Tanner got down on one knee and spoke to Martillo. “I left you alive so that you could enjoy the rest of the show. I’m going to burn this place down around you.”
Martillo gazed up at Tanner with eyes full of hate, as he mumbled out words past bloody jagged stumps that used to be teeth, set in a jaw that canted to the left.
“Who… are… you?”
“I’m death!” Tanner said, and then he rushed from the room as Martillo struggled in vain to stand, or even crawl.
Tanner rocketed down the stairs. It wasn’t until he reached the bottom that he realized the body of the accountant wasn’t on the landing.
He went back up and saw that the damaged computer was sitting in a puddle of blood, but that the man himself had escaped.
There was no time to search for him and he was of little consequence, so Tanner went about applying the finishing touches.
Before gathering the materials he needed, he took in the view of the twisting road that led to the villa. He saw the headlights of three cars. Two of the cars were at the bottom and still a few minutes away, while the first one was farther along and would arrive sooner. Its occupants still had to deal with rolling back the locked gates and gaining entrance.
Tanner was intending to head toward a shed on the side of the house, where he knew the groundskeeper kept gasoline for the lawnmower, but as soon as he stepped out onto the patio, he saw something just as good by the red brick grill.
A minute later, he had squirted a liter of lighter fluid throughout the house and up the stairs. After setting a rolled newspaper on fire, he heard the squeal of brakes, followed by the sound of car doors opening and closing outside.
He waited until the first of the fresh guards stepped through the doorway. When a man appeared holding an assault rifle, Tanner dropped the flaming newspaper, which set the home ablaze and drove the man back outside with his pant leg on fire.
Tanner ran back to the bedroom where Martillo still lay moaning on the floor. He then emptied the last few drops of the lighter fluid onto the bed and set it aflame.
“Burn in hell, Martillo!”
Martillo wasn’t listening; his gaze was concentrated upon the flaming bed and the smoke filling the room.
Tanner turned his back on him, sprinted onto the balcony, and leapt out into the night to fall into the pool below. When he surfaced from beneath the water, he found the air thick with smoke, as flames lit the villa with an eerie glow.
Tanner made it to the back wall, scrambled over it with some difficulty, thanks to the wound on his side, and disappeared into the night, only pausing once to look back at the glow of flames caused by his handiwork.
He whispered, “That was for you, Cody,” and then he faded like a shadow at dawn.
223
“Say My Name.”
At the Reyes Ranch, Tonya joined Tanner at the small cemetery that held the remains of the Parkers.
Tonya was wearing a blue dress. Her tanned legs were shapely, while just a touch of cleavage showed up top.
“I come here at least once a year, usually on the twins’ birthday. I still miss Jill and Jessie very much.”
Tanner turned and looked at her, saw in her eyes that she knew, that she’d remembered. He felt the strange sense of relief that the kinship of that knowledge gave him.
“You three were more like sisters than friends,” he said.
Tonya took his hand. “I remembered you the first time I saw you, but it had been a lot of years and, for obvious reasons, my mind rejected the feelings and thoughts I had. I spent the last few days trying to recall the name of the man who had been staying here at the time of the murders, and I finally did last night. His name was Tanner.”
“Yes.”
Tonya pointed down at the grave before them, the grave of Cody Parker, then she turned and took his face in her hands.
“How is it possible you’re standing here?”
“It was Tanner, the other Tanner, he saved me.”
“And you’re really, you’re…”
“Say it.”
“You’re Cody Parker.”
Tanner nodded.
“Yes, I’m Cody Parker.”
224
Apprentice
THE PARKER RANCH, STARK, TEXAS, SEPTEMBER 1997
Cody was shot in the chest by Martillo before he could fire again. As he collapsed onto his back with a groan, he realized he was dying.
Martillo walked over, pressed the tip of the silencer against Cody’s forehead, and said five words.
“You fought like a king.”
An instant later, Martillo pulled the trigger, but the shot went into the dirt beside Cody’s head, as Martillo was tackled to the ground by the boy, Pablo.
The Mexican teen was crying and screaming in outrage as he clawed at Martillo’s throat. He had lied to the Parkers when he told them that his parents had been killed while on his father’s fishing boat. His father hadn’t been a fisherman, but a farmer. When his father refused to grow poppies for the local drug lord instead of the food the village desperately needed to survive, the man had him, and his entire family murdered by men much like the ones who were killing the Parkers. Only Pablo escaped the slaughter, and seeing it happen again had driven him mad with rage.
A single shot could be heard, partly muffled by a failing sound suppressor, but clearly audible. Pablo arched his back with a face set in a rictus of pain, before sliding off Martillo to lay in the dirt.
Martillo rose in a fury and emptied the rest of his weapon into the dying boy, reloaded, and then emptied it again, before kicking what was left of the body.
Afterward, Martillo turned from Pablo’s mutilated corpse and shouted for his men to set the timer on the bomb. As he spoke, he ran a hand over his thick throat and felt the bloody gouges left there by Pablo’s hands.
“Vámonos!”
