“If you kill them it will break Laurel’s heart, and if she ever found out that you were the one who pulled the trigger, she’d—”
“I know. It’s why they’re still breathing.”
“You know what this means, right?”
“What?”
“Those two are now your responsibility. If they screw up, I’ll hold you partly to blame.”
Pullo sat up straight. “How do you figure that?”
“You’re the one who said they were a threat and that they needed to go. What’s changed? I mean, other than the fact that they’re Laurel’s brothers.”
Pullo thought about it, then cursed. “If only we hadn’t stopped at the clinic.”
“Don’t sweat it. The boys aren’t the brightest bulbs you’ll find, but they’re not greedy or looking to cause trouble either. They’ll be fine.”
Pullo smiled. “They made Laurel happy; I never saw her smile so wide.”
“Good, now what about Tanner? You said on the phone that he wasn’t hurt badly.”
“A bullet creased his ribs, but he’s tough.”
Johnny smiled and then laughed again.
“What’s funny now?”
“I was just thinking, if you and Laurel ever marry, then you, Merle, and Earl would be family.”
“That’s what I get for not dating an Italian girl,” Pullo said.
Laurel looked at the monitor that was connected to the camera and saw Sara staring back at her from the gate outside. When she let Sara into the clinic, she was surprised to learn that Merle and Earl also knew her.
“Oh, but I guess they met you through Johnny?”
“No, I first met Merle and Earl in Las Vegas, but that’s a long story.”
Merle smiled at Sara. “She arrested me once, back when she was a Fed, but the charge was dropped. Did ya’ll know that the Vegas jail has really good food?”
Laurel looked pained. “No, but you’ll have to tell me all about it sometime.”
Laurel and Sara talked in a treatment room while the boys were busy hitting on Laurel’s nurse, Maya, and asking the young woman if she had a sister.
“What brings you here?” Laurel said to Sara.
“I’ll just come out and say it. I know that you and Tanner are sleeping around behind Joe Pullo’s back, but what I need to know is, how serious is it?”
Laurel’s mouth dropped open. “Tanner and I… that’s… nothing is happening between us. Even if there were an intimate relationship, what business would it be of yours?”
“I saw you two the other day and that didn’t appear to be nothing. Tanner doesn’t love you, but he cares about you, doesn’t he?”
Laurel looked as if someone had punched her, as she bent over slightly, and her eyes became moist.
“Why do you say he doesn’t love me? Is it that obvious?”
Sara’s mouth dropped open as the truth hit her. “You love him. You’re in love with Tanner?”
Laurel wiped her tears away. “Nothing is going on between us, not now, but at one time, we were close, at least I thought so.”
“When I said Tanner didn’t love you, I meant he didn’t love anyone. He’s not capable of it.”
“What?”
“The man is a sociopath. It’s not possible for him to have feelings.”
“No, Tanner, he’s… he’s imperturbable? Yes, but he’s not heartless.”
“I think Tanner wants you and I think he’s willing to kill for you. If you have any feelings for Joe Pullo, you might want to break things off with Tanner before he decides that Joe is in the way.”
“You’re crazy! Tanner would never hurt Joe, they’re friends. And I told you, I’m not sleeping with Tanner.”
Sara gathered her purse and stood. “You’ve been warned.”
Laurel walked Sara to the door. As she watched the former FBI agent stride back to her car, she wondered just what it was about Tanner that obsessed the woman so much.
258
Rampage
The last of the patrons left the Cabaret Strip Club with bellies full of overpriced beer and minds brimming with unfulfilled fantasies.
Pullo had left hours earlier, and after Carl the bartender said goodnight along with most of the staff, the head bouncer, Bull, was the only man left with Johnny. The office door was open, and Bull stuck his head in.
“The Carter brothers are here with the limo. They’re in the alley.”
“Is everything locked up out front?”
“Yeah, so why don’t we go out the back way here?”
