The TANNER Series - Books 10 -12 (Tanner Box Set Book 4)

by Remington Kane

  To him, that meant companionship, but to her it meant marriage, and although she spent many nights there, she refused to move in.

  Spenser took a swig from the bottle and talked to himself.

  “Why don’t you marry that woman? You know you love her.”

  Did he love her, really love her? He trusted her with his secrets... well... most of his secrets, but he didn’t know how she would handle the big one. The one that made him think about going after Tanner.

  He heard the sound of the motor while the truck was still a mile away, because sound traveled well over the empty land surrounding his house. He also recognized the engine and knew that it was Amy coming to see him.

  He was only wearing a pair of faded jeans and the hair on his chest glistened in the light of the fire he’d built upon entering the house.

  Spenser padded over to the door in his bare feet and opened it just as Amy stepped out of her pickup truck.

  The truck had an emblem on its doors with the name of Amy’s store on it, The Trading Post, and she often used the truck to make deliveries. Amy owned the store with her brother, who was also a friend of Spenser’s.

  In the sky to the north, Spenser saw a flash of lightning and realized that a storm was headed his way. He hoped it wasn’t a portent of things to come.

  As Amy drew closer, he smiled.

  “Hi honey,”

  Amy walked over and hugged him.

  “I didn’t like the way we parted, and I didn’t want you to think that I was mad at you because you cancelled the trip to New Orleans. I’m more worried about you going after that man, Tanner. He sounds extremely dangerous.”

  “Oh he is, that’s for certain. But you know that I can handle myself.”

  Spenser and Amy went inside and settled together on the sofa.

  “There’s another thing too, Spenser. How do you expect to find him?”

  Spenser had been taking a sip of his beer, and when Amy asked her question, he grinned around the lip of the bottle.

  “Well honey, a man like Tanner will make himself known eventually.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that any dudes that come at him hoping to claim that bounty will not live long enough to regret it, and if I had to guess, Tanner will make certain that they die memorably. That way, it discourages the next bunch.”

  “But it won’t discourage you, will it?”

  “No, but it will let me know where he is, and then I’ll travel there and find him.”

  Amy snuggled against Spenser.

  “A million dollars isn’t worth your life.”

  “I agree, and don’t worry; I’ll be fine.”

  But Amy was worried, and she held Spenser just a little tighter.

  CHAPTER 14 – Alone at last

  Tanner’s motel room, Room 32, was bordered by an alley on its left side.

  He had scouted the area before checking in and realized that the alley would make a good trap, were he to encounter trouble.

  However, he had planned to use that measure only were he to be pursued by one or two men. When Tanner saw that five men were exiting Georgie’s vehicle, he switched to Plan B.

  After entering the motel room, he left the door ajar and rushed to the door on the right side of the room. The door connected his room, Room 32, to Room 33, which was also his room, as he had taken both rooms when he checked in.

  Tanner was through the connecting doors in a flash and had them both locked before Georgie and his boys hit the door to Room 32.

  In Room 33, Tanner cinched a belt around his waist. It was a tactical belt with a pouch on its side. It held several spare magazines, a compass, and a flashlight. But, it was one of the items inside the pouch that Tanner would put to use.

  He grabbed his pre-packed duffle bag from the foot of the bed, even as he removed one of two fragmentation grenades from the belt pouch. Tanner pulled the pin, and after opening the door that led outside, he released the spoon and the grenade armed itself.

  ***

  As Georgie and his men rushed into Tanner’s room, Room 32, Alexa found herself surrounded by The Tin Horsemen.

  Scar was coming at her from the front, reaching out for her as if she would just stand there and let him grab her.

  Alexa lashed out with the knife in her right hand and slashed the fool across both palms, then, while still in motion, she kicked to her left and caught Bruise square in the teeth with the heel of her boot.

  Scar backed away while looking in shock at his bleeding hands, while Bruise toppled backwards onto the parking lot blacktop.

  Being stupid, Wound lowered his head and charged at Alexa like a bull, and like a bull, he wound up gored, as Alexa jammed one of her blades deep into his right shoulder.

  ***

  Tanner left Room 33 with the lit grenade in his hand and when he looked to his left, he saw Alexa cut one of the bikers while kicking another. The fluidity of her movements told him that the woman was a trained fighter.

  He had to look away from her, because he had his own fighting to do, or rather, he had a toss to make.

  The last of Georgie’s men had left the door to Room 32 open after entering. Tanner tossed the grenade inside, and when it hit the floor, the five men all looked down at it.

  ***

  Georgie was farther into the room than the others were, as he had been heading to check out the bathroom. When he heard the clunk of the grenade hitting the floor, he turned to look at it, realized what it was, and dived towards the open bathroom doorway.

  ***

  After lobbing the grenade into the room, Tanner slammed the door shut and crouched down beside the wall in the alley.

  An instant later, the blast occurred. The windows seemed to billow, and then they shattered, but to Tanner’s surprise, the motel room door had stayed in its frame, although its middle section was missing, along with its doorknob, and the side of Georgie’s car was filled with pockmarks from the shrapnel and debris.