Martillo and his men dragged off their dead and wounded confederates, while leaving behind a nightmare of death, and yet, there was one survivor amid the massacre.
A boy named Cody Parker, mortally wounded, and too weakened by his wounds to move, yet alive, alive.
Tanner nearly ran head-on into the departing tractor-trailer as he made the final turn before reaching the Parker Ranch.
He skidded onto the shoulder, trampled sagebrush with his rear tires, and drove past the bullet-riddled police car with the dead deputy inside. He reached the other end of the driveway just as the bomb exploded and set the home ablaze.
“No!”
After leaving the highway, he had seen the glow of the fire at the McKay Ranch and knew that he had been right, and that Martillo was on the hunt for revenge that night.
Tanner skidded the car to a stop beside the porch, saw the savage flames emerging through the front door, and realized that anyone inside the house was gone.
He then turned and looked out at the yard, where over a thousand shell casings glistened in the firelight, and he knew that Martillo had truly sent an army to the ranch.
That’s when he spotted Cody lying in the dirt.
Tanner moved the car beside him, stepped out of it, and felt as if he were inside a blast furnace, as hot air, smoke, and ash swirled about him.
He almost tripped over Pablo on his way to Cody and saw what over four dozen rounds could do to a body. Pablo’s head was a bloody pulp with limbs shredded by multiple close-range wounds.
“Cody?”
When there was no response, Tanner thought the boy to be dead, but when he rested a hand on his chest below the vicious wound, he felt movement.
“Hold on, Cody, hold on!”
Tanner lifted Cody and placed him across the rear seat, then sighed in despair at the flaming house. After a second of hesitation, he plucked Cody’s old Remington from the ground and placed it beside him.
He had gone barely fifty feet on his way toward the driveway when the explosion occurred, as the flames found the gas line. The blast caused the rear of the home to collapse, while the burning
roof of the front porch tumbled into the yard to land on the body of Pablo, crushing what was left of it, while acting as his funeral pyre.
The force of the explosion lifted the driver’s side of the car, but when the wheels touched ground again, Tanner raced out the driveway and away.
A mile later, when he spotted a pay phone in front of a closed gas station, Tanner pulled over and made a call.
“I need to speak to Mr. Mastriani.”
“Who’s calling?” said a gruff voice.
“Tell him it’s Tanner.”
Two minutes later, a smooth male voice came on the line. “Tanner, how are you, kid?”
“I need help. I have a wounded bird that needs mending.”
“I see, but you do understand that the vet doesn’t come cheaply?”
“I do, and the next time there’s a mess I’ll clean up for free.”
A pause, then the voice spoke again. “Two messes, agreed?”
Tanner closed his eyes. The bastard was going to milk him.
“Agreed.”
“And one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Carlo’s boy, the one who wants to do what you do, do you know the one I mean?”
“I do, but what about him?”
“He tags along on the next clean-up; I believe he’s done that once before, no?”
“Yes, I took him along as a favor to Carlo and I’ll do it again, but this bird is very fragile, so I’ll need the vet right away.”
“He’ll be waiting for you. You know the place, right?”
“I do, and thank you, Mr. Mastriani.”
“My pleasure, Tanner, and good luck with your wounded bird.”
Tanner returned to the car and found that Cody was still breathing, yet still unconscious. He drove on, headed toward help, and thought about the Parkers, the ones beyond saving.
He pounded the steering wheel in anger. “I should have been there!”
And he would have died; he knew it. The multitude of shell casings had told the tale of the force arrayed against the home. One more gun would have made little difference.
After glancing into the back seat at the boy he had come to care for, Tanner vowed that he would save him.
Cody awoke late the next day.
He was in the basement of a bordello where the San Antonio mob kept an illegal clinic. The space was also used on rare occasions to torture, as the room was soundproof.
Cody was still too weak to even sit up, but the doctor, a thoracic surgeon with an out-of-control gambling habit, assured him that he would make a full recovery, but that it would take time.
Tanner sat by his bed, as Cody relayed the details of Martillo’s attack, ending with Pablo’s brave attempt to save him.
“He did save you,” Tanner said. “If not for him, you wouldn’t be here.”
Tanner held up a newspaper, whose headline declared that the Parker family had been slain, Cody included.
“They think I’m dead?”
“It’s Pablo. He’s been misidentified as being you. I’m not surprised, between the bullets and the flames, there couldn’t have been much left for an autopsy, and it’s a logical assumption.”
Cody closed his eyes and Tanner thought he had drifted off to sleep, but then the boy spoke.
“If I come forward, they won’t let me live, will they?”
“No, the cartel never forgets, and they know you killed several of their men.”
“What if when I’m better, what if then I kill this guy Martillo?”
“Then they would want you for that. Cody Parker is on their radar, or he was, but now they think he’s dead.”
“And I have to stay dead?”
“It’s the only way to stay safe.”
“I don’t want to stay safe. I want revenge.”
The heart monitor attached to Cody began to beep loudly. Tanner laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Just get better, that’s all you have to do.”
