by Erik Carter
No, the man was near. Hidden. Getting closer. Somewhere, moving through the angles of concrete, snaking through the shadows.
Walter knew this because he knew who the man was.
A man of myth among the criminal element.
Some people called him the Shadow. Others, the Quiet Man or Quiet Death. Walter had even heard him referred to as The Suppressor, both a clever play on his supposed persona and one of the ways in which he was said to dispose of his prey—a silenced pistol.
He’d heard rumors of the man appearing in Miami and Ocala and the Keys and the Panhandle. All over Florida. It had seemed to Walter and many of his associates that the man was some sort of vigilante protector of the Sunshine State.
But then a friend of his in Lincoln, Nebraska, of all places, shared a story. Gus sounded terrified when he told Walter that a group of pervs in his city were found dead in a motel room, all with two bullet holes in their foreheads. Their toy for the evening had been safely returned to her parents.
In the wake of the attack, the lowlifes of Lincoln had converged, compared their experiences. The collective conclusion was that a man had been snooping around the city, asking questions, breaking arms. A tall man. Pure muscle—not bulging but taught, hard. Dark, chiseled features. Cold eyes.
And those who were left alived reported that the man did very little speaking; he simply told them to, “Talk.”
Talk. That’s what the Florida legend was famously rumored to say! He wouldn’t scream at you. He wouldn’t throw a thousand questions at you to confuse you. He would simply say, “Talk.”
And when he said that word, it came out through a horribly rough, deep, inhuman voice.
What did that mean, then, that Florida’s killing shadow was also working in Nebraska? Could it simply be a case of blind, stupid regionalism that led people like Walter to believe the man was operating solely in Florida? Or could the man be tormenting the underworld of the whole country? The entire world?
No. No, that was crazy. All of it. Utter lunacy.
A man with a demon voice hunting down murderers and rapists and drug bosses? Come on.
Walter wasn’t thinking right. There was no vigilante killer in Nebraska or Florida. There was no Shadow. No Quiet Man. No Suppressor.
Whoever was out there in the shadows wanted him dead. That was for sure. But he wasn’t the boogeyman.
If Walter was going to make it out of this alive, he had to get his head on straight. And he had to walk straight as well, which was a challenge given the state of his ankle.
He put his hand on it, grimaced. Just the slightest touch, that’s all it took to send ripples of electric pain up his calf. When he’d sprinted out of the alley and into the construction site, momentarily escaping the big man, he’d made a beeline for a room in the back corner, which was small and dark and seemed like the perfect place to lay low.
What he hadn’t noticed were the rectangular cutouts in the concrete floor, future homes for heating and air conditioning components, assumedly. His shoe had caught in one, twisting his foot back and to the side. Walter had let out a scream that echoed off the empty corridors.
He’d limped through the labyrinth of walls for a minute or two after that, not going to the room he’d originally spotted, thinking that his scream might have alerted his pursuer to his destination.
Instead, he’d taken a circuitous path through hallways and empty doorways, up and down half flights of steps, dodging construction debris, until finally he could stand the pain no more and turned the corner into the next available room, which must have been a future closet or perhaps a tiny, windowless office for some menial, low-level employee. He’d collapsed against the wall, sliding down to his ass, taking the pressure off his ankle.
The room was too damn bright. There was an exterior window opening across the hall, and a golden rectangle of light spilled onto the floor beside Walter. After cramming himself into the corner, he was still barely outside the glow.
And that’s where he’d sat, semi-immobilized, trying to control his breaths, frightening himself with tales of ghosts and goblins.
All of this was Constantino’s fault. Damn him. Had Walter not gotten involved with the guy, had Walter simply kept his perversions to himself, had he continued his time-tested techniques of working alone, grabbing his own targets from schools and playgrounds and shopping malls far from where he lived, then none of this would have happened.
But Walter had gotten greedy. He’d broken his own rules, opened his big mouth. And that had led him to Constantino and his promise of a never-ending supply of treats.
Stupid! How could he have been so stupid? He’d had a good thing going. But now some cold-looking monster of a man was hunting him through a construction site. And Walter was hobbled. And unarmed.
He leaned his ear closer to the doorway.
And heard something. A slight scratching sound.
A rat? Or debris moving in the slight breeze that twisted languidly through the tunnels and holes of the structure?
Walter’s mind flashed on the myth again. The Quiet Man. The Suppressor. The rational assurances he’d given himself a moment earlier vanished, and fear and superstition returned.
A few more of the scratching sounds. Closer. The cadence of footsteps.
Oh god. He was there. Just outside the room. Yes, he was, and—
A flurry of motion. Pressure on his shoulders. A wave of pain shuddered through his body from his ankle. A shift in his stomach, and he was upright. Another wave of pain as his back slapped against the wall.
