The Tanner Series - Books 1-11: Tanner - The hit man with a heart

by Remington Kane

  On the bridge, Cooper and his men also stared in amazement, but seconds later, Cooper was on his two-way radio and giving instructions for the train to be intercepted.

  Sara watched the train until the last car disappeared, and her hope dispersed along with it.

  Tanner lay on his back atop tons of sand and felt the movement of the train beneath him.

  His chest burned where the bullet had entered. He needed medical care soon, or else risk infection and death.

  The wound was his greatest ache, but not the sole one, as the impact of landing on the sand rattled him to his bones. He suspected that a rib on his left side was either cracked or broken.

  In the meantime, his pursuers would keep coming, so he would keep moving and do whatever it took to stay alive and free.

  He lay there in the sand watching the sky grow dark as night approached, and he let out a great laugh, which only made his wounds hurt more.

  Yet, still he laughed, as he realized that the rain had finally ceased. As he continued to stare at the sky, a star appeared, like a beacon of hope. Tanner decided to take it as an omen of better things to come.

  188

  There’s Got To Be A Morning After

  The next day, on a morning bright with sunshine, Sara met with Cameron for breakfast at the Ridge Creek Diner.

  Cameron’s left arm was bandaged and in a sling, and she had gone against doctor’s orders and not stayed in the hospital overnight.

  Tanner was still free. When the train car he had fallen into was checked, the only trace of the man was a small quantity of blood, which had mixed with the sand.

  Sara knew it was useless to search for him anymore and was heading back to New York City.

  “You really think he’ll come after you?” Cameron said.

  “I know he will, and I might never see him coming.”

  “He may not even be alive. It sounds like you gave him a serious wound.”

  “Not serious enough. I had been aiming for his heart, but the shot hit him high.”

  “If he surfaces again, you’ll get him.”

  “Or he’ll get me.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself, Sara; it sounds like you nearly bagged that asshole.”

  “I came close, but close just means I lost.”

  “You’ll get him, mark my words.”

  Sara smiled wistfully, and when she looked around the diner, she saw several people gazing their way.

  “We seem to be of interest to the townspeople.”

  Cameron nodded. “Yeah, more went on in this town yesterday than in the last ten years before it. We were a big part of that. You want to know something else, I’ve been offered the job of Chief of Police.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I am. Three town council members appeared at my motel last night and congratulated me on saving those kids and killing one of the bank robbers. I told them that I didn’t do it alone, but when they heard I was a bounty hunter and used to be a cop, they made the offer.”

  “Are you going to take it?”

  “I told them that I’d think it over. I also told them to move the damn jail out of a flood zone, although to be fair, that lake hadn’t overflowed its banks in nearly a hundred years.”

  “I think you’d be a good chief, and it’s actually not such a bad town.”

  They finished their meals and talked more while enjoying a second cup of coffee.

  “So, the money was just washed away?” Cameron asked.

  “Most of it, yes, but Cooper and his people did recover nearly three hundred thousand dollars, and they’re still looking, but that stream flows into the Delaware River, so the money may be lost forever.”

  Cameron smiled. “I was thinking about those kids, Amy and Dean. What if they had taken the money without anybody seeing them? If they were smart, they might have kept it with no one being the wiser.”

  “Instead, they nearly got killed,” Sara said, “I hoped they learned their lesson.”

  At that moment, across town, Amy was placing an envelope on the coffee table before her mother, who had fallen asleep on the sofa the night before, while watching TV.

  The envelope held a card. The card expressed Amy’s handwritten wish that her mother get the help she needed, and also said goodbye.

  Amy left her home for the last time and found Dean waiting for her. Along with her purse, Amy carried a brown teddy bear and a suitcase.

  Dean smiled at her and thought she looked beautiful in her new red dress; it was the one item from their spending spree that the cops had failed to reclaim.

  When Amy reached him, Dean showed her the morning paper. She read the part about most of the money being lost to the river and was relieved to know that both robbers were dead.

  Dean had borrowed a friend’s car and told him that he could pick it up later at the Amtrak station, which was in a neighboring town.

  Amy and Dean had decided to go to Florida to live, and although he still had two weeks to go until he was considered an adult, Dean doubted that anyone would come looking for them over that infraction of the law, while they planned to take courses and finish high school online.

  After arriving at the station, Amy settled on a scarred wooden bench while Dean went off to buy the train tickets, but he returned to her only moments later.

  “I need another two hundred dollars.”

  “Why so much?” Amy asked.

  Dean grinned. “We’re going first class.”

  Amy grinned back at him, and after looking around to see if anyone was watching, she undid the Velcro seal and stuck her hand inside the bear. When her hand emerged, it held five hundred-dollar bills.

  “There’s extra, for other things later.”

  Dean kissed her. “Thank God, you’re smart.”

  The bear had been Amy’s idea. They had come so close to losing the money when Lydia came to her home that Amy decided it didn’t make sense to keep all the money in one place.

