To Serve And Protect (A Tanner Novel Book 39)

by Remington Kane

  “I’ll be taking a different flight while you fly home, Henry. Tim Jackson has found Guy Hutchinson.”

  “Let me come with you.”

  “You’ve got early classes tomorrow and I don’t know how long this might take.”

  “Where is Hutchinson?”

  “He’s in Aurora, Illinois.”

  “Is that near Chicago?”

  “Very close. I’ll take a flight there and drive to Aurora.”

  “The guy who nearly ran me over, Gage Kline, is from Chicago. Do you think there’s a connection?”

  “I’ll find out if there is.”

  Henry’s flight to Brownsville left ahead of Tanner’s plane to Chicago. Before leaving, Henry asked a question. “Once you’ve dealt with Fortunato, will all this be over?”

  “I’m not sure. Boss and his men, Diablo’s Doubles, they were just part of a bigger plan that’s already in motion. I think the next shoe will drop whether Fortunato is dead or not.”

  “He sent over twenty guys last time. What’s next, an army?”

  Tanner smiled. “That would be the natural assumption, wouldn’t it?”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “I won’t assume so. I’ll be on guard for anything.”

  “You’ve been fed a steady diet of fast balls, and now you think he might throw you a curve, is that it?”

  “Something like that.”

  Tanner’s flight was called. He boarded it while considering the possibilities of what he might find in Illinois. Fortunato could have a team of security personal guarding him, or he might be deadly in his own right. The truth turned out to be something that Tanner had never expected.

  18

  Open House

  Guy Hutchinson lived midblock on a street of quiet homes that all cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars. His house was made of brick and had a stone walkway with an adjacent cobblestone patio.

  The home was lit up brilliantly and the blinds had been left up to allow a view inside. There was also a note taped to the door. It was four words written in black magic marker on a sheet of white paper.

  WELCOME TANNER. I’M UNARMED.

  Tanner was viewing the note through a pair of binoculars. He was parked on the block behind the house that was across the street from Hutchinson’s home. A view through a wrought iron fence allowed him to see down a driveway and across to Hutchinson’s front door.

  Tanner pondered the note. If it was a trap, it was an odd one. Twice he had seen a man walk past one of the windows. The man was tall, good-looking, had a mustache, and seemed to be pacing while smoking a cigarette. He matched the description of Hutchinson that the hapless pilot of the helicopter had given him.

  Tanner watched the home for a few more minutes before driving off to park closer. An hour later he had done a thorough reconnaissance of the area and had uncovered no traps or signs of bodyguards.

  It was possible that the homes on either side of Hutchinson could be filled with armed men waiting to pounce, but that seemed unlikely.

  A bickering couple and two young kids had left the home on the right an hour earlier. From their strident conversation Tanner had learned that they were going to visit the wife’s mother. In the home on the left side, a preteen girl and her friends entered the house while staring at their cell phones. When the girl opened her door to enter, her younger brother had wet the girls down with a water gun. Of course, if you wanted to make things appear harmless, staging those two events would do the trick.

  Tired of playing the waiting game and watching, Tanner strolled up Hutchinson’s stone walkway and raised his hand to ring the doorbell. He hesitated at the last instant and knocked instead in case the doorbell button was rigged to deliver a lethal electric charge.

  Tanner grunted. Hutchinson’s welcome sign was turning him into a paranoid. He would have felt much better about things if there had been a trio of thuggish-looking armed guards standing on the front steps.

  The home had a pair of decorative, leaded glass doors at the entrance. Tanner could make out a shape approaching. It was a man, and although he couldn’t make out fine details through the opaque glass, he could see enough to know that man had nothing in his hands. The figure stopped ten feet from the door and asked a question. The voice was deep and resonant.

  “Who’s there?”

  “I’m the man you left the note for.”

  Silence, then, “The door’s unlocked. Please don’t shoot me.”

  Tanner wondered if the doorknob was electrified but then reached out and turned the damn thing anyway. He was tired of playing games.

  Hutchinson swallowed audibly as their eyes met, then he smiled when he saw that Tanner’s hands were empty.

  “The note worked. That’s good. And if you let me explain I know you’ll see that you have no reason to kill me.”

  “Why would you believe that? You’ve sent at least two teams of men to slaughter me. Why shouldn’t I kill you?”

  Hutchinson held up his hands at chest height. “That wasn’t me and I can prove it.”

  Minutes later, Tanner was in Hutchinson’s living room listening to a recording of the conversation that Hutchinson had had with the real Logan Fortunato. Before entering the room, Tanner told Hutchinson to lower all the window blinds. They then walked together as Tanner checked the home to make certain they were alone. When he was satisfied that there was no one lying in wait, ready to ambush him, they returned to the living room. They listened in silence as the recording played. Hutchinson’s baritone voice was contrasted against the man he was speaking with, whose voice was levels higher and carried with it a tone of condescension.

  “I don’t want anything to do with Tanner. If you’re going after him, I won’t be helping you.”

  “You truly are afraid of this man?”

  “I am. I also don’t plan to commit suicide by challenging him.”

