Young Guns Box Set - Books 1-4: A Tanner Series (Young Gun Box Sets)

by Remington Kane

  “I know, but I still feel like I owe him one. Maybe someday I’ll get the chance to pay him back.”

  NINETEEN YEARS LATER

  Professor Whittier Washington Branson Armstrong touched his chest, and even through the dress shirt he wore, he could feel the two puckered marks he’d carried since he was a teen.

  Professor Armstrong hugged his daughter, and as he kissed the top of her head, he sent a silent prayer of gratitude to the man he knew as Xavier Zane.

  YOUNG GUNS 2 - SMOKE & MIRRORS

  17

  Girls, Girls, Girls

  TUCSON, ARIZONA, MARCH 1998

  Cody and Romeo drove inside the parking garage of the hotel where they were to meet up with their mentor, Spenser Hawke.

  Romeo was driving the red sports car Spenser had given them to use, and as they came around the ramp on the third floor of the parking garage, Romeo spotted Spenser’s black pickup truck. He parked beside it, then he and Cody grabbed their bags to head to Spenser’s room on the fifth floor.

  The boys had survived a deadly and eventful trek on their way to Tucson from Carson City, Nevada. They were looking forward to enjoying a period of relaxation. They headed toward the elevator, but before they reached it the doors slid open to reveal Spenser.

  Spenser spotted them immediately and headed toward them with a wide grin splitting his face. Cody took note that although Spenser’s attention was on them, he still took quick glances around to survey his surroundings. That situational awareness was second-nature to Spenser. Cody hoped to develop that ability someday as well.

  Spenser greeted each of them with a quick hug, then tousled their hair. They had told him on the phone about the run-in with thieves they’d had on the trip there. Spenser had sounded both worried by and proud of the fact that they had handled things by themselves.

  Although he was the boys’ mentor, there was less than a decade separating Spenser from Cody and Romeo. Still, they were his charges, and he treated them like sons.

  “You guys made good time,” Spenser said. “I was headed out for a late lunch, but now that you’re here, I’ll wait, and we can go have dinner.”

  “Do we still have to get rooms?” Romeo asked.

  Spenser reached into his pocket and took out a set of key cards. He handed one to Romeo, and the other to Cody.

  “Romeo’s on my left in Room 517 and Cody you’re on my right in Room 513.”

  “I guess that means you’re staying in Room 515?” Cody said.

  “Right,” Spenser said. “And after we have dinner, why don’t we go out and play pool? There’s a great place I found just blocks from here.”

  The boys agreed, and the three of them headed back up to the rooms.

  Romeo entered his room first, as Spenser followed Cody inside his room to talk. Once the door was closed, Spenser asked a question.

  “I see Romeo is calling you Cody instead of your new name of Xavier. How did that come about?”

  “He opened up to me about what happened when he was a kid, and so I told him my own story.”

  Spenser smiled.

  “I’m glad you two are getting along so well, seeing as how you’re rivals.”

  “I liked Romeo the moment I met him, and I trust him too. Don’t get me wrong, I intend to beat him at everything you teach us and be a Tanner someday, but just because we’re rivals doesn’t mean we have to dislike each other.”

  Spenser leaned back against the hotel room dresser.

  “Romeo surprised me. I took him on as an apprentice because it was a condition of a deal I made with someone. I thought he wouldn’t take things seriously and head back home, but he trains hard and does what I tell him without a lot of back talk.”

  Cody nodded in agreement.

  “Don’t be fooled by his surfer dude attitude, Romeo is as tough and committed as anyone.”

  Two hours later they were seated in a chain restaurant that was known for its steaks. Cody and Romeo had showered, shaved, and changed their clothes before leaving the hotel.

  They each had a steak along with several side dishes, and although Spenser was the only one old enough to drink, he ordered three beers and the boys each had one. They were seventeen and eighteen, but Cody and Romeo were both tall and looked like college kids. No one hassled them about the drinking, and Spenser would have never let them drink to excess.

  There were three waitresses working in the area of the restaurant they sat in, two had dark hair while the third was a blonde. The women were college students and all three of them were attractive enough to catch Cody and Romeo’s attention.

  According to their name tags, the girls were Barbara, Anna, and Monique. Barbara was the blonde, and Cody saw her looking his way more than once. Meanwhile, Romeo was eyeing Monique, and Monique was sending him smiles as she bustled about taking and delivering orders.

  Anna, their waitress, laughed at Romeo’s jokes while giving Cody attentive glances from the corner of her eye. Anna seemed a bit shy, but she answered their questions, and Cody and Romeo learned that the three girls were friends who all went to the same school.

  When the meal was done, they went outside into the cooling night air and headed for their car.

  “Yo, Spenser,” Romeo said. “Cody and I are coming back here at closing time to like, talk to those girls. There’s three of them, so why don’t you hang with us?”

  Spenser shook his head.

  “I think I’m a little too old for the college crowd, but there’s a desk clerk I’ve been chatting up back at the hotel. We’ve made plans to go out tomorrow night.”