The man was before him.
At about six-foot-three, he towered over Walter. He had sharp, attractive features. Dark hair. Dark clothes, too—jacket, button-up shirt, chinos. Eyes of death.
It was him. God, it was him.
How? How had the man gotten him off the floor? Walter wasn’t very tall, but he weighed nearly two hundred pounds. Yet the man had yanked him up like a sack of groceries. The strength coming out of the man’s fingers, pulsing into Walter’s shoulders, was palpable.
The man swung his hands away and patted Walter down with machine precision and speed, so fast that when it was over, it took a moment for Walter to realize what had happened.
Finding Walter weaponless, the man took a couple steps back, putting a few feet between them. He reached under his jacket and took out a pistol. Another flourish beneath the jacket, and he produced a silencer.
A suppressor…
The silencer joined the gun’s barrel with the same speed as everything else the man had done, and in a blink the man now held the suppressed, lengthened pistol at his side.
Walter started to cry. He tried speaking, but his lips only sputtered. Popping sounds came from the back of his throat.
Warmth. On his left thigh. Spreading. He’d pissed himself. Oh, Jesus, he’d pissed himself.
The man stared at him, into him. Face not even twitching. A long moment.
Then he said, “Talk.”
It was him.
The voice. When he’d said that one word, Talk, it perfectly matched the legendary descriptions. Deep, dark. Crackling and torn. Painful-sounding, even.
Demonic.
Walter tried to reply. No words, just the popping sounds again.
He swallowed. Cleared this throat. Tried again.
If he couldn’t force himself to speak, this monster was going to kill him.
“I … I can give you the man you’re looking for. All the guys you’ve killed, they … they’re all connected to Jimmy Constantino. Over in Spring Hill. 1813 Elledge Boulevard. It’s a storage facility. He owns the place. Pedos, man. You want it, Jimmy’ll get it. That’s all I know. I swear!”
He’d spilled it all. He’d ratted out Constantino. That should be enough to get him out of this situation.
The man didn’t react. No nod. No shimmer across the eyes that showed a processing of the information. For the longest time, he didn’t even blink. Just continued to stare at Walter.
>
With the gun hanging at his side.
Walter’s lips trembled as he eyed the gun. The urine on his thigh grew cold.
He looked the man in the eye.
“Dude, I’m telling you, that’s all I know!”
But what did he know, the killer man standing in front of him, looking at him so coldly?
Did the man know about Walter’s adventures? Did he know about the eight-year-old, the one who started it all when Walter still lived in North Carolina? Did he know about the girl Constantino had gotten him just two weeks ago, the little blonde whose parents never locked her window?
Things suddenly grew quieter. The soft sound of the highway in the distance. Water dripping somewhere in a nearby room.
Walter couldn’t take it. “I talked! You told me to talk, and I did!”
Finally, the blank expression on the man’s face broke. A slight, dark grin appeared at the corners of his mouth. His lips parted, as though he had something else to say.
The man was going to speak again? No, this wasn’t supposed to happen. He’d already said his word, his single word. Talk.
Yet he was about to say something else…
Walter inched away, cramming himself into the wall. “I talked!”
The man slowly raised his free hand, leaving the pistol dangling on the other side of his body.
“I talked, goddamnit! What do you want from me?”
The hand continued upward, to the man’s face. A finger extended over his lips.
And the man didn’t speak. What came out of his mouth was just a sound, not a word.
“Shhhhhh…” the man said.
He raised his gun.
And fired.
FREE Silence Jones Book
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In the FREE introductory novella, Book 0, Deadly Silence (available exclusively via the Erik Carter Readers Group mailing list), Silence Jones’s current assignment bears a strong resemblance to events in his past. To stop a gang of murderous arsons, Silence will have to look deep into his history as Jake Rowe, to the events that took place in New Orleans.
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Also by Erik Carter
Dale Conley Action Thrillers Series
Get Down (introductory novella)
Stone Groove
Dream On
The Lowdown
Get Real
Talkin’ Jive
Be Still
Jump Back
The Skinny
No Fake
Silence Jones Action Thrillers Series
Deadly Silence (introductory novella)
The Suppressor
Hush Hush
Tight-Lipped
Acknowledgments
For their involvement with The Suppressor, I would like to give a sincere thank you to:
My ARC readers, for providing reviews and catching typos. Thanks!
Aunt Amy, for medical expertise.
Ricky Cardenas, for some amazing editing polish on the first chapter.
April Snellings, for even more editing polish on Chapter 1.
Dad, for a bit of technical information.
J, for name insight.