Read Online Silencer by James W. Hall - Free Book Online Page B

’Cause that’s what I see. Scribble down this bid, that bid. A hundred here, a hundred there. Paying our room and board from taking those hunters out to shoot big dumb animals. Just scraping by.”
    â€œKeep him where?”
    â€œThe pit,” Jonah said.
    â€œThe pit?”
    â€œPlace I found near the cabin, back in the second pasture. I told you about it. I cut a hatch in the wood cover to see what was down there, you know that place.”
    â€œPut him in the pit.”
    â€œYeah, dump him down there, we can interrogate the guy to our heart’s content. Our own private Guantanamo.”
    The voice on the GPS told them to turn right in two hundred feet. Moses slowed the Prius, made the turn, heading up a dark bumpy road.
    â€œSay yes, Moses. Come on. You know it’s a good idea.”
    There were a dozen cars parked along the shoulder. Junkers and a few nicer models, a couple of pickups, some Harleys.
    Ahead about a hundred yards the night was lit up. There was the thump of a heavy bass, rock music, loud speakers, a band maybe.
    â€œSomebody’s having a party,” Moses said.
    â€œThought this guy was a hermit, just him and the girl out in the woods.”
    â€œApparently hermits have parties.”
    â€œYour destination is in one hundred feet,” said the GPS. “This could be a very dumb idea,” Moses said. “This could come back to bite us in the nutsack.”
    â€œYou have arrived at your destination,” the GPS woman said.
    â€œWe’ve arrived,” Jonah said, grinning, and put his fist up for a bump.
    Moses shook his head one more time.
    Then he raised his fist and went knuckle to knuckle with his kid brother.

SEVEN
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    THORN WAS DUMPING ICE FROM plastic bags into the washtub where the last of the Red Stripe bobbed in tepid water. He was in the kitchen next to the tile-covered island where all the chips and dips and carrots and celery and burgers and buns and fried grouper fingers and shrimp and fish tacos and condiments had been set out neatly a few hours ago. Now the kitchen was in disarray. Since sunset dozens of people had wandered in and out, helping themselves to food and drink—not many neat freaks among them. Friends, and friends of friends, and complete strangers who heard about the party on Key Largo’s coconut telegraph.
    Thorn was an hour past tipsy. The walls were not yet rotating, the floor was still solid beneath his feet, but there was a wavery blur at the edge of his vision, and he was no longer capable of complex sentence structures. Not that they were ever his forte.
    Outside, next to the lagoon, in the golden glow from a dozen mosquito torches, Rusty was doing a courtly waltz with Sugarman. Three guys were swaying around them like moths worshipping a flame. This was Rusty Stabler’s Circe routine, turning a lot of reasonably intelligent males into snorting goofballs. Everyone was smiling. Good for her. Good for Rusty.
    An hour earlier, Thorn had stepped up onto a chair and clinked his beer bottle with a spoon, and when the rabble quieted down, he toasted Rusty’s incredible smarts and good looks and good humor and good everything else he could think of. A long list of fine attributes.
    It went over well, with people interrupting, making fun of him, making fun of the idea of a toast, making fun of his speaking publicly in the first place. Everyone laughed a lot, and Thorn finished the toast to a wild cheer and whistling. Rusty came over to him and gave him a full-frontal wet kiss, and there was more hooting and poking fun at Thorn for the public display of affection, for being sentimental, and for being happier than anybody had seen him in quite a while. Thorn had been toying with the idea of making a public marriage proposal, getting down on one knee. He had the two-carat diamond solitaire ring in his pocket, something Kate Truman, his adoptive mother, had left him. It was there just in case he