Henry had three classes on the third day that would eat up all his time. He offered to skip them but Tanner insisted that he return home and take them. He reminded Henry it was likely that if anything happened it would be at night.
A car pulled into the Carrawells’ driveway and a man got out. He was clean-shaven and looked nothing like the man in the sketch. After walking around to his trunk, he removed a cardboard box that had its top portion cut off. Tanner zoomed in with a pair of binoculars and could see that there were groceries sticking up out of the box. The Carrawells were getting a delivery from the local grocer.
The taller of the two brothers opened the door. He took the box from the man while his brother paid him. After that, it was quiet again.
A late-model car parked at the end of the block shortly after the dinner hour passed. It was on the opposite side of the street from the house the Carrawell twins lived in.
A young woman emerged from it. She wore a skirt that showed-off her shapely legs and moved about gracefully, like a dancer or an athlete. Her long dark hair hung past her shoulders. Her hair was so full that it made it difficult to see her face.
Tanner wondered if she could be the blonde from the drone video with dyed hair until he zoomed in with the camera and saw that she had a darker complexion. She was also taller than the woman in the video.
From the back seat of her car, the woman removed what looked like a sample case. Along with that she carried a glossy folder that was bright yellow.
Tanner was parked along the next block inside the rear of a van. He was seated on a folding chair and had his camera set up on a tripod. Since there was a motorcycle and a sports car parked in front of him, he had an unobstructed view into the next block. The telephoto lens’ capabilities made it possible for him to keep an eye on the Carrawells’ house while staying far enough away to go unnoticed.
The woman went up the steps of the first house on the side of the street she parked on and rang the bell. Tanner couldn’t see who came to the door, but the conversation was brief, and the woman tried the next house.
Whatever she was selling, it seemed no one was buying. She’d been turned down five times in a row when a young man stepped out onto his porch to listen to her sales pitch. Whenever the woman pointed out something in the brochure she was holding, the man’s eyes locked onto her cleavage. The blouse she wore was cut low. It made her seem less professional, but then again, sex sells.
She might have made a sale if the guy’s wife hadn’t stepped out onto the porch to see what was happening. She took one look at the woman and began shaking her head no. Seconds later, the woman was headed down the steps with her sample case in hand. She had decided to try her luck across the street.
Again, she was rejected. By the time she knocked on the door of the Carrawell house she’d been up and down the front steps of eleven homes. Joshua Carrawell, the shorter of the twins, answered the door. Tanner only caught a glimpse of him because the woman blocked his view. After a brief exchange, the woman entered the house.
Tanner smiled. The brothers had been locked up in jail then sentenced to house arrest. The appearance of a beautiful woman on their doorstep must have been a welcome sight. Whether they decided to buy anything or not they could still enjoy her company for a while.
Tanner decided that it was a good time to call home and spoke to Sara and his children. He was planning to head back to the ranch for the night while Henry kept watch. If anything happened, Henry was to call him. If threatened, he was to defend himself by any means necessary. More than likely his biggest concern would be a struggle to stay awake.
Tanner was beginning to think that the bearded man wasn’t coming. The man might have believed, and rightly so, that the cops would expect him to go after the Carrawells. Steve Mendez had. Making a move on the Carrawells now could mean walking into a trap.
Now that the brothers had been identified, the bearded man could come after them at his leisure. If that was true, Tanner would have to find another way to locate him.
After making the call home and having a cup of coffee, Tanner started to wonder why the woman had been inside the house for so long. He supposed that some sales presentations could take time, but the woman had entered the house more than a half hour earlier. It had still been light out when she knocked on the door but now the streetlights were coming on and there was a sliver of moon on the rise.
The Carrawell brothers had no police records until they were caught firing illegal weapons at the festival. That did not mean that they had never committed a crime before. They were suspected of being career criminals. It was possible their crimes included rape and abduction.
Tanner drove the van closer to the house and parked across the street from where the woman had left her car. Before exiting the van, he checked on the camera he had set up outside the rear of the Carrawells’ home. It revealed an empty yard and showed that the back door to the house was closed. There was no one hastily digging a hole to toss a body into. That was good.
After leaving the vehicle, he hurried around to the opposite side of the block on foot. He wore a hood and had a baseball cap pulled down low to hide his eyes and immerse his face in shadows.
The home that sat behind the Carrawells was a ranch-style home. It was dark except for a porch light. Tanner walked up the driveway and entered the backyard as if he owned the place. A floodlight came on as he moved past the rear porch. It was the type activated by motion.
Within moments he was over the privacy fence that separated the properties and crouched down beside a hedge to look and listen.
He heard a few crickets nearby and the sound of a car passing on the street behind him. What he didn’t hear was the cry of a muffled scream. There were lights on in several windows on the first floor that had their curtains drawn. The one at the rear was likely the home’s kitchen. There was also a light on upstairs.