  “Find out if she’s got two friends,” Romeo said. “If Cody and I strike out with the waitresses, we’ll still be looking to hook up with some girls.”

  Spenser laughed.

  “I’ll do that.”

  They played pool for a few hours after leaving the restaurant. Romeo was a great pool player. He had grown up shooting pool on a table his father kept in their home, but Cody had seldom played the game.

  Romeo had given him several tips about angling shots and Cody’s game was improving. When the men playing at nearby tables ended their games, the three of them were alone in their section of the pool hall.

  Spenser motioned the boys closer and spoke in low tones.

  “I may have a contract soon.”

  “When will you know for sure?” Cody asked.

  “I’m going to a meet with a go-between I know. Depending on what the job is, I may take it. If I do, I could be gone for a few days. I just wanted you to know you might be on your own for a while.”

  “Why can’t we go with you?” Cody and Romeo asked. When they realized they had said the same thing, they smiled at each other.

  Spenser looked surprised by the request.

  “I thought you guys wanted to relax before we headed to Mexico? Believe me, when we get to Mexico you’ll be training harder than you ever have. You might want to enjoy the time off while you have it.”

  “I’d rather see you at work,” Cody said, and Romeo agreed.

  Spenser thought for a moment, then nodded.

  “We’ll do this; you’ll come to the meet with me and we’ll see what happens after that. Like I said, I may not even take the contract. As a Tanner, I don’t take whatever is offered.”

  “But this contact of yours, he knows that, right?” Cody asked.

  “Yeah, so the odds are good that I’ll be offered something challenging. He also said it paid well, which is a good sign.”

  “When will you meet with the contact?” Cody asked.

  “Three days from now at noon I’ll call him and tell him where to meet me. I’ll be picking a spot out in the desert.”

  “Three days is plenty of time off,” Romeo said, “especially if Cody and I hook up with these waitresses tonight.”

  Cody and Romeo returned to the restaurant near closing time and sat at a table drinking soda. They were two of only six remaining customers, and so the waitresses, Barbara and Monique, had
time to talk to them. Their waitress from earlier, Anna, was still working the table where the other remaining customers dined.

  Barbara smiled at Cody.

  “You came back. You must like the food here.”

  “The food was good, but I was hoping to talk to you.”

  Monique asked Romeo a question.

  “Do you guys have a car?”

  “We’ve got a sports car,” Romeo said.

  Monique scrunched up her nose.

  “It sounds small. I was hoping you could give me, Anna, and Barbara a ride back to our apartment. I hate riding that damn bus.”

  “We’ll squeeze the three of you in,” Romeo said.

  Monique laughed. “That almost sounds dirty.”

  The girls lived fifteen minutes away. They shared the basement of a private home that had been converted into an apartment.

  Cody introduced himself by his alias of Xavier Zane, which he was growing use to, since only Romeo and Spenser ever called him Cody.

  Once they arrived at the girls’ home, they stood outside the car and talked. Anna excused herself after only a few minutes, leaving Cody and Romeo alone with Barbara and Monique.

  Cody watched Anna as she walked toward the side of the house.

  “Anna’s shy.”

  Barbara crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You had your eye on her, didn’t you?”

  Cody reached over and took Barbara’s hand.

  “I like what I’m seeing right here.”

  The boys drove away twenty minutes later with dates for the following afternoon, since the girls had to work the evening shift at the restaurant. Cody was taking out Barbara while Romeo would be with Monique. The plan was to take in a free concert in the park and see what developed from there.

  As they drove back to the hotel, Romeo asked Cody a question.

  “Do you want to get married someday?”

  Cody smiled.

  “I like you, Romeo, but I don’t like you that much.”

  “I’m serious, dude. I think about that sometimes. When I’m old, I want a family around me, not a bunch of strangers.”

  “I don’t think the married life goes well with being a Tanner.”

  “Spenser said Tanner One and Tanner Three were married, and I think Tanner Four was too.”

  Cody shook his head.

  “I’d have to trust the woman a lot if I was a Tanner. You can’t marry just any woman and expect that to work. She’d have to be okay with what I did. I don’t know if there are many women like that out there.”

  “Dude, all you’d need is one,” Romeo said.

  “Yeah,” Cody said. “And she’d better be one in a million.”

  18

  A Face In The Crowd

  NEW YORK CITY, JANUARY 2018

  Tanner gazed across the table at Sara Blake as they sat together in a restaurant on Fifth Avenue.

  Sara’s life had been threatened recently by a man named Moss Murphy, and Tanner recalled the emotion he felt when he feared that he might not arrive in time to keep her from harm. He was not a man who gave himself over to emotions, but he had come to realize he loved Sara more than he would have believed possible.

  He’d been in love before and it had never worked out. The first time it happened he was still very young. That initial foray into love had been remarkable. Despite being a stoic and solitary soul by nature, he’d discovered that he enjoyed having someone around and looked forward to being with her. He also found it frightening because it demanded that he trust someone and open his heart up to her.

