by Erik Carter
“What is it?” Mrs. Enfield said.
“Our friends.”
Bass pumped out of the car. The white guy laughed.
Silence transferred Baxter to the center of the swing and stood up. He approached the steps, thinking the punks would drive off like they did the last time.
But they didn’t.
So he stepped off the porch.
Mrs. Enfield called out. “Silence, where are you going?”
He didn’t respond.
As he moved down the quiet sidewalk—quiet but for the rumbling music pounding out of the El Camino—the white guy stared at him, grinning, laughing, watching over the top of his sunglasses. Beyond him, the younger guy was also laughing, jeering, and he seemed more emboldened than last time.
When Silence was a few feet away, the driver turned to the kid in the passenger seat, said something. The music died, and both men exited the car.
The black kid stepped around the hood and stood beside his leader. He was tall, and the white guy was short, creating a disparity of easily six inches.
Out of the car, under a streetlight, the kid looked even younger than Silence had originally thought. His mustache was scraggly, cheeks smooth.
“Whatcha want, old man? Huh?” the white guy said through his sneer. One of his teeth was gold. “Did your sugar momma send you to scare us off?”
He turned to the younger guy, snickering, received a sycophantic chuckle in return.
Silence said nothing, just stepped closer.
He looked down upon the white guy, blocking the streetlight, throwing him in shadow. The man took a half step back, a shoe shuffling on the asphalt, losing his balance. A flash of embarrassment swept over his face. A bit of his street cred had just evaporated right in front of his protégé. His face shifted a fraction to the right, checking to see if the kid had noticed.
The man forced the confident sneer back onto his lips.
“Ooooh, we got a tough guy here. Big, tall son of a bitch. Think you scare me, old man?” He reached behind his back. “I’m gonna—”
There was a flash of movement, and Silence didn’t realize that he’d done it.
Truly, he hadn’t done it. Not consciously, anyway. Instinct. A skill branded into his subconscious. Recently.
There was something cold and heavy in his hand. The white guy’s gun, a battered old Smith.
It had been so fast, Silence hadn’t even felt his arm move, let alone seen it.
Nakiri’s training, that he’d completed two weeks ago. The brutal training. Hours and days and weeks of torment.
The shit actually worked.
The white guy’s hand remained at chest level, index finger extended, lower fingers curled, aiming an invisible firearm at Silence. He looked at the hand with wide-eyed shock.
Silence considered turning the guy’s own gun on him. But then he remembered how, moments earlier, the guy had cowered away from him without Silence even having to say a word.
Which reminded him of more of Nakiri’s training, the concepts of escalation and intimidation.
He needed to contain this situation, not escalate it.
The opponent was already frightened of him. And the guy was clearly a novice—all bravado, no discipline. A tiny peacock fluffing its tail as wide as possible.
Intimidation was all Silence needed to use in this situation. He could practically see Nakiri nodding respectfully.
He shoved the revolver in his pocket and glared at the white guy.
“Name,” Silence said.
The man jumped at the destroyed quality of Silence’s voice.
And when he didn’t immediately reply, Silence repeated, louder, “Name!”
The man jumped again. “Doughty.”
Silence faced the younger guy, whose eyes were saucers, arms shaking. If there was any doubt that this kid was in over his head, it was erased now.
“L-L-Lee. Lee, sir.”
Silence patted Doughty’s revolver in his pocket and gave the man a dark stare. “Keeping this.” He pointed to the El Camino. “Leave.”
Doughty’s eyes went to Silence’s pocket, as if for a fraction of a moment he had the courage to protest, then he opened the driver-side door.
Lee moved around the car, back to the passenger side.
“Not you,” Silence said.
Lee stopped.
Silence could sense the kid’s quality, his confused decency. C.C. had always told him he was good at reading people.
So Silence was going to go out on a limb, take a chance.