“And then what? Contact the cops and enter Witness Protection?”
Tanner shook his head. “If I thought that was safe, you’d be in a real hospital right now. With the reach the cartel has, I figured it was a fifty-fifty chance that you’d be hit before you ever saw a Fed. You’re a witness to a massacre, one that already has the country up in arms over illegal immigration and the failure of the drug war. If the cartel didn’t kill you, someone in DC might order it done.”
Cody wiped at tears. “They’re gone, Tanner. Jill, Jessie, my dad, Claire… and the baby, little James, they’re all dead… all dead.”
When the boy’s tears dried, Tanner spoke.
“You’re not alone, Cody, you’ve got me. You know, on the day we found out that Pablo had been hiding in the barn, I told your father that he had done a good thing in taking the boy in and feeding him, giving him a job, a chance. Frank said that he prayed someone would return the favor if one of his children was left all alone. I know I’m not much and I’m hardly a father figure, but I’ll look out for you if you’ll let me. I think we both know that I owe you at least that much.”
“You don’t owe me a thing, Tanner. If you had been there, nothing would have changed, there were just too many of them.”
“Still, what do you say to my offer?”
“Yes, but I want to learn to do what you do. I want to become the best there is at killing, and then someday it won’t matter how many they send, because I’ll just kill them all.”
“It’s a tough life, a lonely life.”
Eyes that had been filled with tears turned to stone before Tanner’s gaze, and he realized that the tough boy’s soul had just hardened a little more.
“I’ve got nothing left, and any life I live will be less than the one I lost.”
“True,” Tanner said.
He stayed with Cody until the boy drifted off to sleep, and after leaving him a note, he left to prepare for his trip to Mexico to kill Martillo.
225
It’s Good To Be Home
Tonya gazed down at the grave of Cody Parker.
“Pablo is in your grave?”
“Yes, and a few weeks later, Tanner and I left the area.”
“And you took his name, and now you do what he did, you guard people?”
Knowing that the truth would only upset Tonya and spawn more questions, Tanner just nodded his head in answer.
“I see, but why take his name?”
“It’s a tradition, one passed down from mentor to apprentice. He was the sixth Tanner and I’m the seventh.”
“Would the cartel still harm you after all this time?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ve also no reason to step forward.”
“Why did you come back now?”
“Circumstances placed me in the area and curiosity brought me back here. When I learned that there was trouble again, I stayed.”
“You were afraid history would repeat itself, weren’t you?”
“I was going to make certain the Reyes family stayed safe.”
“Which they are thanks to you. Does that mean you’ll be leaving soon?”
“I leave tomorrow morning.”
“So soon?”
“I have business in New York City that I need to see to, a certain debt to repay.”
“And will you ever come back?”
Tanner opened his mouth to say no, but he equivocated instead.
“Who’s to say?”
They left the graveyard and were walking across a sunlit meadow toward the house when Tonya stopped and grabbed Tanner by the arm.
“The wound to your chest… can I see it?”
Tanner removed his T-shirt and Tonya studied the scar, then she noticed the fresh one below his left collarbone.
“This one looks new, was it as bad as the other one?”
“No.”
She moved closer. “Let me kiss it and make it better.”
Her lips brushed against the scar, then moved up to find his. Within seconds, they were
lying on the grass and kissing passionately. Tanner slipped a hand beneath the dress and soon Tonya was moaning with pleasure, as her own hands went to work on his jeans.
They made love in the meadow, upon the land his family once owned, in the place where he was born and where he was believed to have died.
Tonya the woman was fulfilling a fantasy that Tonya the girl could have scarcely imagined, as the boy of her dreams, Cody Parker, made love to her. She wanted nothing more from him than to have this memory, and to take joy from the fact that he was alive.
“Ooohh, Cody.”
Tonya was straddling him, riding him. Tanner reached up and caressed her cheek.
“Call me Tanner.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Our little secret.”
Tanner smiled. “But not the only one.”
“Trey can have me forever. But right now, I’m all yours.”
“Tonya.”
“Yes?”
Tanner ran his hands over her breasts.
“It’s good to be home.”
Tonya laughed, and it was followed by a whoop of joy, as Tanner flipped her onto her back, and the two of them became reacquainted.
226
Lost And Found
Romina hugged Tanner so tightly that the ribs he thought were fully healed began to ache again. He reciprocated and embraced her with genuine affection. They were outside the ranch house with Maria, Javier, and Doc, as Tanner prepared to leave in a rented car.
Romina wiped at tears. “I’m going to miss you, Tanner.”
“I’ll miss you too, and remember what I said.”
“I will.”
Earlier, Tanner had given Romina a slip of paper with a phone number on it, along with a P.O. Box number. He’d told her that she was to call or write if she ever needed to contact him.
“A man named Tim will answer, or else leave a message and Tim will contact me. Now, that number doesn’t have to be used only for emergencies, but I also don’t want to gossip about the latest boy band.”
The Tanner Series - Books 1-11: Tanner - The hit man with a heart Page 71