by Erik Carter
“You’ll have to use your memory in the field, dummy. That’s what they used to call people who can’t talk—dummy. You’re gonna be my little dummy for the next three weeks. Now … eight-zero-six-four-five-four-one-six-two-nine.”
“Eight-zero-four—”
“Wrong!”
She went to squeeze the shoulder again but stopped yourself short, the tiniest shimmer of sympathy crossing her eyes. A cold smile formed on her lips, and she removed her hand.
“To be continued.”
Silence’s entire body quaked. His flesh was cold and wet. He sensed his wrists, looked, and saw angry red lines from the plastic ties.
Nakiri looked him over, from top to bottom.
“Let’s keep things brief today. It’s late, and it’s your first day. Only two lessons. We’ll come back to lesson one momentarily. Moving on to lesson two.”
She traced the back of her hand along his cheek, a tickling sensation that ran across his scruff beard. Her skin was softer than he would have thought, her fingers smaller, delicate even.
He tilted away.
What the hell was she up to?
“Falcon tells me you’ve only been out of sedation for a few brief moments before tonight,” she said. “To you, it must seem like yesterday that Cecilia died, hmm?”
Silence nodded.
“An Asset with an open-ended romantic connection.” She tsked. “Now, we can’t have that.” Her gray eyes locked in on him. “With that voice of yours, you’ll never go undercover. Unlike me. Do you know how many times I had sex with Burton? How disgusting it was? How many times before Burton I’ve had to put myself in situations like that? It’s different as a woman, even as an Asset.
“You and me—we need to clear any sexual tension at the beginning of this journey we’re about to share. We’re gonna be working closely together. Touching. And, believe me, there’s always sexual tension, no matter how devoted a person is. You’ll be interacting with other non-Cecilia women in the field. I need to know that you won’t cower away from a woman’s touch.”
Her hand moved.
Oh.
Now Silence understood what was happening.
Her fingers traced down his neck, tickling even more, prickling his skin, over his chest, pausing to run her finger under the collar of his gown, down his side, past his waist.
She took hold of him.
And Silence knew he was learning a lesson right now, just not the lesson Nakiri intended. If he really was going to be in situations with “touch,” as she called it, he would need to use his mind and his memories to disappear.
And remain faithful.
Because what Nakiri didn’t understand was that Silence’s attachment to C.C. wasn’t because she’d recently passed. He’d promised himself to her. For life. And he meant it.
C.C. taught him how to use his mind, and he would use his mind to escape this.
Surprisingly, this situation he was in with Nakiri had triggered a memory. He would use it.
He thought of C.C.
And he was gone.
Months earlier.
The beach.
It was early spring, so the sun was warm, but the humidity wasn’t stifling. A pleasant breeze rolled off the water. Locals and off-season tourists stretched on towels and splashed in the waves. Pleasant conversations. The smell of suntan lotion clouded the air. The white sand was an endless carpet before them, lined with condo towers and beaches, stretching to the horizon, where it disappeared beneath a brilliant blue sky.
“I’ll be happy when you can get rid of those contacts,” she said, pointing at his sunglasses. I like your real eyes a lot better. The real you.”
He’d taken the lenses out for her a couple times during private moments.
“The ‘real me’ includes this.” He poked the hideous brown blob on the corner of his jaw.
She swatted him. “Stop it. I like everything about you.”
“Even the mole?”
“Even the mole. Even your lame jokes.”
He took her hand and brought her to a halt. She spun on him, her polka dot sundress twirling.
For a moment he hesitated, but then a bigger part of him took control.
“How would you like to have the brown eyes and the mole and the lame jokes all the time?”
He reached into his pocket, grabbed the small ring, and got on a knee.
“Will you marry me?”
Her mouth opened. No words came out. Just a vigorous nod and a tear that escaped the bottom of her sunglasses.
Jake smiled and slid the ring onto her finger. He stood, put his hands on her waist, his forehead against hers.
Applause.
Jake turned.
People on the beach-towel-draped balconies of the condo tower beside them had seen it all. Cheers, whistles, commotion.
Jake and C.C. waved back.
He took her hand and examined the ring, a carved piece of brown-and-tan shell.
“Hope it fits,” he said. “I got it from that surf shop back there.”
He pointed to a small building past the condos, next to a pizza joint.
She twisted the ring around her finger.
“It’s a little loose, love.”
He turned in the opposite direction. “Then let’s exchange it. Come on.”
She didn’t budge, shook her head. “No. I’ll just add some masking tape or something.”
“It’s only temporary,” Jake said. “Until we get everything here wrapped up. I mean, it was only a couple bucks. I’ll get you a real ring some day soon.”
Her stare had stayed fixed on her hand as he spoke. She ran a finger along the ring. “Please don’t. This works for me.”
He smiled. “I know it does.”
The crown of Jake’s head had burnt. He should have applied more suntan lotion.
It was dark. They’d spent the entire day at the beach. That week had been a particularly stressful one in their combined efforts of working with the police department to put an end to her brother’s brutalities. They’d needed sand therapy, and Pensacola Beach had generously provided some.
There were no more condos or surf shops or beach bars. They were at the undisturbed, natural beach of the national seashore. Entirely alone.