Johnny agreed, and after turning out the lights, he opened the rear door of the office and stepped into the alley. He didn’t see the limousine, and when he turned to look at Bull, he saw that he was pointing a gun at him.
“What the fuck, Bull?”
Bull shrugged. “Sorry Johnny, I really am, but Heinz is paying me a fortune for this. It’s enough to open my own club.”
“You scumbag! You sold me out for a few dollars?”
“No, I sold you out for a shitload of dollars. Now close your eyes and I’ll make this quick.”
Headlights brightened the alleyway as the limo entered from the street. Johnny tried to take Bull’s gun away, but the big man was too strong and shoved him to the ground. When the limo rounded the bend in the alley, Bull was locked in indecision between shooting Johnny or firing at the limousine, but when the vehicle kept coming, he turned to fire at it.
Brakes squealed as the gun went off, but the bullet went high as the limo slammed into Bull and sent him flying backwards to land on his butt near the dumpster.
Johnny snatched up the fallen gun and walked over to stand above Bull, who was moaning over his broken right leg. Bull gazed up at him, then raised a hand in pleading.
“No, don’t!”
Johnny fired two shots, one that struck Bull in the head, while the other hit his heart. When he had dealt with the traitor, he turned to see Merle and Earl gawking at him.
“You boys just saved my life, consider your pay doubled. And shut and lock the gates.”
Merle and Earl were still staring at Bull’s body when Johnny went back inside to make calls.
“Merle.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t tell Johnny that your foot just slipped off the pedal, okay?”
“Okay.”
Despite the early morning hour, the doorbell rang at Laurel Ivy’s townhouse. Pullo was staying over, and he went with Laurel to see who had come to call and woken them.
It was Laurel’s nurse, Maya, a young Asian woman. Maya’s eyes were red from crying.
“Maya, what’s wrong?”
“I’m so sorry, Laurel, but I really need to speak to you and it can’t wait until morning.”
Pullo yawned as he walked off toward the kitchen. “I’ll let you two talk while I get a drink of water.”
After Pullo headed down the short hallway and disappeared into the kitchen, Maya reached into her jacket pocket and took out a gun. Laurel backed away from her so fast that she bumped the entryway table and knocked over a vase.
“Maya… why?”
“A man offered me money, so much money, to kill Joe, but… I can’t leave a witness. I’m sorry.”
An instant later, Maya had dropped the gun. She was gagging on a carving knife that Pullo had thrown from the kitchen doorway.
Eight inches of razor-sharp stainless steel entered Maya’s throat, severed her trachea, and cut off her air supply.
For several moments, Laurel simply watched in shock and horror, but as Maya began thrashing about on the floor and desperately ripped the knife from her throat to get air, Laurel moved toward her to help. She was held back by Pullo, who grabbed up the gun and kicked the knife from Maya’s hand.
“Let the bitch die,” Pullo said.
Laurel did so, but refrained from watching it take place, as she buried her face against Pullo’s chest and cried.
It took several minutes, but Maya died, and as if to mark he
r passing, Pullo’s cell phone began ringing upstairs in the bedroom.
He placed an arm around Laurel’s shoulders and led her up the steps, then grabbed the phone off the nightstand and answered it on the sixteenth ring. It was Johnny, who had just survived his own attack and betrayal. Pullo told him what had just happened, and they agreed to meet at the club.
Minutes later, Pullo and Laurel were in his Hummer and headed away from her townhouse.
Laurel had stopped shaking and took out her phone. “Should I call Tanner? Is this what he was talking about when he gave me his number?”
“I don’t think he expected this, not an attack by a friend, but yeah, I guess he didn’t put anything past Heinz.”
“They wanted you dead, not me. Maya was just going to kill me because I was a witness and—what do we do with her body?”
“I’ll have it taken care of. The next time you go home there won’t be a sign of trouble.”
“Oh my God, I nearly died. You saved me, Joe.”