Tanner moved closer and eased his way around the side of the house. He was wearing black jeans and a dark blue shirt. He blended in well with the deepening gloom that night was spawning.
He couldn’t find a gap in a window blind or curtain on that side of the house and had to move around to the opposite side. On his way there, he tried looking through the kitchen windows. There, on the small window built into the back door was a slit he could see through. It gave him a view of the refrigerator and the electric stove. A big pot was on the stove. Steam curled from its opening, as if water were being boiled. Along with the appliances, Tanner could see partway down a hallway. Through an open door in the hall he saw the corner of a white pedestal sink, indicating that the space beyond the door was a bathroom.
There was no one in view, so Tanner moved on to the other side of the home. There, he reached one of the side windows that looked onto a guest bedroom. That was when he saw the blood.
Blood spattered the walls, the floor, and had even stained the ceiling in one spot. The woman was covered in it as well. She was naked, and she was in control.
Alden Carrawell was shackled to the bed by handcuffs and leg irons, while his brother, Joshua, was bound to a chair with duct tape. They were both naked, as they had been ordered to strip. The only thing they wore were their electronic ankle bracelets.
Plastic sheeting had been spread out on the floor. It was mottled by the bloody footprints the woman had made as she moved around the room.
Most of the blood had come from Alden. There were cuts on his face, chest, and abdomen. His manhood had been snipped away with the use of shears. It lay between his knees on the bed and there weren’t enough little blue pills in the world to bring it back to life. The same was true for its owner. Alden Carrawell’s throat had been slashed. If he’d been tortured for information, Tanner was willing to bet that he had spilled everything he knew, along with his blood.
It must not have been enough, because Joshua was in the middle of getting the same treatment his brother had received. Tanner could hear his hoarse plea for mercy carry through the closed win
dow.
“I don’t know where the other group is or even who they are. I’m begging you, please don’t kill me. If we knew, don’t you think Alden would have told you?” Joshua looked over at his brother’s body. He had to squint because of the blood that was dripping into his eyes from a gash on his forehead. “Oh God. Why did you have to kill him? Why?”
The woman raised the knife she was holding and pointed it at Joshua’s crotch. He’d already suffered through over a dozen cuts but she’d yet to harm him below the waist.
A great sigh escaped her as she came to the conclusion that she was wasting her time. Joshua was right. If they had been able to answer her questions, they would have done so. The woman stepped around behind the chair Joshua was bound to and used the blade to slice open his throat. Her expression as she committed the act was one of calm professionalism. The violence neither thrilled her nor repulsed her. It was required and so she did it.
Joshua bucked in the chair and gasped as his blood mixed with his brother’s blood. They were born on the same day and now they would die on the same day.
When Joshua became still, the woman freed a key that had been taped to the handle of her knife. She used the key to remove the handcuffs and ankle restraints that had been confining Alden Carrawell to the bed.
Despite the blood and the gore, Tanner couldn’t help but take notice of how beautiful the woman was. Her flawless skin was the color of honey and her large eyes were a luminous blue. The breasts were firm, the stomach taut, and the long legs both shapely and athletic. The long dark hair had likely been a wig worn to help obscure her features in case she was captured by a neighbor’s doorbell camera or a dashcam. Whatever her real hair looked like, it was beneath a red swimming cap and some sort of gel had been applied to her eyebrows to prevent a stray follicle from falling loose and winding up in a police evidence bag. There was no other hair, as she had shaved that delicate region.
A pair of blue paper booties were beneath a corner of the plastic that covered the floor. The woman slid her feet into them while being careful not to let her bloody soles leave a print on the part of the carpet that still showed.
She left the room and headed toward the kitchen. Tanner went to the back porch and gazed through the gap in the window. The woman was carefully placing the knife, key, garden shears, and the shackles into the water that was boiling on the stove. That would cleanse the blood from their metal surfaces and erase the brothers’ DNA from any crevices. Tanner admired her professionalism while at the same time knowing that it deepened the mystery.
Whether she was an assassin or a professional interrogator, the woman was top-notch. People of her caliber did not come cheaply. Someone had paid her to gather information. Given what Joshua Carrawell said, she’d been looking for information that would lead her to the other heist crew. If all they had stolen was a few thousand dollars, no one would be going to this much trouble and expense to find them. There was money involved, yes, but a hell of a lot more than a few grand.
After placing the tools of her trade in the water to be cleansed, the woman left the kitchen and reentered the bedroom. Tanner followed and was back at his spot at the window in time to see her strip off the clear vinyl gloves she was wearing. They were dropped onto the plastic sheeting, then the sheeting was folded inward and wrapped into a tight rectangle. The woman had left a length of duct tape hanging from the rear of the dresser where it was unlikely to be struck by blood. She freed it and used it to keep the plastic sheeting from unraveling. Once more she reached behind the dresser and removed a green garbage bag. The plastic sheeting went into it and the bag was carried out of the room and into the bathroom down the hallway. Tanner heard the faint sound of water running. She had blood to shower off.