  When Tanner stood, he saw that Alexa had defeated the other two bikers. One had a blade sticking out of his shoulder, while the last one was sitting on the ground and cupping his crotch with both hands.

  He smiled. He always liked a woman that could fight.

  ***

  When the door to the motel room flew open, Tanner drew his gun while wondering how anyone could still be on their feet after such a blast.

  It was Georgie. He stumbled from the room like a drunk walking on the deck of a ship in rough seas, and then he fell face first atop the pavement and breathed his last.

  Georgie’s backside looked as if it had been fed through a meat grinder, and blood seeped from dozens of small wounds.

  Tanner put his gun away, got in his car, and started the engine.

  ***

  Alexa called to Tanner. “Wait!”

  But Tanner didn’t wait, and he had the car in motion even as the door on every occupied room popped open, as the other guests came outside to see what had made the explosion that awakened them.

  Alexa rushed to her van to pursue Tanner, but only after she appeased her curiosity and peered inside Room 32.

  A second later, she so wished she hadn’t looked, as she viewed what a fragmentation grenade could do to several bodies in close quarters.

  She was driving out of the parking lot as the desk clerk left the office, and although Tanner had a head start, his car was still in sight.

  ***

  As Alexa drove onto the highway in pursuit, she thought about her first sight of Tanner.

  She had felt something, strong emotions, but she wasn’t quite sure what they were.

  The sketch had not done him justice, for although the eyes looked like the eyes in the drawing with the fierceness burning in them, there was something else in those eyes as well.

  It was intelligence, a deep intelligence, and she sensed decency in the man. That he was intelligent had not surprised Alexa, but the sense of decency she felt emanating from him was a shock.<
br />
  The man was a hired killer, a gun for pay, but then, hadn’t she killed as well?

  Why did she think of herself as a good person? Was it because she only killed those who were in league with Alonso Alvarado?

  Yes. It justified her killing, but she was still a killer, a murderer, and she sometimes wondered what her grandmother would think of her. Would her abuela be proud, or perhaps horrified?

  Alexa shook her head as she chased away the speculation.

  Everyone has to live their own life the way they see fit, and she didn’t regret any of the killing she had done. In fact, she would do much more, hundreds more if necessary. She would kill and kill again until she reached the target of her wrath, Alonso Alvarado.

  He would die by her hand. She knew this the way she knew her own name.

  She was Alexa Cazares, the last of the Cazares Family, but she was also Alexa Lucia, daughter of Rodrigo, her Papa.

  She would make herself proud, kill as many as she had to kill, and then stand for sentencing come judgement day.

  And whatever her fate in the afterlife, she would face it with her chin held high.

  ***

  Tanner looked in his rear view mirror and saw that the van was gaining on him.

  He nibbled at the inside of his cheek as opposing emotions plagued him. One side of him was telling him to stop the car and talk to the woman, while the other side was concerned about her very presence.

  How was it possible that she had found him? Was she even looking for him, or was it all some huge coincidence?

  He shook his head.

  Her appearance at the motel where he was staying would be too big a coincidence, but wasn’t she wanted by Alvarado as well?

  Again, he was torn by opposite desires.

  Get away from the woman, lose her, or, pull over and talk to her and get answers.

  He soon realized that the matter was going to be taken out of his hands, as the car began to slow on its own. When he looked down at the gas gauge, he saw that the tank was empty.

  He had nearly half a tank left when he left the motel, but then he realized what must have happened. It was the debris from the grenade blast. A piece of it must have punctured the gas tank.

  He brought the already coasting vehicle to a halt, got out, and walked around to the passenger side, where he bent over and saw half a door handle sticking out of the fuel tank.

  The woman, Alexa? Yes, she had said her name was Alexa. The woman’s van was drawing nearer.

  Tanner took out his gun covertly, so that no one in the passing cars would see it, and then he watched as Alexa pulled up and parked behind him on the shoulder.

  She showed him that her hands were empty, and then stepped out of the van slowly. When she walked around to the front of it, they both gazed at each other until Alexa broke the silence, and spoke to Tanner in English, which displayed her Spanish accent.

  “My real name is Alexa Cazares, and Alonso Alvarado killed my family when I was just a girl. I’m going to kill the bastard, and I would like your help, Tanner.”

  Tanner placed the gun behind his back, in his waistband, and after grabbing his things from the car, he walked towards the van.

  “Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”

  Alexa pointed at his car.

  “What about that?”

  “It’s not working, and it’s burned anyway, just like the ID I used to check into that motel.”

  When they were both sitting in the van side by side, they looked at each other again without speaking; then, Alexa placed the van in gear and headed down the highway.

  CHAPTER 15 – Wounds, new and old

  Scar sighed with relief as he rubbed ointment between his slashed palms before bandaging them.

  He and the other Tin Horsemen were in the parking lot of a 24-hour drugstore, tending to the wounds that Alexa had given them.

  Abrasion had gotten off easy with just a kick to the balls, but he was still so sore that he could barely ride his motorcycle.

  Bruise had a missing tooth and a split lip from the kick he received, and he was busy wrapping a bandage around Wound’s shoulder.

