Unspoken (Silence Jones Action Thrillers Series Book 13), page 1
UNSPOKEN
ERIK CARTER
Copyright © 2024 by Erik Carter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
CONTENTS
Author Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
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Acknowledgments
AUTHOR NOTE
If you enjoy the book you’re about to read and would like to check out a different take on the same core story, check out my novel, No Fake, an action thriller in one of my other series.
I adapted No Fake as the basis for Unspoken, so as an introduction to my other series—the Dale Conley series—you might enjoy seeing a different take on the story and checking out the similarities and differences between Unspoken and No Fake.
If you enjoy the Silence Jones series, I’m certain you’ll love the Dale Conley series as well. It’s set in the groovy ’70s and features a headstrong, cocky, yet competent hero who travels the country solving history-related crimes.
CHAPTER ONE
St. Augustine, Florida
The 1990s
Archie Kovacs didn’t know where the hell he was.
No clue.
All he knew was that it was dark, and his head hurt like hell. Pulsing. White-hot.
His next observation was a feeling of heaviness permeating his entire body. His limbs felt leaden, immobile. It was as though the awful waves of pain surging out of his temple were washing away the strength from the rest of his body.
He didn’t know the origin of his head wound—as clueless about this as he was about his location.
Despite the awful pain, his attention was quickly diverted back to the initial question that had formed the moment his eyes blinked open, a question that was so much more pressing.
Where the hell am I?
He was lying down, indoors, in a room. That much was evident. The room was small; he felt the presence of walls close by.
As the fog in his throbbing mind began to clear, Archie tried to piece together what had happened, searching his memory. What was the last thing he remembered? Driving on the highway. Yes. A1A, going south, he’d been—
No.
No, there was a more recent memory than that, coming back to him in segments, strobe light images of himself in a nighttime environment, brightly lit with exterior lighting, boots crunching against blacktop, trying to be quiet, to move silently.
He’d been investigating… yes, his latest investigation. He’d hopped the fence, cleared the razor wire, evaded the security cameras. He’d been outside the StashPoint storage facility.
Then there had been men, two of them… not the armed guard he’d already evaded—he’d also dodged a vicious dog, he recalled.
No, these other two men hadn’t worn a cheap rent-a-cop security guard outfit like the first one. They’d been dressed in suits.
Archie blinked, grimaced. The pain throbbed. His eyes adjusted, taking in more details. Corrugated walls. Concrete floor. The room was dimly lit, just a bit of light filtering in from somewhere.
Wait…
Corrugated walls, concrete, a tight space.
He was inside StashPoint!
The two men had dragged his unconscious body inside and locked him in one of the storage units…
That’s what brought everything back.
He remembered.
StashPoint storage facility. Two men in suits. The first one, a husky white guy with a buzzcut, had tackled him. Archie had taken a brutal hit to the head when he fell. That explained the throbbing pain.
In his woozy state, moments away from passing out, Archie had heard the second suited man—a black guy with an athletic build—chide the other one.
“Dammit, Landers,” the second man had hissed. He had a deep voice, resonant. “This guy could be a cop for all we know. Why the hell did you knock his ass out?”
“I didn’t mean to!” the white guy had said. His voice was nasally and surprisingly high-pitched for someone his size. “We fell, and he whacked his head.”
“Shit!” the black guy had said. A long pause, “I’ll need to call Crane. If this ends up…”
The memory ended there. That must’ve been when Archie entirely lost consciousness.
All of this meant one thing: Archie was now a prisoner.
Archie jolted. Again he sensed his motionless arms. But now he realized they weren’t useless dead weight—paralyzed by the head wound—like he’d thought. No. There was pressure against his arms, holding them down.
He squinted, forcing his eyes to focus, dipping his chin to look down the length of his body. Thick straps pinned him. One across his arms and chest, another over his stomach, and another digging into his thighs. He was strapped down, not paralyzed.
His breathing quickened.
They’d strapped him down to a gurney and locked him in a room.
Yes, he really was a prisoner.
Oh, shit. Oh, shit…
He shifted his head, testing the limits of his restraints. The gurney’s metal frame creaked under his slight movement, echoing in the small, metallic space.
Then there were voices from beyond the dim light source—two of them. The same voices from earlier. The suited men. Hushed, urgent voices.
“Did you call?”
“Yes, and he’s pissed. He thinks that…”
The voices faded along with footsteps as the men paced farther away in what must have been a hallway outside the light source.
