When he rejoined them, the realtor asked him a question.
“Lola seems interested in the school system, does that mean you plan to have children?”
Andrea wrapped her arms around Tanner, kissed him passionately on the mouth, then spoke to the realtor.
“We go at each other like animals. It’s just a matter of time until I miss a period.”
“I see,” Emily Parson said, while blushing.
“I would love to look at more homes,” Tanner said. “However, I have an appointment I need to keep.”
“Fine, but call me when you have the time, and it was nice meeting you two,” Parson said.
As they drove away from the house, Tanner wiped Andrea’s lipstick off his mouth. When he said nothing about the kiss, Andrea frowned at him.
“Did you like it?”
“The house was great.”
“I meant the kiss.”
“It was a mistake. It made us more memorable to that woman than we should be.”
“Shit. You’re right. I’m sorry, I was just… I’m sorry.”
“If you want this to work you need to stop being so playful. We’re out to kill two men for revenge, not play slap and tickle.”
“You’re right, and I’ll behave. What’s next?”
“I’ll come back here tonight to sneak into that house and do surveillance on Mead.”
“I want to come too.”
“That’s fine, but if you play around again, I’ll be doing this without you.”
“Don’t worry. Should I dress in black?”
“Wear dark colors, but look like you belong in the neighborhood. By the way, we’ll be staying in that house all night. I want to observe Mead’s routine when he leaves for work.”
“Are we going to attack him at home?”
“It depends on what I observe, but right now that’s the plan. We’ll get him away from his bodyguards and question him about Smith.”
“What if he won’t talk?”
“He’ll talk. It’s just a matter of time.”
“You mean you’ll torture him?”
“Yes.”
“Once we have Mead, let me torture him. I still remember the way he smiled when he watched my father get hit in the stomach.”
Tanner looked away from the road to stare at Andrea.
“Mead is going to regret that smile.”
“You’re damn right he is,” Andrea said, “and Smith will wish he’d never been born.”
22
Bad Timing
PHOENIX, ARIZONA, APRIL 1999
As he and Romeo entered Phoenix, Cody recalled the last time he was there. It had been in September of the previous year when they had traveled with Spenser to fulfill a contract. It had also been the first anniversary of the day his family was murdered.
As they whizzed along the highway, Cody remembered that time.
Cody Parker sat on the edge of his motel room bed and fought back tears as he thought about his slain family, who had been murdered one year ago to the day. Spenser had offered to stay with him and talk, but Cody declined the offer while saying that he’d be fine.
But he wasn’t fine. Despite his inherent toughness and stoical nature, Cody found himself becoming lost amid dark thoughts, and memories of the final moments of his loved ones’ lives. Along with it, he was feeling more than a touch of survivor’s guilt.
The three loud knocks on the door roused him from his despair. After wiping away a stray tear, he rose, looked through the peephole, and sighed.
The door opened to reveal the smiling face of Romeo, who was holding a bottle of wine, and the mellow and carefree boy wasn’t alone. There were two girls with Romeo, both were young and beautiful. After looking Cody over, the girl on the right sent him a huge grin.
“Xavier, say hello to Carla and Alicia.”
Before Cody could say anything, Romeo brushed past him while holding Carla’s hand. Alicia, the girl who had been on the right, was now standing alone in the doorway. Cody ushered her in with a sweep of his arm.
“I’m Xavier.”
“I’m Alicia.”
The girl was a blonde with huge green eyes. When she walked into the room as if floating on air, Cody intuited by her lissomness and grace that she was a dancer.
Romeo draped an arm over Cody’s shoulders and held up the bottle.
“We’re going to have a drink or two, get to know each other, then go out and light up the town. What do you say?”
Cody managed to break free of Alicia’s gaze. After turning his head, he whispered to Romeo.
“Didn’t Spenser tell you that I wanted to be alone?”
“Yeah,” Romeo whispered back, “But hey, bro, nobody wants to be alone, not really, and I’m just looking out for you.”
Cody sent him a small smile. “Bro?”
“Hell yeah, we’re like brothers, aren’t we? And Spenser, he’s like our old man.”
Cody’s smile widened. He looked back at Alicia, and the beauty sitting on his bed grinned again.
“Romeo, I owe you one, bro.”
“All right, now let’s get this party started.”
“This is the exit,” Romeo said.
They were headed to the apartment of Pete Roscoe’s girlfriend. At least, she had been seeing Roscoe when the client knew him. It was possible that Roscoe was staying with her.
Cody looked at the photo the client had passed along. It showed a group of four men standing near several motorcycles. Pete Roscoe was the man on the far left. Roscoe was in his forties, average height, and bald with a fringe of dark hair. Although it was hard to tell from the photo, he appeared to have blue eyes.
Romeo parked across the street and down the block from the apartment house where Roscoe’s girlfriend lived. The woman’s name was Janna, and she worked as a stripper. After leaving their car, Romeo grabbed a box from the backseat and put on a cap. Written across the front of the cap was the name of a fictitious delivery service.