  The backpack that Tyler wore when he went into the water had several hundred thousand in cash, yes, but only on top. Beneath that, Amy and Dean had filled the pack with dozens of note pads, which were similar in size and thickness to the bundles of cash.

  When Sherry grabbed the backpack and confirmed that it held the money, she only checked one layer, and had been deceived by the pack’s weight. Had Sherry dug deeper, she would have discovered the truth.

  When it was time to board, Amy and Dean climbed on the train and headed toward a new life in Florida.

  Minus the twenty-five grand they gave Tanner, and the three hundred thousand taken by Tyler, Dean and Amy still had well over half a million dollars, all of it unmarked and untraceable.

  They were out of the rain and headed for The Sunshine State.

  Back in Ridge Creek, Amber and Brittany were reading the morning news with great interest as they sipped their coffee.

  The stories about the bank robbery were fascinating, as well as the search for a man named Tanner, whom the girls were certain was the same man they knew by the name of Romeo.

  They both agreed that what was written about their friend couldn’t be true, and they wondered if they would ever see him again.

  Amber made a face of displeasure as she took a sip of her coffee and found it to be cold. She had been so engrossed in reading about the bank robbery and the goings on at the jail that she had forgotten it.

  She rose from her chair and walked to the microwave to heat it, and that’s when she found the twenty grand Tanner had left them inside the machine.

  There was also a note.

  DON’T WAIT. OPEN YOUR SHOP NOW — ROMEO.

  The girls did as the note said, and weeks later a new salon opened in Philadelphia.

  It was named ROMEO’S.

  BOOK 5

  THE LIFE & DEATH OF CODY PARKER – TANNER BOOK 5

  In the town of Stark, Texas, Tanner faces ghosts from his past as he tries to keep history from repeating itself.

  189


  King Of The Road

  Forty hours after he leapt off a pedestrian walkway and onto a train, Tanner awoke to find himself still riding the rails. He was also fighting for his life, as a large man lifted him from the floor and slammed him against a wall of the train car.

  Tanner, still weak from his wounds, slid to the floor and let out a moan. The moan was real, as was the pain that gave it birth, but he exaggerated his reaction and let his hands drop onto his lap.

  The behemoth who had assaulted Tanner glared down at him in disgust, then started in on an old man who was cowering in a corner.

  “I want everything you two got, otherwise, I’ll toss you off the train.”

  The man had a long black beard that nearly covered his entire face, leaving just a potato-size nose and two dark eyes showing.

  Tanner made his move as the brute reached for the old man. He sent an uppercut between the big man’s legs to smash his testicles. The brute bent over so fast that he slammed the crown of his head against the wall beside the old man and suffered a cut from the impact.

  Tanner had given the punch everything he had, but because he was weakened from the gunshot wound he’d recently suffered, it was a question of who would recover first, him or the big man.

  It was Tanner who recovered first. He jabbed stiff fingers at the man’s throat, but the blow was cushioned by the woolly beard and had little effect.

  Then Tanner watched with surprise as the old man kicked the big man in the gut and sent him tumbling backwards.

  Tanner grabbed the brute by his beard and dragged him toward the open door of the moving train car, with the intention of pushing him off. The man realized what he planned to do, and in a panic, he made it to his feet.

  Tanner let go of the beard, tried to hit him in the throat again and managed only to jab the man on the ear.

  The bearded man growled and reached out a hand to grab Tanner’s throat, but Tanner ducked beneath the man’s outstretched arm and rammed his clenched fists into the bully's gut. The man bellowed in fear as he nearly fell from the moving car, but he managed to snag the edge of the door with his right hand.

  Unfortunately for him, his weight caused the door to slide shut, while most of his body was still leaning outside the train.

  Once the door slammed into his left foot, which was supporting his weight, his fate was decided. He tumbled out of the train car with a scream on his lips, as the door slammed shut behind him.

  The old man came over and slid open the door to peer back down the tracks. “Ouch! That tumble will have him spending time in a hospital for sure.”

  When the old man looked back at Tanner, he saw that he was down on one knee.

  “You’re dizzy, aren’t you? Well, that’s no surprise after the fever you’ve had.”

  Tanner stood on weak legs, walked over to the back wall, and slid down to a sitting position with his legs straight out in front of him. The old man brought him a bottle of water that was half-filled, and Tanner drained it.

  Tanner stared at the old man and found that he had vague memories concerning him.

  “You helped me, didn’t you?”

  “I got that bullet out of you.”

  Tanner nodded, as the events of the last two days came back to him.

  After leaving Ridge Creek, he had evaded being captured by leaping into a moving coal car, which passed within feet of the train car full of sand he’d first leapt into. By the time that second train finally came to a stop, he found himself in Bowling Green, Kentucky, with a throat as dry as the sand he once laid upon.

  Judging by the position of the sun, it was mid-morning. Tanner realized he must have slept for hours. He had a fever to go with the dry throat. After checking the wound in his chest, he knew it needed tending to or it would become infected, if it hadn’t already done so.

  There was construction going on at the train depot in Kentucky. Inside the job trailer of a plumbing contractor Tanner found bottled water and a first aid kit, along with a bag of potato chips.