Then Archie recognized the source of the light by its shape—rectangular. A thin line of yellowish glow, turning at ninety-degree corners. An outline of a closed door. He was inside a dimly lit storage unit, but there was brighter light beyond—the hallway, of course.
A door…
His escape.
If only he could free himself from the straps.
Desperation surged through him, melding with the pain, as he tested the straps, trying to find any slack, any bit of give.
The gurney creaked loudly, the noise echoing against the corrugated metal walls.
Archie froze.
Listened intently, his breath shallow, rapid.
Nothing. Just quiet. No footsteps, no voices.
He tried again, tugging harder this time. The strap across his chest held firm, but the one over his arms… there was a hint of movement.
He seized on that tiny bit of hope, twisting his wrist and pulling with all his strength. The gurney rocked, the metal frame groaning under the strain, louder.
Archie paused, his heart thudding in his chest, listening for any sign of his captors. Still nothing.
He gritted his teeth and pushed harder, feeling the strap begin to loosen just slightly.
Yes!
He flexed his fingers and lifted his forearm. There was a good two inches of clearance, enough room he could work with if he just pulled the arm slightly farther outward.
He swung the arm in the limited bit of free space he had, and the gurney jolted.
Bam!
The corner slammed into the wall with a deafening clank. The sound reverberated through the metal structure
Archie stopped.
Listened.
Footsteps. Outside. Fast and heavy…
…and coming right toward him.
CHAPTER TWO
Silence Jones wasn’t afraid of a little hard work.
But everyone has a task they despise.
And Silence loathed painting.
He stood on the stepladder, paintbrush in hand, glowering at the half-finished living room wall. The smell of fresh latex paint hung heavy in the air, mingling with the musty scent of Mrs. Enfield’s century-old home.
Silence felt a twinge of irritation as he surveyed the work. Mrs. Enfield had asked him to paint this one portion of the room even though the rest of her creepy old Victorian house was covered in antique wallpaper. Why the hell did this particular area need to be painted when wallpaper would have matched the rest of the house’s aesthetic perfectly?
And why did a blind woman care so much about her walls’ visual appeal?
He loved the old woman—his sightless, sweet, and all-alone next-door neighbor—really he did, but at that moment, his mind couldn’t think of a single thing that made him as grumbly as painting did.
Well, maybe one thing.
As if summoned by Silence’s sour thoughts, Baxter sauntered into the room. The massive orange tabby fixed Silence with his perpetual cat-smile, a thin line of drool escaping from the corner of his mouth. The drooling was as ever-present as the contented look on Baxter’s furry face.
Silence glared back, paintbrush hovering mid-stroke.
Baxter was a beastly cat with a big, square jaw and a saccharine-sweet disposition. He padded to within a yard of the stepladder and sat, watched, laughing at Silence’s plight.
The front door creaked open, bringing a gust of humid Gulf Coast Florida air and the sound of cheerful humming. Silence recognized the hum, who it belonged to.
His scowl deepened.
If painting was number one on his list of despised activities, and Baxter’s devotion was a close second, then Lola’s visits ranked a solid third.
“Yoo-hoo! Mrs. E? Silence?” Lola’s voice carried through the house, sickeningly sweet.
Silence grunted in response, not bothering to turn around. He heard Lola’s footsteps approach, the thump of her biker boots on the hardwood floor growing louder.
“There you are!” she said, entering the living room. “Look at you up there, Si. You look good splattered with paint.”
Silence shot her a withering glare over his shoulder.
Lola stood in the doorway, all curves and smiles, her brown eyes twinkling with barely concealed mischief. Mixed-race Asian, thirty-something. A natural beauty. She wore jeans, a concert T-shirt, and a bangle bracelet. Sunglasses were perched atop her head, half-submerged in silky dark hair.
She’d said Silence looked good. She’d also called him Si, a nickname he permitted from Mrs. Enfield but never offered to Lola. This was what Lola did—she constantly pushed the limits.
She knew Silence was engaged. That’s what Mrs. Enfield had always told her. That’s what Silence had always told her. And in Silence’s mind, it was true, even though his fiancée was deceased—murdered years ago.
Silence had never wanted anyone but C.C.
He’d found his person.
And lost her.
Tragically.
Silence had never explained to Lola that his fiancée was dead—and as far as he knew, neither had Mrs. Enfield—so that made Lola’s insistent quasi-flirting all the more frustrating.
Lola was Mrs. Enfield’s prior caretaker. She’d moved away from Pensacola years ago and now lived in Knoxville, Tennessee, several states away, but she came back to Florida at least once a year to visit “Mrs. E.,” as she liked to call the old woman.
