“You’re correct again. Three men went after a certain target and two of the men have disappeared.”
“What about the third?”
“His body was found yesterday.”
“Is the target foreign or domestic?”
“An American living abroad, but he’s a very dangerous man.”
“It sounds interesting, and I do like a challenge, although, once I kill Alvarado, I’ll be taking some serious down time. If you still need me after that, let me know.”
“Down time? I don’t think you understand. The man I’m talking about should have been put in his grave weeks ago.”
“That’s not my problem. If you still need help in a month or so, I’ll think about it.”
“You’ll think—goddamn it! I’ll talk Burke out of using you somehow, and Alvarado will probably kill you anyway.”
“What’s got you so upset, Matthews? Is it my lack of discipline or the fact that I don’t give a damn about your problem?”
“It’s not my problem, Tanner, this affects the world.”
Tanner had been smirking into the phone, but Matthews’s words intrigued him.
“What are we talking about here, a terrorist?”
“This is a man who funds terrorists, chiefly because they further his own agenda.”
“All right, but there’s something I don’t get. Why is Burke in the assassination business? The government has its own killers and black ops to do this sort of work.”
“Yes, and they’ve all failed before we were ever consulted. The government outsources many areas to us; Mr. Burke was hoping to expand into this arena as well. However, we’ve proven as ineffective as the government in this case.”
“It sounds interesting, but my focus is on killing Alonso Alvarado; until that’s done, nothing else matters.”
“I understand that, and… I can help you.”
“How?”
“As I said before, we have the Alvarado compound under satellite surveillance. I’ll forward that to Garner and then he can forward it to you.”
“That would be helpful. I take back what I was thinking about you, Matthews.”
Matthews chuckled. “You kill Alvarado, Tanner, and I’ll believe you’re as good as you think you are.”
“It’s a deal,” Tanner said, then he ended the call.
416
Meter Reader
After speaking with Dan Matthews, Tanner had driven around the city for hours.
When he spotted the group of eight men gathered together in the side parking lot of a bar, he was almost certain he had found what he was looking for.
The men all had the carriage of soldiers and were likely a group of mercenaries looking to cash in on the bounty placed on his head. They appeared to be organized, but they were not the men that Tanner Six had warned him about. Those men would not stand around a public parking lot to make their plans. Those men would be secreted somewhere just waiting for him to stick his head up so they could chop it off.
Still, he could use this group to make the other group show themselves, and once they did so, he would be the one doing the chopping.
While shopping with Alexa the day before, Tanner had bought a set of green work clothes, along with a clipboard and calculator.
He was wearing those clothes, and after donning a plain black baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses, Tanner left the car and began working his way closer to the men inside the parking lot.
He stopped at each business he came to and went around to the gas meter. If the meter were an older model, Tanner pretended to copy down the numbers he read onto the clipboard. If the gas meter was electronic, he held the calculator against it, as if it were a device to gather data from the meter.
He had used the ploy once before when he’d only had a clipboard, and his target at the time, a perceptive man who was in hiding, made him as a phony and slipped away. He eventually killed the man, as a Tanner never failed to fulfill a contract, but the lesson was learned, and the mistake would never be repeated.
When he was checking the meter on the dry cleaners that sat next to the bar’s parking lot, the men stopped talking for a moment as they looked over at him. They soon dismissed him as simply a man doing his job and resumed making their plans.
The largest of the men, a bearded giant wearing faded overalls, spoke to the others.
“Two million, man, you know whoever wants this Tanner really wants him when they’re willing to pay that much now.”
One of the other men smiled. “You know what we should do if we bag him. We should keep quiet and wait until the price goes higher.”
“Screw that,” said another man who wore a goatee. “Once we get him, I’m cashing in and heading to Vegas.”
The other men laughed, then the big one opened up a paper map. From what Tanner gathered as he walked past them to check the bar’s meter, they were dividing the city up into grids to search. That was good, it meant that they would be separating into smaller groups and make themselves more vulnerable.
Tanner pretended to check the meters up and down each side of the block while the men made their plans. When the eight men separated into four sets of two, he decided to go with goatee and his partner, a skinny guy with sunburned skin. That was when Tanner noticed that all the men had good tans, and he wondered where they were from. Wherever it was, they should have stayed there.
It seemed Matthews was right. His bounty had been doubled to two million dollars. That was a good sign; it meant that Alvarado was worried.
Alvarado must have seen the drawing of him as well as the old mugshot, but whether he realized that he was Cody Parker, Tanner didn’t know. He had only been sixteen when Alvarado killed his family and left him for dead, and as he had believed Alvarado long dead, Alvarado must have believed likewise about him.
If Alvarado didn’t realize that Tanner and Cody Parker were one and the same, Tanner would reveal it to the man before he killed him. Alvarado had murdered Tanner’s family, and he would finally pay for that act.
Alexa had suffered too, even more so than Tanner had, given how young she was at the time. He could only imagine the damage that such a horrific experience must have caused the child she once was.