  Scar had yanked the knife out of it to the tune of Wound’s howls, and after slathering an entire tube of antibacterial cream on the deep cut, Bruise was attempting to wrap it tight to stop the bleeding.

  Scar shook his head in disgust.

  A woman, a woman had kicked their asses, and not some Amazonian broad either, but a woman hot enough to be in a centerfold.

  “We gotta find that bitch,” Scar said.

  Bruise nodded in agreement and held up a flyer with a drawing of Alexa on it.

  “She’s worth money too. This flyer was in Georgie’s car. I also got his phone; it was left on the dashboard.”

  Abrasion spoke as he massaged his balls through the fabric of his jeans.

  “You stole Georgie’s phone?”

  Bruise laughed, and the missing tooth in the front of his mouth made him look even dumber than usual.

  “He don’t need it. Hell, you saw him, Tanner blew him to bits.”

  Scar held up his bandaged hands. Like everything else he’d ever attempted, he’d done a piss poor job of wrapping his cuts, and the ends of the bandages hung loose and blew in the breeze.

  “New plan; we leave Tanner alone and go after the woman. She might be worth a lot less, but I think we can take her... and I don’t want to get blown up.”

  “That’s fine by me,” Abrasion said, and the others agreed.

  “I’ll know that van again if I see it,” Bruise said. “It had all them tinted windows and new tires.”

  Scar straddled his bike.

  “All right, we’ll look for her in the morning. First, let’s get a motel room for the night.”

  “With what?” Wound said. “We spent most of that money your mother gave you on buying gas and supplies.”

  Scar reached in a pocket with just his fingers, so he wouldn’t hurt his hand. When his fingers came back out, they were holding a credit card.

  “This is my mom’s card; she won’t care if I use it.”

  The four of them rode off to find a place to stay, not knowing that Tanner and Alexa were just a few miles away.

  ***

  After spotting a nearly hidden driveway on a back road, Tanner had instructed Alexa to pull the van over. What had caught his eye was the stack of white plastic wrappers.

  Each wrapper held a bundle of flyers from local merchants and supermarkets. They were piled in front of an oak tree and behind a hedge that was a few feet past the entrance to the driveway, and there must have been dozens of them.

  Once parked, Tanner told Alexa that he was going to check out the house and to keep the engine running so they would be able to move quickly if they had to.

  Alexa said that she would, and Tanner disappeared into the darkness. When he returned just a few minutes later, he told her that the house looked lived in, but that there appeared to be no one at home and all the lights were off, despite the vehicle parked under a carport.

  “I rang the bell and then went around to the back door and knocked hard on it. If we’re lucky, whoever lives here is away on vacation.”

  Minutes later, they were inside the home. Alexa had picked the lock on the rear door in the kitchen like it wasn’t even there, and Tanner had been impressed.

  The home sat back from the road and was surrounded by trees on three sides. The forth side opened up onto a large field that stretched for over a mile, and beyond that was a roadway, discernable because of the lights of the vehicles moving on it.

  Upon entering, both Tanner and Alexa wrinkled their nose. The house had a musty odor. To the relief of both of them, the electricity was still on, and they looked around the kitchen.

  A newspaper sat open on the table as if someone had just been reading it, and there was a coffee cup sitting beside it.

  Tanner looked inside the cup and saw a dark sediment at its bottom, as Alexa pointed at the new
spaper.

  “Look at the date. This paper is over four years old.”

  Tanner took out his gun and motioned for Alexa to follow him. There was no door between the kitchen and the hallway, but beyond the threshold, the home looked dark.

  Alexa handed Tanner a small flashlight from her purse, and he shined it into the hall. He held it in his left hand with his arm extended out from his body. If someone were to fire at the light, he might have a wounded hand, but the rest of him would likely be spared.

  However, nothing happened, but there was an open door across from the kitchen entrance. When Tanner moved closer and shined the light that way, a set of wooden stairs were revealed.

  With his gun at the ready, Tanner stepped to the opening and shined the light down the steps. That was when he and Alexa saw the body lying at the foot of the stairs.

  They moved away from the basement, and Tanner shined the light about the hall.

  Alexa spotted an odd sight by the front door and silently pointed it out to Tanner. After looking at it for several seconds, Tanner moved back to the basement and tried turning the light on. Nothing happened, and he thought that the bulb must have burned out a long time ago. He then played the flashlight beam over the body.

  The corpse was desiccated, shriveled, and had been an old man when alive, judging by the white hair visible at the back of its head. It wore khakis and a red flannel shirt, but only one brown slipper.

  When Tanner moved the beam around, he saw the other slipper. It was lying on the third stair from the top and blended in with the dark wood.

  He then shined the beam back at the pile of envelopes lying against the front door and knew what had happened.

  Alexa had figured it out as well, and she spoke it aloud.

  “The old man fell down the stairs... a long time ago. How is that possible?”

  “It happens now and then. I once read of a man who died of a heart attack in his apartment and wasn’t discovered for over six years. All of his bills were on auto pay, even his rent. He was found sitting in front of his television when a pipe burst and had to be fixed.”

  “Still, didn’t someone miss him?”