He would guess that she had placed her clothes in the bathroom beforehand. The paper booties and the swimming cap she wore would be the last items to go into the garbage bag before it was sealed. The bag would later be discarded far from the crime scene, and possibly set on fire.
Tanner left the window and removed the camera he had placed in the Carrawells’ yard. Then he was back over the fence and cutting through the neighbor’s property again. There were lights on and a car in the driveway indicating that someone had come home. Tanner didn’t see anyone as he left, and no one called to him.
He returned to the van and grabbed a tracker from a case. He would use it to follow the mystery woman and see where she led him. As he was coming back from planting the tracker, he saw someone walking toward the van from the opposite direction. It was Henry.
Tanner gestured for him to get inside the van. Henry did so, and they settled in the back of it on a pair of folding chairs. Tanner had readjusted the camera so that it was pointed at the woman’s car.
After he told Henry what he had witnessed, the boy seemed impressed.
“She took her time and visited other houses first. That way, if the brothers had been watching her, they would think she was really just out to sell something.”
“I believed it. I was concerned that the Carrawell brothers might have attacked her. They must have been shocked when she revealed her true nature.”
“I guess she’s an assassin.”
“Not necessarily. There are people who make a living as private interrogators. Sometimes they kill, but it’s not what they’re paid to do. They’re paid to get information. I’m beginning to think that you were right about there being two bearded men involved. Gonzales was tortured in the hospital. Although it was nothing like what the Carrawells received, it was still an interrogation. The bearded man from the hospital might be working with the woman.”
There was movement outside. It was the woman leaving the house. She looked no different than when she’d entered it. The long hair of the wig hid her face, while her short skirt and the daring neckline drew attention. Even her shoes had been chosen to lure the eyes away from her face, as they were bright red. Tanner wondered about her eyes then and felt sure that their blue hue was the result of wearing colored contact lenses. As for her sample case, it held the restraints, knife, shears, and the garbage bag containing the evidence of torture and murder.
“I see why the Carrawell brothers let her into their house even though they knew someone might be targeting them,” Henry said. “She looks harmless.”
“That’s a lesson,” Tanner said. “Never assume anything when it matters.”
The woman eased her car away from the curb and drove off. No one would come looking for the Carrawells until they missed their sentencing hearing. They’d already been sentenced—to death.
Tanner waited until the woman’s car was out of sight before following her. He’d instructed Henry to follow him in his car since they were done watching the Carrawell brothers.
As Tanner drove, he thought about the woman and wondered who had hired her, or whether she was working for an organization. Wherever the other heist crew was they had more to fear than being arrested by the cops. It appeared as if they were targeted for death. Henry followed behind the van as Tanner followed the woman by using the tracking app on a tablet. The woman had been looking for answers. By following her, Tanner hoped to get some of his own.
5
The Grab
The woman made a stop twenty minutes later. She had pulled into the parking lot of a busy supermarket and drove around to the rear. When she left, there was a dumpster on fire. Tanner had been following a mile behind her. When he saw the blaze in the dumpster, he knew that she had just disposed of the bloody items she’d removed from the house.
After that there were no more stops. For a time, it looked as though the woman might be headed to Stark, but she stayed on the highway and continued on to Brownsville, Texas.
The hotel she stopped at was one that Tanner was familiar with. It was the Victory Hotel. He’d spent an afternoon there shortly after he’d escaped from a Mexican prison. He’d been framed for drug possession by a mobster named Albert Rossetti. When he left the hotel there were two dea
d men lying outside his room. They had tried to kill him. That had been quite a few years ago. He hadn’t even known Sara yet.
Henry left his car in the parking lot of a nearby fast food restaurant before joining Tanner in the van. Having Henry along gave Tanner an advantage he wouldn’t normally have. Because of his youth, Henry could follow the woman without arousing suspicion. If she caught sight of him, she would likely write him off as a kid. Tanner still warned him to be careful.
“I’ll be careful, and I won’t be too obvious about it when I follow her.”
“Good,” Tanner said. “Just find out what room she’s in and then come back here. Are you armed?”
“Oh yeah,” Henry said. He pulled up his sweatshirt and removed the concealed holster that was clipped to his jeans. The weapon he had was a Glock 43. “I also have an extra magazine in my pocket.”
“Good man. Now go.”
Henry left the van to fulfill the tasks he’d been given, Tanner remembered when he and Romeo had done similar errands for Spenser when he was training them.
Henry came back with the news that the woman was staying in Room 328. She was not alone.
“I heard a man greet her as she was going inside the room, but I didn’t get a look at him from where I was down the hall.”
“Did you locate her car?”
“Yeah. It’s in a corner of the underground garage, not far from the elevators. She must have switched out the license plates before going up to the room because they’re different. There are two cameras in that area and the elevator is around the corner.”
“What about our camera?”
To Serve And Protect (A Tanner Novel Book 39) Page 4