Tanner wondered about her briefly. Was she off doing as he asked her to do, or was everything she’d told him a lie and she had some unknown agenda? Tanner hoped she would pass her final test, because if she didn’t, he’d have to kill her.
He followed behind Goatee and his partner in his stolen car as they drove off in a silver Toyota pickup. The license plate on the rear of the truck told Tanner that the men were from Arizona. That answered Tanner’s earlier question about where the men had come from.
After he thought enough time had passed to allow the other groups to travel far enough away, he decided to lure Goatee and Sunburn back to the house where he and Alexa had been staying.
While Tanner was busy looking for someone to lead into their trap, Alexa had been driving to the northeastern portion of Oklahoma to a lake that had cabins for rent.
Tanner had told her of a place he stayed at before and knew to be secluded. It was the off-season and empty cabins would be plentiful.
Alexa was to get a cabin, stock it with food, then return to Oklahoma City for Tanner. It was a six-hour round trip with the shopping included. She felt as if he was trying to keep her out of harm’s way by sending her off on an errand.
Then again, when she arrived at the lake, she saw what Tanner had meant. No one would think of looking for them in such a picturesque environment. And as half of a vacationing couple, Tanner would be even less conspicuous.
Alexa took a cabin that sat among a group of three. The other two appeared empty, as no vehicles were parked outside their doors. She then followed the directions of the woman who had rented her the cabin and shopped at a local supermarket.
She had rented the cabin with the story that her husband would be joining her there later for a vacation break. When Alexa firs
t entered the cabin and saw that it contained only one bed, she smiled.
Tanner must have known that there was only one bed per cabin. It would serve him right if she made him sleep on the sofa. That was unlikely, she knew, because she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
When she returned from the market, she saw with a small bit of irritation that they did have a neighbor in one of the other cabins. It irked Alexa because it meant they would have to be more on guard. However, the woman seemed friendly enough, and like Alexa, her partner would be joining her later that day.
“Oh yeah, Bob and I come here every year about this time. We love it here.”
“Is it quiet? My husband likes his privacy.”
“Oh honey, it’s full of quiet, and you don’t have to worry about Bob and me, we’ll spend most of our time out on the lake fishing.”
Alexa said goodbye to the woman, and with all the preparations done, she locked up the cabin, climbed into her van, and headed back to Oklahoma City to meet up with Tanner.
As she drove along, she thought about her Papa Rodrigo, and Emilio, and wondered how they were doing. She never once realized she was being followed by Spenser Hawke, or that her friendly neighbor in the other cabin had actually been Amy.
Alexa drove on, unaware that she was leading Spenser straight to Tanner’s location.
417
Spilled Blood
Tanner followed the two mercenaries and saw them pull into the parking lot of a donut shop. The place was only about three miles away from the house he wanted to lure them to, so he decided to make his move.
Goatee ran inside and came out a few minutes later with two cups of coffee, one of which he handed to Sunburn.
Tanner drove into the lot and parked near them, then got out of the car and went inside the donut shop. He had replaced the green work shirt with a black sweatshirt and had taken off the cap and sunglasses.
As Goatee began backing his pickup out of its parking space, Tanner thought he had been too subtle about things. But then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other man, Sunburn, spill coffee on himself and point his way.
Goatee had brought the car to a stop in such a manner that he was blocking the entrance to the lot, while he and the other man talked about Tanner. When the driver of a car trying to enter the parking lot blew her horn, Tanner saw Goatee send her an apologetic wave and drive over to park against a fence.
Here’s where things could get tricky, Tanner thought.
If the men were stupid, they would try to kill him right there in the parking lot. However, if they had any sense at all, they would call in the troops, the other six men that had been with them.
Tanner bought two donuts, and as he left the shop, he pretended to be reaching into the bag for one. He wasn’t reaching into the bag for a donut, but rather, he was using the bag to conceal the small gun he held. If Goatee and Sunburn made a move, he would shoot at them right through the bag. Fortunately, he saw that Sunburn was on the phone and talking rapidly. That was good, and it got better when the men began following him back to the house.
Tanner drove calmly and pretended not to know they were there until he was at the last traffic light before reaching the house. That was when he adjusted his rearview mirror and appeared to notice the men in the pickup, who were in the next lane behind a car.
Goatee and Sunburn immediately looked elsewhere, and when the light changed, Tanner made a left and sped off down the quiet road where the house was located. Moments later, as he approached the entrance to the property, Tanner slowed, then made a hard right into the graveled driveway.
Goatee and his friend were feeling the adrenaline and were on the hunt, and as Tanner hoped they would, they threw caution to the wind and raced after him. As they did so, Sunburn was shouting into his phone and giving the other men their location.
As Tanner neared the parking area at the front of the home, he headed left toward the wide field, even as Goatee and Sunburn entered the graveled driveway.