“I heard the vase break, if not for that…”
“Should I call Tanner?”
“Yeah, tell him what happened and have him meet us at the club.”
Tanner had assigned Laurel’s number a special ring. He awoke from a sound sleep after it rang only once.
“Laurel, are you all right?”
She wasn’t, and he could hear the tears in her voice as she told him what had happened. Afterwards, she passed the phone and Pullo filled him in on the attempt on Johnny’s life as well and told him that they would all meet at the club, where they would plan a counter attack.
After ending the call, Tanner saw that Sophia had awakened and was staring at him.
“That was that doctor?”
“Heinz sent someone to her home to kill Pullo… and her.”
“Shit, are they all right?”
“Yeah, Joe handled it. Someone tried to kill Rossetti too, one of his own people. He’s also okay, but they were all very lucky.”
Tanner grew silent as Sophia put on a light and rose from the bed.
“We’re safe here, right?”
“Yes, but we’re leaving anyway. Rossetti wants to meet at the club.”
Sophia put on her robe and went into the bathroom. When she emerged a minute later, she saw that Tanner hadn’t moved, but that his face had grown red with rage.
“Tanner… are you all right?”
He stood and grabbed his clothes. “Get dressed. I’m putting you in a cab and sending you to the club.”
“Where are you going?”
Tanner’s intense eyes blazed, and Sophia spotted the hate burning in them.
“I’m going back to that hotel of Heinz’s and I’m going to kill them all.”
Sophia pleaded with Tanner not to face Heinz’s men alone, but her appeals to reason fell on deaf ears.
After seeing that she was in a taxi and on her way to the club, Tanner drove six blocks and entered an underground parking garage.
The attendant was in the middle of telling him that he couldn’t park his car himself, when Tanner told him to pull up a file on the company computer. The young man gave him a strange look, but when the file was found, the man saw that it contained a photo of Tanner, and that it identified him as one of the owners of the property.
He wasn’t the owner, but he had made a deal with the woman who did own it. The deal allowed him a permanent parking space in several of the garages she owned. In the space at this garage was a van, and that van held supplies and an arsenal. In ten minutes, Tanner had donned a bullet resistant tactical vest and was ready to fight a war.
After driving to the area, he parked in the alley that ran behind the Rutherford Hotel and left the car carrying an AR-15, while an Atchisson assault shotgun was slung across his back. The tactical vest held a Beretta in its holster and there were spare magazines and shells for the three weapons.
Tanner entered the hotel by the same second-story window he’d left it by the day before, after kicking in the plywood that had been fastened in place over it. The noise brought three men stumbling into the hallway with eyes puffy from sleep. Tanner shot them all and went looking for more. Only one man had been wise enough to carry a gun, but he never got off a shot.
Tanner assumed Heinz would be in his suite on the top floor of the six-story building, but he needed to clear it before heading up, so he went downstairs to the ground floor. He was met by a group of men who had been playing a late-night game of poker.
Tanner opened up with the AR-15 on full auto and killed three of the six men right away. As he reloaded, two bullets struck him in the chest. Despite the body armor’s heavy plating, the pain was maddening and caused his eyes to tear up.
Tanner blinked the water of pain away and opened fire again, this time using three-round bursts. After killing another man, the last two dived behind the oak reception counter.
If they had hoped that the massive and ornate service desk would protect them, they were sorely mistaken. The ammo from the AR-15, the .223 Remingtons ripped through the wood, the men, and the wall behind them.
After clearing the ground floor, Tanner heard footsteps on the stairs, but to his amazement, the elevator chimed. The old man who had been wearing the bathrobe the previous night emerged from the machine wearing the same again, but this time he was carrying a shotgun.
Tanner hit him with a burst from the AR-15 and the fool fell back into the elevator car with his feet sticking out. The shotgun lay atop his body, while the doors of the elevator repeatedly opened and closed upon his legs.