  “Cipher is an important client. We make millions off of servicing them and they’re offering three times the usual fee for dealing with Tanner. If I refuse this contract, the relationship we’ve built with them will be in jeopardy.”

  “Yeah, but you’ll go on breathing. If you fail to kill Tanner, he’ll kill you.”

  “Hutchinson, if you abandon me like this there will be consequences.”

  “I don’t want to end our association but there are risks I won’t take. If the police arrest me someday, I’ll do time, yes, but I’ll still be alive. That’s not true if Tanner gets me in his sights.”

  “Fine. Quit. But remember this, I’ll make you pay a steep price for it.”

  Hutchinson laughed. “Logan, you won’t be alive to follow through on the threat. Not if you insist on going up against Tanner.”

  “You’re a coward!”

  “A live coward. Goodbye, Logan. Remember that I warned you when Tanner catches up to you.”

  Tanner listened to the recorded conversation. He had one question when it ended.

  “How do I find the real Fortunato?”

  “That I don’t know, but I do know how you might be able to track him down.”

  “If this is some sort of trick or a plan to walk me into a trap, you’re making a mistake.”

  Hutchinson shook his head furiously. “No traps and no tricks. Tanner, you just heard the conversation I had with Logan. I knew that the only way to survive you was to plead for mercy. I never sent anyone to kill you and I told Logan that he would regret doing so.” Hutchinson pointed at the tape player. “Logan Fortunato thinks that there’s no one his equal. I’ve known for a while that his ego and hubris would get him killed someday. He thinks he’s untouchable because he’s never been seen and no one but me even knows that he exists. He’s got everyone believing that I’m him, so that when trouble came, I would be the one in the crosshairs.”

  “You signed up for that, didn’t you?”

  “I did, and I’ve been paid extremely well to put myself in peril. Going up against you was a risk I was unwilling
to take.”

  “How do I track down Fortunato?”

  “We were talking on the phone one day when I heard a voice in the background. It was a voice that I knew. She’s a high-priced call girl named Gianna. A night with Gianna will cost you dear but she’s worth every penny.”

  “What do you expect me to do, abduct this woman and make her tell me where Fortunato lives?”

  “That would work, but it may not be necessary. Gianna will book a single date, but she also has a few regulars. If Logan is one of those regulars, Gianna could be followed right to him.”

  “A woman like that would have a handler, a pimp of some sort. She would also have someone watching her back.”

  “Jerome,” Hutchinson said.

  “Who’s Jerome?”

  “He’s the guy who drives Gianna to her appointments. He introduced himself to me the first time I paid for Gianna’s services. He made a point of letting his jacket slip open so that I could see the gun he had strapped to his belt.”

  “Describe Jerome.”

  “He’s a black man, a little taller than you and maybe carrying more muscle. He’s no hoodlum. He spoke well, dressed nicely, and he knew that print on the wall over there was a Matisse.”

  Tanner looked at the picture. He had studied art briefly as he tried to be knowledgeable about many things. If he’d been asked, he would have said that it was an early work of Pablo Picasso and not Henri Matisse.

  “So, you’re saying Jerome is intelligent. That’s good. A smart man will know when it’s in his best interest to share information.”

  “You’re going to question Jerome?”

  “Yeah, and you’re going to help me get to him by making a date with the hooker.”

  “But if I do that Jerome might guess that I set him up.”

  “He might. Listen, Hutchinson, you’ve been doing Logan Fortunato’s dirty work for years and now you expect to walk away clean? I won’t kill you if you help me get to Fortunato, but I don’t give a damn if somebody else does it. If you think this Jerome will want revenge then take a trip or move away. You’re lucky that I haven’t beaten this information out of you just for the hell of it.”

  Hutchinson nodded. “Maybe it is time that I found new pastures.” He smiled. “At least I’ll have one more night with Gianna.”

  Hutchinson sent a text off to the call girl. He told Tanner that she usually responded within an hour. It took her thirty-eight minutes to accept his request, but she wouldn’t be able to see him until four days later. Tanner was both pleased and annoyed by the delay. He wanted to end things as quickly as possible but would enjoy being able to spend time at home. He’d been away quite a bit lately.

  “I’ll be back in four days,” Tanner said as he was leaving. “If you run, I’ll find you.”

  “I’m not going to run.”

  “Do you know what make and model car Jerome drives?”

  “I never really caught a good look at it, but I think it’s a black Lexus. He parks in my driveway while he’s waiting.”

  Tanner tossed a thumb at the sign on the door. “How many days has that been there?”

  “Two days. The mailman asked me who Tanner was.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said that you were an assassin. He laughed and waved his hand at me.”

  “People seldom believe the truth when they hear it.”

  Hutchinson nodded. “I’ve noticed that too.”

  19

  Queen’s Gambit

  After he’d been back on the ranch for one day, Cody was tempted to say the hell with Fortunato and not return to Illinois.