When he had gone far enough to the left, Tanner made a sharp right while pulling up on the parking break. The car shuddered to a halt after having turned around 180 degrees.
Tanner leapt out. He fired two rounds from a Mossberg tactical shotgun into the front grill of the pickup truck. Goatee lost control, sideswiped Tanner’s stolen car, and plowed right into a large oak tree.
Tanner fired another shot. He wasn’t shooting to kill, and so he just flattened a rear tire. Goatee and Sunburn staggered out of the driver’s side and stood looking about for a second.
Tanner let out an exasperated breath. He was trying to let the two idiots live, but they were making it so easy to kill them.
Tanner fired a shot over their heads and the men ducked down. When they returned fire, the fools did so by standing up and steadying their arms on top of the pickup truck’s roof, thus leaving their midsections exposed through the vehicle’s window glass.
Every shot they made was either wide or too high. The only thing they managed to hit was a tire and a branch on a small tree near the house. Tanner wondered if they ever practiced their shooting.
He sighed again and fought the urge to shoot them both dead. Instead, he took aim at Goatee and placed a round on the outer part of his left shoulder, a shot that barely grazed him.
Goatee howled, more from fear than pain, then finally, he and Sunburn headed into the trees to make their way back out to the road.
Tanner followed them until he was certain they were leaving, then ran back to the house, went to the refrigerator, and removed a jar.
The jar contained blood, his and Alexa’s which they had taken from each other that morning.
Tanner returned outside where he emptied nearly half the jar beside the stolen car, before using the other half to leave a trail of blood from the car, up the porch stairs, and into the house.
He had cut the side of his hand earlier, before leaving, and let it drip blood up the stairs inside the house. In the bathroom, there were bloodstained towels and an empty box of gauze that spoke of someone attempting to treat a serious wound.
Anyone finding the blood trail would think him wounded and hiding within the house, and with a two-million-dollar price tag on his head, they likely wouldn’t leave until they had torn the place apart. That would take time and draw his pursuers in, and ultimately, the team hunting him for Alvarado would come to the house. Once revealed and identified, they could be eliminated.
After leaving the house, Tanner checked the location of the two men, and saw them out on the road. They were talking to two of their partners who had just arrived on the scene.
While they were planning their next move, Tanner bolted across the field at the home’s rear, crossed the other road, and climbed over the fence, to walk behind a bowling alley. When he saw Alexa’s van, he realized he was looking forward to seeing her. She greeted him with a smile as she opened the rear doors.
There was a card table in the back of the van with a trio of laptops on it. Alexa sat in front of the table in a folding chair. Tanner took the one beside her, as she pointed at the laptops.
“Every camera is working perfectly except for two of them, and I saw how you handled those men at the house.”
“You mean the idiots? Neither one could shoot straight and the one with the goatee ran his truck into a tree and nearly killed them both.”
Alexa grinned. “I saw that. You’re even deadly when you’re not trying to be. I rented the cabin, and that lake looks beautiful.”
“Any problems?”
“No, but we will have neighbors in a nearby cabin.”
“Neighbors? More than one?”
“Yes, a woman with dark hair, but I haven’t met her husband.”
“I’ve been told that a woman named Ariana O’Grady is hunting for me, and that she has dark hair. How old was the woman?”
Alexa recalled Amy and shrugged with one shoulder. “Not old or young, maybe mid-thirties, and she was beautiful.”
&n
bsp; “Hmm, she sounds too old and too good looking to fit the description I was given of Ariana. Still, we’ll keep an eye out for her since we’ll soon have the people hunting me searching that house.”
Alexa pointed at the middle laptop. “It’s already started.”
Tanner looked and saw that two of Goatee’s friends had found the blood trail that led into the house.
“That’s a start, and word will spread about the house, human nature will see to that.”
Alexa hit several keys on the laptop and took still photos of the mercenaries, then, she sent them to the printer that was on the floor beneath the table.
Tanner looked at the photos. “This is good work, but we don’t have to worry about most of these people. If I had to guess, I’d say we’re looking for a team of three or four men.”
“If they are as good as you say, they may show at the house very soon.”
Tanner shook his head. “Actually, I would expect them to be last. They’ll let everyone else do all the searching and then come in at the end to verify I’m really not in there.”
“But wouldn’t they fear that someone would find you first?”
“No, because if that happened, they would just kill whoever had me and take me from them. These are men who will fear no one, because they’ve never met anyone better than they are.”
Alexa turned in her seat and studied him. “But you’re better than they are, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Alexa leaned in and kissed him. “I find confidence very sexy. I also missed you while I was off on my errand.”
“I assume there’s no one back in Mexico waiting for you, or is there?”
“No, my recent lifestyle doesn’t offer many dating opportunities.”
“Is this your first time in the US?”
“I went to college in Texas, but I dropped out after two years because I knew I could learn more on my own.”
“Have you ever been to Hawaii?”
The Tanner Series - Books 1-11: Tanner - The hit man with a heart Page 133