  After gobbling down the chips, he went through the two desks in the office and found a pint of whisky, along with a prescription bottle with eight pills remaining inside.

  The pills were white, oval-shaped and labeled as cephalexin, an antibiotic usually prescribed for upper respiratory infections. According to the date on the pharmacy label, the pills had likely expired. However, thieves, like beggars, can’t be choosers.

  After cleaning his wound with the whisky, Tanner downed two of the pills and pocketed the bottle, then he considered finding somewhere on the property to rest up.

  It was not to be. The office had a window in the wall, and through it, Tanner had seen a man wearing sunglasses talking to two cops who were inside a patrol car. The man with the sunglasses was pointing toward the trailer he was in.

  The man must have seen him enter the trailer, which had been locked and pried open by Tanner using a claw hammer he’d found nearby.

  Tanner had stuffed the bandages and painkillers from the first aid kit into a pocket of his cargo pants. It was as he was doing that, he realized he no longer had the gun he had used in Ridge Creek, the one which had been the chief of police’s duty weapon.

  The empty gun had been tucked in his waistband, but it must have fallen out along the way; Tanner’s best guess is that it was still in the train car that carried the coal.

  Acquiring a new weapon would have to wait, and Tanner left the trailer before the cops could trap him inside. He’d made it clear of the trailer, but when more cops joined the hunt, Tanner again climbed aboard a train car, riding inside for once, and traveled toward who knew where.

  The train just kept rolling, and as it did, Tanner felt himself become more feverish. He swallowed more of the antibiotics but doubted they would work any better than the first dose had.

  In time, he slept, but awoke to see an old man peering down at him with a concerned expression. He knew the man was old because he glimpsed the deep wrinkles around the man’s eyes, but he could see little detail in the gloom of the darkened train car.

  “That bullet must come out,” the old man said, and Tanner had nodded in agreement.

  “Where are we?”

  “Just outside Dallas.”

  “Texas?”

  “Yeah.”

  The old man had held a bottle of water to his lips and Tanner drank it greedily, while realizing how weak he had grown. He knew he was hot with fever. He also realized that it was night again and had a vague memory of stumbling out of one train car and climbing into another.

  “Doctor,” he said.

  The old man smiled. “Just call me, Doc.”

  And then Tanner was out again.

  The next time he opened his eyes was when he was rudely awakened by the bearded man he had shoved off the train.

  Tanner stood and felt the pain in his wound. When he looked at it, he saw it had been bandaged. He lifted the bloodstained gauze that had been taped in place and found a neat row of blue stitches that appeared to be made of simple sewing thread. He looked down at the old man, who was seated on the floor of the train car.

  “You do decent work.”

  “Thank you. And you’re not the first man I’ve had to stitch up on the fly.”

  Tanner’s clothes were damp with sweat and he smelled sour, but when he laid a hand on his forehead, he could tell that the fever had broken. He looked out through the open door and saw desert, but he could also make out a highway in the distance.

  When his bladder reminded him there were more urgent matters than sightseeing, Tanner stood at the edge of the open door, whipped it out, and watched his stream wet the weeds that grew between his train and the tracks on the opposite side.

  “Where are we?”

  The old man pointed toward the south. “We should be pulling into the train yard at Culver, Texas, in about twenty minutes.”

  Tanner turned his head and blinked at the old man, as surprise animated his usually stoic features.

&nb
sp; “Culver?”

  “Yeah, there’s not much there but the train yard, but to the east is the town of—”

  “Stark,” Tanner said. “To the east is Stark, Texas.”

  “I guess you’ve been there before, because Stark is barely a dot on the map.”

  Tanner nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been there before,” he said, and his mind drifted off into memory.

  190

  Cody Parker

  STARK, TEXAS, SEPTEMBER 1997

  The young man with the trim beard calling himself Tanner had stopped on the side of the road to consult a map. That was when he spotted a dog being chased across a field by three coyotes.

  The dog was a beagle; his short legs were no match for the predators who pursued him. Tanner guessed that the coyotes would catch up to the dog within seconds.

  When something on the dog’s neck twinkled, Tanner assumed it was a license or name tag attached to a collar. That meant that the hound was someone’s pet. He thought about trying to shoot the beasts pursuing it, but his gun lacked the range and would be useless.

  Four seconds later, the fastest of the coyotes moved within inches of the dog. That was when Tanner saw the creature’s head explode. He heard the first rifle shot, then watched the other two coyotes be torn apart by gunfire, followed by the echo of two more blasts.

  Tanner looked over toward the right where a man held a rifle steady. It was perched on the top horizontal slat of a white fence and at least a hundred yards away. The man had hit three running targets with consecutive shots from that distance, a feat that Tanner would find difficult to duplicate.

  When the man sprang over the fence and began walking toward the quivering hound he had saved, Tanner tossed the map back in his car and went out to meet him. Tanner was closer to the dog, so he was closer to the dead coyotes as well. When he checked the bodies, he saw that all three had been put down by head wounds.