“I’ll go check things out,” Romeo said.
While he entered the apartment building, Cody went around to the building’s rear. If Romeo managed to flush Roscoe out of hiding, Cody would be waiting for him if he tried to leave by the fire escape.
Seven minutes passed, then Romeo appeared in a window and waved down to Cody, to give him the all-clear sign. When Cody joined him at the apartment door, Romeo let him in, then shut it closed behind him. The phony cap was in Romeo’s back pocket, while the empty box sat near the door.
“I knocked like crazy and no one answered, then I pounded on the neighbor’s door and got the same.” “Roscoe might still be staying here,” Cody said.
“Maybe, if so, he didn’t leave any clothes laying around. I think the chick lives alone.”
Cody gazed about the room. On the coffee table was a small pile of text books and a well-used notepad. Looking closer, Cody could see that the books were all about nursing. Janna might be a stripper, but it looked like she was studying to become a nurse.
“We’ll wait outside and keep an eye on the place. Maybe Roscoe will show.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to waste too much time here. I still think he might have gone home to his parents’ house.”
“Wherever he is, we’ll find him.”
“Damn right,” Romeo said.
They left the second-floor apartment to head back to their car. As they were leaving the building, two girls in their late-teens were entering. One was a blonde with blue eyes, while her redheaded companion had green eyes. Both were beautiful and wore short dresses. They smiled at the boys while looking them over.
“Hey there,” Romeo said, but then he felt Cody nudge him in the ribs with an elbow. It was no time to be picking up women.
Romeo closed his eyes and cursed silently as he realized his error.
The girls laughed with amusement at the look on his face, and they shared the same musical tone. Studying them more carefully, Cody guessed that they were sisters. The redhead
moved close to Romeo, then touched him on the cheek.
“Are you two new to the building?”
“Um, no,” Romeo said. He was cursing himself for having spoken to the girls. He was so angry at his stupidity that he was crushing the fake delivery box he carried. He and Cody were there to find a man they planned to kill. It was stupid to make himself memorable to two of the building’s tenants.
“Too bad,” said the blonde, as she stared at Cody. “Zoe and I were hoping to party tonight. By the way, handsome, I’m Kayla.”
Cody swallowed, as he found himself getting lost in the twin seas of blue that were Kayla’s eyes.
“Nice to meet you,” Cody said, in a near whisper.
“So, handsome, would you like to party with me? There’s a club with live bands right down the block.” Cody smiled at Kayla, but then caught himself.
“Thanks, but we have to get going?”
“Who were you here to see?”
Cody remembered a name he’d spotted on one of the building’s mailboxes.
“Mr. Saxon.”
“The old man? He died a month ago. I hope you weren’t close?”
“No, not close at all, and I have to go.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jack.”
“You don’t look like a Jack.”
Cody sent Kayla a shrug, grabbed Romeo by the arm, and started walking.
“See you around, Jack,” Kayla said. Afterward, she and Zoe laughed again.
“I screwed up, Cody, I know it.”
“No harm done for now, and I guess this means we’ll have to kill Roscoe somewhere else even if we find him here.”
“I know I was stupid to talk to them, but were those girls hot or what?”
“And they wanted to party with us. I almost said yes.”
“New rule,” Romeo said. “No women while we’re working. Dude, Roscoe could have walked right by me and I wouldn’t have noticed.”
“Same here.”
They reached the car and settled in for a night of surveillance. Neither said a thing for several minutes as they thought about the girls. When Kayla and Zoe left the apartment building and walked off in the other direction, Cody and Romeo both looked at them through binoculars.
“Those girls are smokin’ hot,” Romeo said.
“Oh yeah,” Cody agreed.
Kayla and Zoe turned a corner moments later and climbed into the rear of a dark blue van. The driver was a tall and handsome man in his seventies with a full head of brilliant white hair, along with a beard to match. He was smoking a pipe and the aroma of the cherry tobacco filled the van.
His name was Farnsworth. He was a bounty hunter. As Farnsworth drove the van to where he could view the apartment house, Kayla gave him some news.
“We have competition, Granddad.”
“How’s that?”
“Two guys about the same age as Zoe and me. They searched the apartment after we did. They’re good. The blond guy picked the lock in like three seconds.”
“Did they see you up there?”
“Zoe broke into the apartment across the hall and we hid inside until they entered the girlfriend’s place. After that, we went downstairs, then ran into them like we were just entering the building.”
“They’re both hot,” Zoe said, “especially the blond one.”
“You two can play once we capture Roscoe,” Farnsworth said.
“I don’t think he’s here. There was no sign of him in the apartment.”
“And where are the boys now?”
“They’re parked down the street there in a red sports car. I think they’re running surveillance on the building just like we are.”
“Hmm, I think I’ll go have a talk with those two tonight. They must be after the bounty.”
“We’ll come with you,” Zoe said.
“No. You two stay here. You’ll be my secret weapons if these boys don’t back off and leave Roscoe to me.”
