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

He took a deep breath. Held it. Closed his eyes.

Nakiri behind him: “What are you stalling for, Suppressor? Hurry your ass up.”

He replaced her voice with C.C.’s.

Feel the moment, love. Don’t reject it. Embrace it.

He opened his eyes. Exhaled. And squeezed the trigger.

Crack!

A small hole appeared in the black part of the target.

Beep.

Nakiri pulled her hand from her pocket. Resting in her glove was the digital stopwatch that Silence hadn’t known she’d brought with her. Her eyebrows raised as she looked at the time.

“Eleven minutes. And only seven rounds.” She looked at the target, shoved the stopwatch back in her pocket, turned away from him. “Those are both records.”

She grinned. Then scowled.

“One good shot doesn’t mean shit, dummy.”

She shrugged the duffel bag off her shoulder and threw it in the snow beside him. And when he just stared back at her, she gave him a little motion with her chin that said, Open it.

Silence brought his dead fingers to the bag and unzipped it.

A large bath towel. Jeans. Multiple shirts. Boots. Multiple pairs of socks. Fresh underwear. A jacket.

He grabbed the towel and dried off, instantly feeling warmer. Then the jeans. With his hands and arms and legs as lifeless as they were, it took nearly as long to get dressed as it had to hit the target. But when he was done, he was warmer, like he’d climbed into a sauna.

Nakiri stepped up to him.

“Now … hit me.”

Silence stared at her.

More of her mind games. He felt his nostrils flare.

Of all the shit she’d put him through, he hated this the most.

“Still can’t hit a woman. You have to be able to do this. Didn’t you ever apprehend women as a cop?”

“Of course.” He swallowed. “Never punched one.”

“Why’s that? Because we’re so pretty and sweet?” She primly placed a hand under her chin, looked up and to the side, batted her eyelashes. “Let me tell you, Suppressor, you’re going to face a lot of awful women in this job. And you’ll have to throw a few punches.”

She gave him a dark look.

“I shouldn’t pass you. You don’t have it, Silence Jones. You weak-minded idiot. Weak, weak, weak. Hell, I should have failed you long ago. You stole my assignment, my ticket out of this life. I should go to Falcon right now and tell him what a worthless sack of shit you are.”

Her chest rose. An exhale whistled out of her nose, puffing a cloud of vapor in the frigid air. She narrowed her eyes.

“I’ve put you through some real hell. Any man in your position, no matter how chivalrous, would knock my lights out. There’s something else holding you back. And I know what it is.”

She stepped closer. A dark smile played on the corners of her mouth. Her eyelids lowered farther, and her gaze deepened. Bedroom eyes.

“This goes back to our first day of training. When I touched you. You have a connection with me now.”

She put her hand on his chest, and he brushed it away roughly.

Another sultry look from her.

“That’s it. We have a bond, don’t we, Silence? That’s why you won’t strike me. And maybe the bond is giving you conflicting thoughts about your girlfriend.”

“Fiancée.”

Nakiri shrugged. “I never saw a ring on her finger. Whatever you want to call her, the thought of Cecilia is sullied now, isn’t it? Because not only did I play with your ding-dong, but I’ve been with you every step of the way during the most difficult time in your life. You’re closer to me than you ever were to her, whether you like it or not.”

She put her hand on his crotch, and he smacked it away again, harder than before, strong enough to make a slap sound that echoed through the trees.

“Cecilia told me her secret,” Nakiri said. “She and Christie Mosley didn’t have too many moments together, but for some reason, your fiancée decided to open up to me one night. A little girl time. She told me she was saving herself for when you two got married. Not your typical born-again virgin, was she? Aren’t they usually the church-going types? Which got me to wondering—maybe it wasn’t even by choice. Maybe you were too dickless to do anything with her.”

She grinned. Then leaned closer, getting on her tiptoes, placing her lips right beside his neck, so close that he felt the heat of her breath on his frozen skin.

“And maybe you’re worried that since you enjoyed how I touched you, then maybe, just maybe, she enjoyed it. Cecilia. I mean, I wasn’t there, but I gotta imagine that those rough-and-tumble guys didn’t just slap her around. You watched the video. Tell me, did they touch her? You know, touch her. Did they rub their big, strong hands all over that tight little born-again body? Oh, yeah, baby. That little gray dress she wore that night.”

She took a step back and smiled up at him, eyes twinkling darker.

“Maybe she even liked being slapped around. The rough stuff. God knows you weren’t man enough to give it to her. All those tough guys feeling her up. Maybe her dying moments were spent living out the sexual fantasies you were never gonna fulfill.”

She smiled wickedly.

“Maybe she just loooooved it.”

Silence felt something in his numbed body, little tingling sensations in his face. Quivering fury.

He slugged her.

Right to the eye socket.

She flew back, head snapping behind her, hair flailing, landing on her back in the snow.

Silence instantly knelt, reached out for her.

She leaned up, groaning, and planted her hands on either side of her. She looked at his outstretched hand, slapped it away.

One of her eyes was pinched shut, the other scowling.

Then she grinned.

“Training complete,” she said.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Training complete.

Nakiri’s words rolled through Silence’s mind as he took another sip of the Heineken and leaned farther back in the metal folding chair, his long legs draped in front of him, feet resting inches from the shiny, curved plastic wall of the pod.

He glanced at his hand, resting