Lee was on the sidewalk, at the front corner of the El Camino’s hood. He looked at Silence, the saucer-eyes even wider, then at Doughty who stood in the open driver-side door, one leg in the vehicle.
Doughty turned to Silence, more of his pride crumbling away. His gaze snapped back across the hood to Lee. “Get in the car.”
Lee made eye contact with Silence.
Silence shook his head.
“Get in the damn car!” Doughty said.
Lee looked back and forth between them. Stopped on Silence. And finally turned to Doughty, shook his head.
“Shit!” Doughty said and dropped into the cracked vinyl seat. “Goddamn idiot.”
He slammed the rusty door. His eyes met Silence’s, burning. The car bolted off and screeched around the corner ahead. The bass came to life, so loud it rattled the rotting body panels.
The El Camino disappeared.
Silence went to the sidewalk. He put his hands in his pockets and looked down upon Lee. The kid was tall but not nearly as tall as Silence.
“Talk,” Silence said as quietly as his voice would allow.
He’d considered saying something more intimidating, something to scare the shit out of the kid. But his throat was hurting bad after the second, louder time he’d growled at Doughty. And, of course, Lee was already scared, shaking.
Which brought forth an intriguing notion, one that C.C. would have been very much in agreement with: Less is more.
Silence was tall, big, and had severe features and a demonic voice. He didn’t need to say much to impart the intimidation that Nakiri had preached. He could say one syllable, Talk, and let other people do all the speaking, lowering the number of sounds channeling through his painful throat.
A good idea. He’d remember it.
Lee’s lower lip trembled. His skin was a pale caramel color, dotted with freckles. He wore his beanie far back on his head, his hairline propping it up.
“I just follow him around, man. He told me he could help me out, that two people are better than one, you know? He’s from Mobile. Just a thief, a petty criminal, but he’s trying to make a name for himself here in Pensacola. There’s this mob family. They’re called the Farones. And there’s this other group he’s been hearing about, the Burton gang. You’ve probably never heard of these groups, have you, someone like you in your nice clothes in this nice neighborhood?”
Oh, you’d be surprised, Silence thought.
But Silence played dumb. He shook his head.
“Well, Doughty thinks if he can make a name for himself around town, he’ll impress them, get a foot in the door. And he wanted a partner. See, I met him at the gas station after school let out one day, and—”
Silence held up a hand.
Had the kid really just said “school”?
“Age,” Silence said.
Lee cocked his head. “You mean, how old am I?”
Silence nodded.
“Seventeen.”
Silence sighed.
Even younger than he’d thought.
And the kid had gotten himself involved with an out-of-state petty thug whose biggest aspiration in life was joining up with Burton.
Silence was glad he’d followed his gut instinct. He needed to divert this kid’s life path, put a peg right in front of a line that was barreling toward a horrible future. He needed to do so immediately. But how?
Due to Silence’s size, strength, and his monster voice, Na
kiri had told him that intimidation would be one of his strongest traits. This had proven very effective moments earlier with Doughty.
However, Nakiri had also said, Never forget about deception. When situations are critical or when adrenaline is flowing, when bullets are flying, it’s easy to not consider finesse. But don’t forget about it.
Silence pointed to the street ahead of them where Doughty had taken off. “You’re done with him.”
He flicked back his sport coat, revealing a flash of his shoulder holster, the Beretta within.
Lee gasped. “Shit, you’re a cop! Yes … yes, sir. I won’t talk to him again. I mean, the guy’s a loser anyway. I … I’ll never contact him again. I promise.”
Silence nodded. He grabbed a quarter from his font pocket, took his wallet from his back pocket. He handed Lee the quarter and a twenty-dollar bill, then pointed down the street in the opposite direction of where he’d pointed moments earlier.
“Pay phone. Two blocks down.” Sharp pain in his throat. He paused. Swallowed. “Call taxi.” Swallowed. “Never come back here.”
