The Suppressor by Erik Carter (good books to read for beginners .txt) 📕

had a point. Jake hesitated.

Odom suddenly dove for the couch, plunging his hands between the cushions, and pulled out a small pistol.

Two guns stashed within feet of each other in the living room. This guy was loaded to the teeth.

Jake lunged at him. Got his hands around his neck. Swung his side into Odom’s arms, getting out of the path of the gun.

Odom tried to maneuver the pistol back around, and Jake swept laterally, clamped his hand on Odom’s wrist, torqued it in the opposite direction. Odom went to the floor as Jake stripped the gun from his hand—a front disarm technique Jake learned at the academy.

One of Odom’s big boots swept at Jake, catching him behind the knee and bringing him to the floor beside him. Jake wrapped his legs around Odom’s waist and rolled them away from Odom’s pistol.

They crashed into Odom’s recliner. Jake was behind Odom, and the Glock weighted Jake’s hand, ready and willing.

But Jake gave a thought to what Odom had said.

It would be a mistake to put a round through Odom’s head in the apartment complex—not just because of the potential of being found out, but also because there could be an errant bullet. Someone else could get hurt.

Or killed.

So instead of shooting Odom, he would strangle him.

Odom’s neck was in the crook of Jake’s elbow, and he gagged as Jake pulsed his bicep. Fingernails dug into Jake’s arms. Odom swung a fist backward like a hammer at Jake’s ribs, missing once, connecting on the second attempt, which nearly stole Jake’s breath.

But Jake had a powerful advantage, and through his taut arm he felt the beginnings of Odom’s death. He felt the man’s panic. His desperation. His dissipating strength.

A recent memory flashed through Jake’s mind. One from only moments earlier: Odom’s sneering face, his gleeful confirmation that he had been one of many who had taken part in ending C.C.’s life, that he’d wanted to sexually assault her as well.

No, strangling Odom wouldn’t suffice.

Jake jerked his arm hard to the side.

Crack!

Broken neck.

Panting, Jake rolled off him, his head coming to rest on the matted carpet next to the coffee table. For a few moments, he remained like this, breathing hard and looking up at the popcorn texture of the ceiling.

Then he got to his knees. And looked down at Odom.

Eyes open. Tongue hanging from his mouth, onto his scraggly, disgusting beard.

Jake flipped his notebook to the list and crossed off another name.

Cobb

Gamble

Hodges

Knox

McBride

Odom

Glover

Burton

The pencil stayed on the page for a moment as he looked at the list.

Two down; six to go.

He stood, went to the bedroom in the back, a room just as shitty as the living room. The bed was unmade, its tussled bedding faded and old. There was the sour smell of body odor.

To the closet. Where he knew Odom would have a stash of weapons.

Odom didn’t disappoint.

On the closet floor was a steel weapons case. The numerically-coded lock was unlatched. He tipped its door open and found a small arsenal.

Plenty of the items could be helpful for what Jake’s mission, but there was only object item he was searching for.

A suppressor.

There were several in the case. Most of them were shit, some of them even homemade-looking. But he found a decent one. Tested the threading. It fit.

He started to close the case. And stopped.

A blackjack baton. About eight inches long with a flexible, braided leather handle and a battered, black-painted, lead bulb on the end.

Jake picked it up.

Blackjacks had been outlawed in his department for some time—before he joined—but he learned about them during his training. It was a brutal weapon used in close-quarters combat. The weighted end was effective at knocking people out.

They were also known to split open scalps.

He thought of C.C.’s destroyed face.

The lead bulb at the end of Odom’s blackjack was covered with blackened blood, not quite dry, still sticky.

Jake nearly dropped it before he tightened his grip around the leather handle.

He hurled it across the room.

The weighted end impaled the wall, fissures in the drywall. The handle quivered.

He left the bedroom, and as he walked past Odom’s body, he held up the suppressor.

Thanks for the tip, he thought as he shoved it in his back pocket and left.

Screams. Lots of screams.

And panicked people funneling around Jake from both sides, going for the exit.

Old Reno tavern was as divey of a dive bar as Jake had ever seen. Flickering neon beer signs lit the gloom, which smelled like cigarette smoke and perspiration and desperation.

The patrons flooded around him in a panic he’d created when he walked in and fired a round into the floor. Even the bartender, who seemed the type who would unflinchingly poke a deadbeat’s eyeballs out, had run away.

The only person who remained stationary was the man sitting at the bar, staring at Jake with wide eyes, a beer bottle in front of him. Shaking. A fat, redheaded slob with tattoos.

McBride.

As the last of the bar’s patrons pushed past Jake, he approached McBride.

The man’s curly red hair poked out the bottom of a beanie, from which a drop of sweat rolled out, over his forehead, down his round nose. His hand was six inches from the beer bottle. Tattoos on his knuckles. Shaking.

“Oh, shit … Oh, shit…”

Jake could just hear a faint melody. Sad music. A doleful Bill Withers song. He didn’t need any extra sadness. He considered putting a round through the jukebox, then also considered how hillbilly that would look. Shootin’ the jukebox. He let it be.

A revolver stuck out of the back of McBride’s jeans, right by his exposed, sweaty ass crack. Jake grabbed the gun. A Smith & Wesson. He tossed it over the bar.

The notebook was already turned to the correct note when Jake pulled it from his back pocket. He slapped it on the bar in a puddle of water and booze.

The list. Cobb’s and Odom’s names crossed off.

Cobb

Gamble

Hodges

Knox

McBride

Odom

Glover

Burton

Jake tapped his finger next to McBride.

McBride shook harder. “Come on, Pete. Please. I was just doing what Burton