, grunted. “If Burton is as big of a threat as we’re thinking, our new man has about three hours to stop a catastrophe.” Another pause, a 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.”