  That would be a mistake. Fortunato and others might view his disinterest for reluctance to face another attack. If anyone ever thought that he feared a challenge, those seeking to build a rep would crawl out of the woodwork to take a crack at him the next time he stuck his head up. Fortunato had to be put down. His death might make Cipher reconsider their stance to treat him as an enemy. After all, whoever Logan Fortunato was, he was hiding behind a shield of anonymity just as the leaders of Cipher were. If he could be found and killed, why not them?

  Cody had been out for an early run when his phone alerted him that he had received a call on another phone that he owned. The other phone was a burner that he’d been using lately. Henry had the number and so did Crash, but neither of them would be calling so early. They would also call his real number, which they both had. There was one other person he had given the burner phone number to, Karl Weber.

  Tanner stopped running and listened to the voicemail message. It wasn’t from Weber. It was from his daughter, Amelie. She sounded as if she’d been crying and was out of breath.

  “Mr. Tanner… this is Amelie. I need your help again. Oh, I hope you get this message. My father and I thought we were… we thought we were safe, but these men attacked us… and there were so many of them. Papa tackled one of them so that I could get away and I’ve been running all night. If you get this message, please come get me. I’m at the Regal Diner in Dallas. Oh God, I’m so scared.”

  The message ended. Tanner wondered why Weber had stayed in the Dallas area. Then he remembered the regret Weber displayed over having to give up the farmland he had inherited. He might have stayed in the area while trying to find a way to profit from that asset. If so, greed had been his downfall.

  Cody couldn’t call Amelie from his own phone, so he returned home to call her on the burner phone that was in his desk.

  The call was answered on the first ring. “Tanner?”

  “Yes. Are you safe?”

  “I think so. Can you help me?”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “Papa was lying about getting on a bus and leaving. For some reason he wanted to stay in the city for another day so that he could talk to a lawyer. I think it had something to do with the farm.”

  “When were you attacked?”

  “We were staying at a motel when we heard noise and loud voices coming from the parking lot. We looked outside to see a lot of men wearing suits going door to door. They looked like police detectives or federal agents, but their cars didn’t have those flashing lights. Papa recognized one of them and knew that he worked for the people who were after us.”

  “Is that when you ran?”

  “Papa and I slipped out of the room, but we were seen by one of those guys. Papa told me to run and I took off across the road while he fought with the man. I… I heard shooting. I pray that Papa is all right.”

  “How many men were there?”

  “Dozens. They were everywhere. The motel is a huge place with over a hundred rooms and two floors, but it seemed like they were near every room that we could see.”

  “Are you still at the diner?”

  “Yes. How soon can you get here?”

  “I’m not nearby, but I can get to you in about four hours.”

  “Four hours? Oh God, that’s going to seem like an eternity.”

  “You could go to the cops and they would keep you safe.”

  “They’d also arrest me.”

  “Yeah, they would, but you would be alive.”

  “I don’t want to go to the police.”

  “Stay put and I’ll get there as soon as I can. If you have to leave, then call me and tell me where you’ve run to.”

  “Hurry, Tanner, please?”

  “I’m coming.”

  In Dallas, Amelie smiled as the call ended. Tanner was on his way and he didn’t suspect a thing. Weber’s statement that Amelie had gone through a rebellious streak in her teens had been an understatement. Amelie had runaway often, was involved with drugs, and had been with one man who was a career criminal.

  She had been only sixteen at the time, but she hadn’t been an innocent who was led astray. She’d been a party girl, a high school dropout, and it was Amelie who had planned the crime she and her lover had committed.

  Weber had made sure that she never wanted for anything but was never there when she nee
ded him. It was because of that that Amelie gravitated toward older men. One of those men was an ex-con named Willie Ralston. Ralston was thirty-one when he met sixteen-year-old Amelie. Ralston had served time for armed robbery after he and a friend robbed a check cashing business. Amelie talked him into committing another crime. The kidnapping of a former classmate.

  The victim’s name was Tonya Flores. Tonya was the only daughter of Juan Flores. Juan had come to Dallas from Puerto Rico at eighteen and gotten a job as a janitor and dishwasher in a restaurant. By the time he was forty-five he owned seventeen restaurants and two hotels. That was also the year he married and became a father. Juan adored Tonya and spoiled her. Tonya never wanted for anything. She was beautiful, a talented pianist, and became head cheerleader. Amelie hated her with a passion. She and Tonya had never exchanged two words, but Amelie despised her all the same. She couldn’t stand it that one of her peers had it so much better than she did. It wasn’t fair.

  On a night when Tonya was driving home alone after visiting a friend, Amelie drove up behind her at a red light and purposely bumped into her with the stolen car she was driving. Tonya stepped out of her yellow sportscar to see what damage had been done.

  Amelie had wondered if Tonya would recognize her, but the other girl displayed no reaction indicating that she remembered her. That angered Amelie. It shouldn’t have. She and Tonya had only one class together the year before Amelie had dropped out of school, a school that had over two thousand students. Amelie had also cut that class almost as many times as she had shown up for it.

  Willie Ralston pulled up in a van and asked if he could help. When Tonya turned to look at him, Amelie slammed a wrench against the back of her head, knocking her out.