Moonlight shone off gentle waves that lapped a few feet in front of them where they sat at the edge of the surf, right where wet sand met dry sand.
They’d chatted for over an hour about everything and anything and nothing before reaching a point of silence.
Finally, Jake spoke again. “You know, I’ve always found it interesting, how your life relates to the rest of your family.”
She shifted toward him, pulling her knees tighter to her chest. “How do you mean?”
He shrugged. “I mean, you’re so peaceful and into such thoughtful, esoteric topics, but all those hours in the library are contingent on the safety provided by your family’s violence.”
She looked back at him. Blinked. Readjusted the arms wrapped around her knees. Then looked to the sea. “Maybe I’ve been sheltered. Maybe I live in arrested development. But I used my privilege to expand my mind. To make a difference in the world, one must first take care of oneself.”
Her eyes narrowed, as though scanning the dark horizon for a distant ship.
Jake considered filling the quiet moment. But didn’t.
“And one must always take advantage of one’s opportunities,” C.C. said. “It’s wrong not to. I’m playing the hand I was dealt. I could get some normal job, be another cog in the wheel. An opportunity was provided to me, and I capitalized on it to have the sort of life I want. If that makes you uncomfortable, I don’t give a damn.”
Oh, shit.
Anger looked improper on the ideal lines of C.C.’s face. Jake had managed to piss her off for the first time on the same day he’d proposed.
His mind space was so chaotic that when he got to talking, sometimes words just spilled out. Stupid words, often enough. Regrettable words
.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really, I didn’t—”
She smiled. “Shhhh. I know you’re sorry. I can see it. That’s one of the things that I love about you: your sincerity.”
Jake ran a hand through his hair, his chin lowering. “Oh, man, I really screwed this up, haven’t I? On the day I gave you your little shell ring.”
In reply, she kissed him.
She moved herself onto him, fingers pressing hard into his back, her breasts squeezed against him through her thin sundress, nipples hard. They tangled for a few moments. Then her hand went below his waist, grabbed him.
He took her wrist, stopped it, and pulled away from the kiss.
“Whoa, now! Easy, tiger. What happened to waiting till we got married?”
She smirked, a coy twinkle in her eyes. “Well, aren’t we presumptuous, Mr. Rowe? I’m not going back on what I said. I’m a woman of my word.” A purposeful bat of the eyelashes. “Just relax, love. Let go.”
A half hour later.
They lay against a sand ridge, facing the water, the star-speckled sky, both fully clothed, both covered in a sheen of sweat.
She was on his chest, hand on his shoulder. His heartbeat was finally slowing to a normal rate.
The sea had gone quiet. The rhythmic hum of the waves coaxed his eyelids closed.
“Just a little preview,” C.C. said without leaving his chest. “Something to tide us over until the real thing. Okay?”
Jake tried to reply. He opened his mouth, but all he accomplished was a stupid smile.
C.C. lifted off his chest and looked down at him. She grinned.
“I guess there’s one way to shut you up.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
The place smelled like shit, like literal feces.
Burton was good at faking smiles, but he had to work extra hard to keep a pleasant look on his face as he traveled down the long, supposedly sterile corridor, which was built wide to accommodate wheelchairs and had stainless-steel railings along the walls. At the far end of the hall was a fish tank and beside it a little table with an arrangement of dusty silk flowers and a mound of easy-to-digest cookies. The floor had been recently polished, but the pungent odor of industrial-strength cleaner did little to cut through the scent of shit wafting out of the rooms.
Burton always looked to the future, constantly searching the horizon for the next great opportunity. If his life could be summed up in a single phrase, it would be Keep moving forward.
Forward, forward, forward.
Progress, progress, progress.
But this place, which he’d visited three times now in the last several years, always brought a sobering set of opposing realities to his grand vision. Ultimately, places like this were endpoints of forward momentum. The future held decay and death. It was inevitable. If he kept pushing onward, was he only shortening the time he had left before he, too, was rotting in a chair in a room in a shit-smelling tomb of a building?
He shoved the thought from his mind.
A nurse approached from the opposite side of the hallway, pushing a wheelchair that held a hunched, living corpse with pallid-gray skin riddled with imperfections and moles and sores. Cataract-ridden blue eyes looked up at Burton. There was a smile.
Burton forced his own smile broader, managed a nod, and turned into the room.
It was a narrow space full of white. White walls, a white drop tile ceiling, and white furnishings. A small TV sat atop a white set of drawers, and there was a pair of chairs beside the adjustable hospital bed.
Joseph Farone had been a small man his entire life, but his station had made him appear larger than he really was. Now that Mother Nature had stolen that station, he looked his size. Tiny. And even more frail now with his degrading mental health affecting his physical health. He was the picture of a little old Italian man in the same way that his daughter was the quintessential cute Italian chick. He had a kind old face with a big nose, wrinkled skin that had darkened with age. A shock of white hair, slightly thin on top, spiky and worn combed-back.
His eyes were clearer than the creature Burton had just seen in the hallway. Bright blue eyes. Crisp. They had the same stern but sparkling quality that Burton remembered from so many years ago, eyes that had seen promise in the teenage version of Burton, which had led Joseph to take Burton in, include him in the family, and give him a better life.