The girls laughed.
“You’ve got something planned for them?” Kayla asked.
“Only if they don’t back off.”
Zoe grinned. “Being a bounty hunter is fun.”
Farnsworth winked at his granddaughters. “It beats workin’ 9 to 5.”
23
Head Hunting
STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK, MARCH 2018
At 10:24 p.m., Tanner and Andrea were inside the empty home that offered a view of Kent Mead’s property. Other than the appearance of a middle-age woman Tanner took to be a housekeeper and cook, no one had entered or left the home.
Andrea had decided to stop flirting, which pleased Tanner. He would have preferred that she had let him handle things alone, but if she was going to involve herself she needed to be serious about it. Andrea had something else on her mind as well. Tanner didn’t bother to ask what it was. It was his experience that most people talked whether you wanted them to or not. If you waited them out, they would spill what was bothering them. Andrea was no exception and finally revealed what was on her mind.
“Tanner, I know why you were meeting my father in the desert years ago. He was hiring you to kill Mr. Smith, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“What was my father? Was he like your agent or something?”
“It wasn’t that formal an arrangement. If he was approached by someone who wanted someone else dead, he would contact me or some other assassin. I only handle the tough ones, which Mr. Smith certainly proved to be.”
“I knew my father wasn’t legit, but I didn’t know he dealt with murder.”
“He was a go-between and worked on a percentage. He was good at it and kept you clothed and fed by doing it.”
Andrea placed a hand on Tanner’s arm.
“I wasn’t putting Daddy down, or you. It’s just that he was such a gentle man. It seems odd that he would involve himself in violence.”
“Your father, Herb, he didn’t deal with lowlifes looking to have their spouses killed. Your father handled the higher end of the trade. The deals I did with him never involved the innocent, unless it was an innocent hiring him. I killed men like Smith on the contracts your father handled, while one was a serial rapist that escaped the legal system on a technicality. Your father was a good man, Andrea. When I kill Smith, I’ll be doing it for him too. Smith had no right to kill him, and threatening you, a child at the time, was definitely out of line.”
“I still miss my father.”
“And you will forever, the pain never goes away.”
Andrea was about to ask Tanner why he knew so much about the pain of loss when Kent Mead’s limo appeared. The huge vehicle parked in front of the home and a man stepped out of the passenger compartment. After gazing about, the man, whom Tanner took to be a security guard, entered Mead’s home after inputting an alarm code.
Because of the late hour and the heavy tinting on the limo’s windows, Tanner and Andrea were unable to see inside the vehicle.
The security guard reappeared and gave an okay signal. Two other men emerged from the rear of the limo; one of them was Kent Mead.
“There’s the bastard,” Andrea whispered, as Tanner studied Mead through the zoom lens of a camera.
Kent Mead was escorted inside his home as the limo driver backed the car into the attached garage. The garage was big enough for two cars, but most of the space was filled with boxes and old furniture. One of the guards stayed outside and observed the street until the limo was tucked away for the night.
As the limo driver emerged into the glow of the streetlight, Andrea gasped. The man was wearing a black suit, while perched atop his head was a white cowboy hat.
“That’s Cord. Tanner, that limo driver is Cord.”
Tanner zoomed in on Cord’s face, then smiled.
“He’s got a long scar on his right cheek. It looks like you marked him for life.”
“I only wished I had killed him back then.”
Cord and the security guard entered the home just as a li
ght came on in an upstairs window.
“That must be Mead’s bedroom,” Andrea said, “and I don’t like that security system. Even if we got past Cord and the guards, we would then have to deal with the police.”
“We won’t take him inside the house. We don’t need to thanks to a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“Mead keeps his garage so cluttered with junk that the limo barely fits in there. It’s why he enters the home through the front door. We’ll use that to our advantage and take him on the street when he leaves in the morning.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“No, first we need to observe his routine. We’ll also do some stage-setting.”
“What do you mean by stage-setting?” Andrea asked.
“Are you a jogger?”
“I run on a treadmill at my gym.”
“You’re going to put on a show tomorrow morning for the guards. I want to see how they react.”
“What sort of show?”
Tanner studied her.
“We need to get you in costume.”
“What costume?”
Tanner smiled.
“You’re going to play the part of the sexy jogger.”
At 8:24 the following morning, Andrea went running by Kent Mead’s house after Cord had driven the limo out of the garage. The two security guards were standing on the front steps of the home, but Mead was still inside the house.
Andrea was wearing a blonde wig, a pair of blue-tinted sunglasses, and little else. Her running shorts were small and tight, while her skimpy top allowed her breasts to jiggle as she ran. The two guards on the steps watched her approach. When Andrea waved to them, one man smiled and the other waved back.
Since he was in the limo, Tanner didn’t know what Cord’s reaction had been, but he doubted that the man could have missed seeing her. Andrea had no fear that Cord would recognize her beneath the wig and sunglasses. She was running down the street half naked. The man would not be scrutinizing her face.
Young Guns 3Beyond Limits Page 8