Lee clutched the bill in both hands, nodded fervently, then spun around and took off. He wasn’t going to blow this second chance Silence had given him.
“Thank you,” the kid called over his shoulder.
Silence watched him retreat down the sidewalk, then turned back for the house.
A few moments later, he stepped up to Mrs. Enfield. He didn’t sit back down beside her, though, just stopped and stood next to her. Doughty had delayed him, and now he had to double down. He had to get back to his house.
And move on to the next step toward stopping Burton.
Mrs. Enfield smiled up at him, and her face seemed calm, but her quivering hands gave her away. She was a resolute woman and prideful in the best possible way.
Silence knelt down, laid one of his big hands over both of hers, pressed against the shaking.
“They’re gone?” she said.
“They’re gone.”
She pulled one of her hands out from beneath his, placed it on his cheek. “Thank you, Silence.”
Baxter had returned to his spot beneath the table. Silence picked him up, placed him on Mrs. Enfield’s lap, then stood.
“Have to go.” He swallowed. “Work to do.”
“Be safe.”
She’d said it with triple-filtered purity. There was no hiding from this intuitive woman the fact that he was in a violent line of work. She didn’t want the responsibility or liability of knowing exactly what it was he did—and he couldn’t blame her—but she’d also quickly grown to care genuinely about him.
It wasn’t a platitude, what she’d said. She meant it. She wanted him to be safe.
“I will,” he said and left.
In his house, he went straight for the kitchen, where he first put Doughty’s gun in a drawer, then moved on to his primary objective: the refrigerator. He grabbed one of the bottles. Cold and heavy, dappled with moisture.
His mind flashed on Mrs. Enfield, the genuine concern she’d just shown him, her vigilance about his drinking.
He would drink this one beer. Only this one.
He glanced to the far end of the house, where the two bedrooms were. Fresh drywall—unfinished and unpainted—framed the left doorway. The wall had just been put back up a couple days earlier, and there was still work to do. Beyond that unfinished wall, in the bedroom, was the object that was going to help him find Lukas Burton.
Silence had known his entire life that his mind space was chaotic, but it wasn’t until this last year that he understood it was a genuine issue. C.C. had pointed this out to him. And she’d given him several techniques with which to help manage the storm of his mind, things like mind mapping, meditation, breathing exercises, self-reflection.
Since her death, since he’d become a literal new man with a new face, a new voice, and a new name, he’d taken C.C.’s teachings even more seriously than he had when she was alive.
And when the Watchers had given him a $50,000 seed with which to begin his new life, he immediately spent half of that on an item that became an extension of C.C.’s teachings, an item that she would have never imagined he would use.
It was in the back of the house, one of the two bedrooms, right across the hall from where he slept.
And he was going to need it if he was going to stop Burton tonight.
Clutching the Heineken, he left the kitchen, crossed the living room, entered the short hallway, and turned into the bedroom on the left.
There it was.
It filled nearly the entire floorspace of the small room. For the technicians to assemble its large pieces, Silence had to hire contractors to tear down then reinstall the wall and doorway.
A massive, white, glossy pod, split in two, hinged in the back. Sleek and smooth. It looked like something from a sci-fi movie, an escape module, or a giant robotic clam that traveled back in time from the future. In its idle state, there was a gap between the two halves, from which came blue fiberoptic lighting, making the entire room glow.
It was an isolation tank. A floating pod.
Otherwise known as a sensory deprivation chamber.
Ten inches of water inside, kept at the skin-receptor-neutral temperature of 93.5 degrees and loaded with eight hundred pounds of Epsom salt, enough to make anyone float. When the door was shut and the light extinguished, things went pitch-black. The combination of the darkness, the floating, and the earplugs created a nearly stimulus-free environment.
Sensory deprivation.
It was the most nothingness one could possibly create for oneself.
And people used this carefully crafted environment to experience the transcendent, the ultimate form of quieting one’s mind.