Still, Joseph’s rapidly progressive dementia was growing steadily more rapid. It had been six weeks since Burton had visited, and those bright eyes looked even more lost in confusion than when he’d last seen them. Gone.
Burton pulled a chair closer to the bed.
The gleaming blue eyes looked up at him. Joseph smiled, not like a father but like a young child, like a dog expecting a pat to the head.
“How you doing, old man?”
Joseph didn’t reply, only smiled broader, dumbly from his position propped up by a pair of pillows.
“I know it’s been a long time since I’ve visited, and I apologize for that. I’ve been a busy bee. You’re gonna be so proud. I’ve taken over your entire operation. Can you believe that? And I’ve already transformed things. No more of the petty mafia shit. Drugs, extortion, protection rackets. How antiquated. The twenty-first century is almost here. I’ve contemporized the operation, gotten more done in a couple months than you accomplished in decades. Pretty impressive, huh?”
Joseph smiled at him. He reached for the nightstand, grabbed a tiny canvas with a few scratches of paint, held it for Burton to see.
Burton glanced at it. “You made this, old man?”
Joseph smiled, patted his chest.
“Me,” Joseph said in his disproportionately deep and booming voice, which sounded scratchier than the last time Burton had heard it.
“I see,” Burton said and took the small painting, looked down upon it. “Joseph ‘Joey’ ‘The Jaguar’ Farone, painting with all the skill and vigor of a two-year-old.”
Joseph laughed then.
Burton joined him in the laugh, which made Joseph laugh even louder and more enthusiastically.
Burton put his hand on the old man’s tiny shoulder, squeezed, leaning over him as he laughed.
“Whew!” Burton said, wiping away an invisible tear. “Funny stuff, huh? Want to know something else that’s funny? I killed your son and daughter.”
Joseph continued to laugh. He pointed to his painting.
Burton laughed louder. “They died like the two clowns they were.”
Joseph’s laughter died off, and he looked at Burton, confused.
“Like clowns,” Burton repeated.
This brought a smile to the old man’s lips.
“Oh, you like clowns, do you?”
Joseph laughed again. Burton joined him.
“I couldn’t catch your other son, though,” Burton said between laughs. “I like to think you favored Pete Hudson because you were loony by the time you met him, but the truth is, I don’t blame you either way. I mean, Cecilia certainly favored him over me.”
He chuckled. Joseph joined him.
“You took me in when no one else would. You were a father to me. But this son could never impress you, could he? I was never enough. Not even as impressive as a random car thief that showed up a few months ago.”
Burton was no longer laughing. He reached behind the old man, took him by the shoulders, and pulled him away from the bed while he grabbed one of the two pillows.
“I’ve nearly wiped out the entire Farone crime family,” Burton said. “There’s only one member left.”
He put the pillow on Joseph’s face. Pressed down.
Joseph struggled. Minuscule strength pushing back against Burton’s hand. Just as weak as he looked.
It only took a few moments.
Burton removed the pillow.
Joseph’s eyes and mouth were open, face tilted to the side. Burton pulled the tiny body away from the bed and put the pillow back behind him, turned his face toward the ceiling
. He brushed Joseph’s eyelids closed.
Something tickled Burton’s cheek, and he wiped it away, rubbed it out of existence, his momentary weakness.
He pushed the call button on the bed’s hand railing.
Waited.
And looked at the body.
There had been a single tear. That was all he needed. He’d already erased it. He was fine now.
Footsteps behind him. He turned.
A rotund nurse entered the room. “Is there something I can—”
“Hurry!” Burton said, waving frantically. “He stopped breathing! Please hurry!”
She rushed past him. “Oh my goodness, Mr. Farone!”
She pressed another button. An alarm blared. She looked at Burton. “You need to leave. I’m sorry.”
He nodded solemnly.
Three more personnel rushed into the room, and he stepped out of their way, pressing himself against the side of the wardrobe by the door.
A final look into the room. Six people crowded over the Jaguar’s bed. Shouting at each other. One of the nurses performed CPR. Burton caught brief glimpses of the old man in the small gaps in the action.
Then he turned the corner and entered the hallway.
Yes, he’d shed a tear for dear ol’ Father.
Now it was time to celebrate.
He was free of the old man’s presence. Unworthiness no longer tainted Burton. He’d been purified, and now he was ready to proceed. Onward to the future.
Forward movement.
Progress.
He smiled.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Nakiri, the woman who had been calling herself Christie Mosley, looked at this man lying in the hospital bed before her, the man who had been calling himself Pete Hudson, who had actually been Jake Rowe, who was now calling himself Silence Jones, to whom Falcon had given the codename Suppressor.
And he disgusted her.
What the hell was Falcon thinking bringing in a thirty-something-year-old inexperienced local cop as an Asset, knowing there was less than a month to train him?
Foolishness.
Falcon was a good man and a good Prefect, but he often made reckless choices that aligned with his cavalier, smartass, goofy-uncle attitude. Someday, one of his off-the-cuff decisions like this was going to get somebody killed.