  When that relationship ended he turned inward and focused on his goal of being a Tanner. He had resolved to remain alone and unencumbered by relationships with women that demanded more than he was willing to give.

  The world was full of women, and he would move among them, experience them, then move on before he grew too attached.

  That was when a woman named Laurel Ivy came into his life and crawled right into his heart. Tanner found himself in love once again, and with a married woman no less. After a few weeks, he gathered the strength to leave her and go back to his solitary ways.

  What followed was over a decade of one-night stands and emotionless hook-ups with women all over the world. Tanner kept himself occupied with contracts, training, and the expansion of his skill with foreign languages.

  Falling for Alexa Lucia seemed but an extension of the intimacy they shared by having suffered similar childhood tragedies at the hands of the same man, Mexican cartel leader Alonso Alvarado. After they’d dealt with that monster in Mexico, Alexa had talked Tanner into settling down into something that resembled a normal life.

  He could have stayed with Alexa if she’d been willing to accept all of him, but no, it was Cody Parker she wanted, the son of a rancher, not Tanner, the consummate assassin.

  Alexa had endured enough death, and she wanted only to live the quiet life. He had hoped she would learn to live with a compromise, but instead, she left him alone.

  It was the first time a woman had abandoned him, and he felt the sting of that rejection, but he was who he was and compromise was as abhorrent to him as it had been for Alexa. He didn’t want to live life with someone where it felt like he was walking on egg shells all the time, and there was no way he was prepared to give up being a Tanner.

  Strangely enough, it was at Alexa’s departure that he began thinking Sara Blake and he could someday be more than friends. That they had become friends at all was a miracle given the animosity that had existed between them for over a year.

  He had tried to kill the woman and failed. That was not a unique occurrence, but it was a rare one, and Sara was the only one he had not eventually put down. For her part, she had severely wounded him, and damn her if she didn’t come out on top in the end.

  Her obsession to gain revenge ended when she inadvertently caused the death of a man she loved, and grief doused the flames of her hatred.

  They came to an agreement that would benefit both of them, and when it was over, they parted company not as friends, but with a feeling of mutual respect.

  Sara reentered his life as a go-between for a corporation that handled government sanctioned assassins. Tanner had been suspicious of her motives, but she had later proved herself trustworthy. The work had them spending time together, and they bonded, then began a tentative friendship. The friendship deepened and later turned into a physical relationship.

  Tanner loved Sara, loved her more than he had ever loved before, and she accepted him as he was. Recently, his mind turned to thoughts of marriage. When he imagined asking her to marry him, he felt an emotion that he recognized but was not well acquainted with. It was fear.

  Once they were wed, they would either stay together forever or drift apart as so many do. Tanner didn’t want to lose her. He was sick to heart of losing people he loved. He wanted Sara in his life, always in his life, and the thought of starting a family made him smile.

  He was a Tanner, but he was also Cody Parker, the son, grandson, and great-grandson of ranchers. The life of a rancher was in his DNA as surely as was the color of his hair. Whenever he imagined being an old man, he pictured himself sitting on a porch and looking out over land he owned, while surrounded by family.

  He could not be a Tanner forever, time and aging would see to that, but he would always be Cody Parker, and Cody Parker had begun to reassert himself in recent years.

  Becoming a Tanner was a commitment he’d made while still little more than a boy. He had achieved that goal and lived his dream. But he was no longer a boy out to prove himself and live a life of adventure. He was a man in his thirties with enough wisdom to realize that time could move with the speed of a bullet train.

  If he didn’t risk failing at marriage, didn’t take a chance on Sara being the perfect mate for him, and somehow let her slip away, he could well wind up a sad old man with a handful of regrets and excuses.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Sara said, thus ending his
reverie.

  “I guess I zoned-out there for a minute,” Tanner said.

  Sara laughed. “You did, and you didn’t. You seemed lost in thought, but you were still swiveling your head from left to right every few seconds, as if surveying your surroundings. Even when you daydream you stay on full alert. I have no doubt that had something threatening happened you would have snapped out of your trance and reacted.”

  “It’s the training I had, that, and a regretful experience that taught me well.”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “You… us.”

  “Good thoughts or bad?”

  Tanner reached across the table and took her hand.

  “All good.”

  After leaving the restaurant, Tanner hailed a taxi to take them back to their apartment. He had failed to bring up the subject of marriage although he had planned to do so. He realized why he had hesitated. Marriage was no different from anything else in life. You didn’t talk about it, you simply did it.

  He decided to get an engagement ring. Once he had that, then he could ask Sara to marry him. Years earlier, Spenser told him that there was a proper way to do everything and to never do anything halfway. He also said the larger and more important things should be planned well before executing them.

  His mentor, as usual, was right. Tanner decided that he would plan something memorable. Sara was worth it.

  Their taxi traveled down Fifth Avenue in heavy evening traffic. As they were stopped at a red light near 34th Street, up ahead, Tanner saw a man exit an office building and run across the road. Once he was on the other side, the man began walking in Tanner’s direction. The traffic light turned green, and as the taxi moved closer to the man Tanner got a good look at his face.