Silence flicked his eyes to the wall. “I’m here to work,” he said and swallowed. “Not look good.”
He did that a lot—interrupted his speaking to swallow.
Concurrently with C.C.’s murder years ago, a related event nearly took Silence’s life, leaving him with not only a surgically reconstructed face but also a permanently injured voice box. Speaking caused intense pain to the glut of scar tissue in Silence’s neck. The more syllables he attempted, the worse the suffering, leading him to swallow frequently to soothe his throat.
A new voice that had emerged—and remained—from his injured throat, and the voice always perplexed people the first time they heard it. It was a crackling, rumbling, popping monstrosity, at the same time volcanic and robotic.
But Lola was accustomed to it. She’d heard it many, many times through the years.
Lola groaned. “Ugh! Always so serious. Where is my dear old friend, anyway?”
Before Silence could answer, Mrs. Enfield’s ancient voice drifted down from upstairs. “Is that you, Lola? Come on up, dear. I’ve got some things I’d like to go through.”
“Coming!” Lola called back. She paused at the foot of the stairs, glancing back at Silence. “Don’t work too hard.” She winked, left.
Silence waited until he heard her footsteps fade away before allowing himself a small shudder.
He looked down at Baxter, who had settled into a loaf position at the base of the ladder, still staring up at him, still cat-smiling, still drooling.
At least you don’t talk, he thought.
The cat blinked slowly in response.
For the next hour, Silence worked in blessed quiet, broken only by the occasional thump or exclamation from upstairs. He had no idea what the women were doing, but it had clearly excited them both.
He had just finished the second coat on the far wall when the sound of hurried footsteps on the stairs made him tense.
“Si! Si, you gotta see this!” Lola burst into the room, waving an old, leather-bound book in the air. Mrs. Enfield followed more slowly, guided by Lola’s free hand, her cloudy eyes wide with both excitement and apprehension.
Mrs. Enfield was small, black, frail, and had hair even whiter than her functionless irises. She lived next door to Silence, across a gravel drive, in the East Hill neighborhood of Pensacola.
Silence set down his paintbrush with a sigh. “What is it?”
“It’s Rory’s old journal,” Mrs. Enfield said, her voice quavering slightly. “From right after the war. I had no idea he kept one.”
Rory was Mrs. Enfield’s husband. Long deceased, much longer than C.C. had been.
Lola nodded eagerly. “We found it in a box of his old things. But Si, you won’t believe what’s inside. It’s full of the most incredible stuff!”
Despite himself, Silence felt a flicker of curiosity. After all, Rory had been a World War II vet.
He descended the ladder, wiping his hands on a nearby rag. He stepped over Baxter and approached the women.
“Here, look,” Lola said, thrusting the journal toward him. She flipped it open to a dog-eared page, pointing to a series of scrawled notes. “It’s all in code, or some kind of secret language. And there are mentions of operations, strange places… I think Rory might have been some kind of spy!”
Silence knew a thing or two about spies in his line of work as a vigilante assassin working for an unsanctioned organization embedded surreptitiously within U.S. government…
He frowned, scanning the page. The writing was cramped and hurried, full of abbreviations and alphanumeric sequences. They meant nothing to him, didn’t align with any system with which he was familiar.
But one entry—circled and written larger than the rest—caught his eye: X7R9Q2P.
“What do you make of it?” Lola said, bouncing with intrigued excitement.
Silence shrugged, handing the journal back. “Who knows.”
But Mrs. Enfield shook her head, her expression troubled. “Rory never talked much about the war,” she said in her tiny, raspy voice, “ but… there were times, late at night, when he’d wake up muttering about things. Names I didn’t recognize, places that didn’t exist. I always thought it was just nightmares, but now…”
Her voice trailed off, and Silence felt a pang of sympathy. He’d seen enough in his line of work to know that some secrets were better left buried.
It was clear she was getting upset.
He looked at Lola. “Let’s put it…” He swallowed. “Away.”
But Lola didn’t register the seriousness of his request. She was already flipping through more pages, her eyes wide. “Oh, listen to this! ‘Met with J today. New assignment, deep cover. God help me if L ever finds out.’ Who’s J? And L – could that be you, Mrs. Enfield?”
Mrs. Enfield’s face was lowered, as though studying the hardwood with her dead eyes. “I… I don’t know. Lola, perhaps we should—”
“Wait, there’s more!” Lola interrupted, still oblivious. “’Awaiting further instructions. I’m wanted at—”