It had cost him twenty-five grand. It had been here for a week. And he’d yet to use it.
The only other item in the room was a folding chair, leftover from the day the technicians had installed the pod. When they’d left, he’d sat in the chair to stare for a while at his bizarre investment.
Now, he sat in the chair again and ran the cold beer bottle between his palms, staring at the pod as he had the first day.
People would tell him he was crazy for spending half his startup cash on a quirky technique he’d never even tried.
Tanner would have said he was crazy.
His dad would have, too.
But C.C. wouldn’t have.
He twisted the cap off the beer bottle, took a long swig.
Good. Very good.
He’d drink this beer. Then he’d get in the pod.
And find his answer.
Another gulp, this one bringing cold pain to his neck. He rubbed it, remembered how Mrs. Enfield had chastised him for messing with it.
When she’d scolded him, he’d been thinking of the moment Burton had crushed his throat. At that point in time, he hadn’t yet been introduced to the Watchers. He hadn’t received his new name or face.
Nevertheless, that was the precise moment he became a new person.
He’d died then. Figuratively speaking.
And he would have died literally as well had it not been for her, the woman he’d known as Christie Mosley.
She saved his life.
Chapter Forty
The woman calling herself Christie Mosley fidgeted anxiously in her seat as she stared through her binoculars at the windows of Burton’s beach house—the sprawling living room area and the hideous events within.
She’d seen Burton—who she unfortunately knew intimately enough to recognize from a mere silhouette—punch Rowe in the neck, a devastating blow, one so hard that Rowe’s chair flew back.
“They punched him in the freaking throat!” she shouted at the cellular phone on the passenger seat. “The chair tipped over. He’s on his back, and ... oh, shit, he needs help.”
“Hold your position,” Falcon said. He’d lost every trace of his often misplaced whimsy. Now his voice was deadly serious, anger threatening to burst t
o the surface.
The figures converged on the overturned chair. Sharp, fast flashes of movement among the shadow figures.
“They’re kicking him…”
“Listen to me, you hold your damn position!”
“Oh, God, they’re kicking the shit out of him.” She paused. Gave it another moment of consideration. And then said. “I gotta go.”
“Don’t you—”
She pressed the END button, dropped the phone and binoculars on the passenger seat, grabbed her holstered Beretta 92FS, drew the weapon, and bolted out of her car.
Humid, slightly cool air. The sound of waves crashing beyond the house. A screaming seagull.
Across the street. Up the steps to the all-glass front door. She could see all the men clearly now in the living room beyond—Hodges, Gamble, Glover, and Burton converged in a circle, kicking at Rowe. Thin, blue nylon cords tied Rowe to the overturned chair.
If Rowe’s throat injury was as bad as it had appeared through the binoculars, he only had moments left.
She tried the door handle. Locked. Reached into her pocket. As Burton’s “girlfriend,” she’d been afforded a key. She unlocked the door, threw it open.
And started firing.
The men looked up in shock.
Burton managed three words before she squeezed off the first round.
“Christie, what are—”
Her first shot struck Gamble in the forehead. A plume of blood.
Slight reposition. Trigger.
Hodges’s shoulder exploded. He screamed. She squeezed twice more, putting two rounds through his chest. He collapsed a couple feet away from Gamble.
Burton and Glover had crossed the room, running up the floating staircase to the second floor.
She fired three more times, the rounds cracking into the steps, the wall, sending debris clattering into the room.
Instinct and training pulled her after Burton and Glover. For only a split second, not even enough time to move her feet. Because there was a more pressing objective.
She ran to the chair, dropped to her knees.
“Shit!” she screamed and fought the urge to look away.
Rowe was in goddamn horrible shape. She’d seen a lot in the last twelves years of this “job” of hers, but this was the worst. That unassuming, handsome, aww-shucks face that she’d known for the last several months as Pete Hudson, and more recently as Jake Rowe, was simply gone.