Tanner took off at a run up the stairs and began firing the instant he spotted movement. There were four men in their underwear on the second-floor landing. His shots caught them in their bare legs, taking the fight out of all but one of them. That man fired a shot that hit the web of flesh between the thumb and forefinger on Tanner’s left hand, causing it to drip blood and sting like a son of a bitch.
Tanner shot the man in the face and moved on, as the other three men moaned in agony from their wounds. Two of the men he recognized as his drinking companions from the night before. He felt no pity for them, not after Laurel Ivy had nearly been killed.
As he opened the door to the third floor where most of the men were housed, Tanner got what he expected, as a brutal barrage of gunfire perforated the metal door with over a dozen holes, while two more rounds found Tanner’s vest, knocking the breath from his lungs.
Tanner recovered quickly, as he was fueled by rage. His intent had not been to enter the floor, but to deliver a surprise and shut the door again.
The grenade exploded, causing the door to blow open and hang from one hinge, as the bottom hinge had been blown off by the explosion, even as the blast ripped apart several men.
Tanner slid the rifle around the edge of the doorframe and emptied its final magazine down the corridor, before trading the AR-15 for the Atchisson assault shotgun. Particles of debris and dust filled the air, but Tanner could make out four torn bodies lying on the carpet, with two more casualties farther down the corridor.
That meant he had encountered twenty men since entering the building, and he knew from his stay at the hotel the day before that there should be at least two more somewhere, not counting Heinz and Vance.
If the men were hiding, then so be it. Time was short, and doubtless someone passing nearby the building had heard the noise. Yet, he still had to get to the top floor and kill Heinz before the authorities appeared.
One of the missing men fired at him as he opened the door to the sixth floor. Before he could fire back, the man tackled him, and the two of them went tumbling down the stairs together.
Both the man and Tanner had lost their weapons during the fall down to the landing, while Tanner had banged his head on the wall as he landed and was momentarily stunned.
The other man recovered first. That’s when Tanner realized that it was the Frenchman who spoke only a little German. The Frenchman’s eyes also widened in recognition as he
grabbed the weapon nearest to him, pointed it at Tanner, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened, because the man had grabbed the AR-15, which was out of ammo.
After realizing his mistake, the Frenchman made a leap to retrieve his own weapon, which was laying behind him on a stair, but when he turned back around to fire, Tanner tossed a knife that entered his left eye.
The Frenchman screamed in agony, but his pain was short lived, as Tanner ripped the gun from the man’s hand and shot him in the head twice.
“Heinz!” Tanner called, his voice filled with fury, as he ached to kill the man who had dared to threaten Laurel Ivy’s life.
However, vengeance was to be denied. When Tanner made it back up the stairs and onto the sixth floor, he found that the suites and conference room were empty. Heinz had been wise enough to move somewhere else after Tanner’s destruction of his hit team. The assassin would have to wait to get revenge.
Tanner made his way back down the stairs, where he found that two of the men wounded on the second floor landing still lived, but were too weak from their wounds to fight. He shot them with the Beretta to finish them off.
To his surprise, no sirens greeted his ears upon reaching the lobby, but then he remembered that the once elegant hotel was well built. It was also surrounded by warehouses which were closed for the night, while the street saw little traffic after daylight hours.
The sound of the grenade going off might have reached the restaurant on the corner, but he recalled that there was music playing inside. There was an even chance that no one heard the sound, or if heard, they didn’t consider it menacing.
Whatever the reason for the lack of a police response, it was so much the better, and Heinz could return to find his nest in ruins.
The sound of running footsteps came from the area of the front doors after they’d been crashed open. Tanner nearly shot Johnny Rossetti and Joe Pullo as they came toward him with their guns up and ready.
They both stopped and stared at him as their guns dropped to their sides, noting the blood dripping from his hand and splattered over his armor and clothing.
The Tanner Series - Books 1-11: Tanner - The hit man with a heart Page 83