[Tanner 16.0] To Kill a Killer

by Remington Kane

  Another creak came, this time closer, and Tanner dropped flat and peered beneath the gap under the door. He saw a pair of feet clad in sneakers, and while they weren’t tiny feet, they were too small to belong to Scallato.

  Tanner went back to standing from his prone position with an effortlessness and speed that would be the envy of many athletes. After reaching over and soundlessly unlocking the door, he turned to find Sara peeking around the door frame of the bathroom.

  Tanner mouthed the words, “Don’t shoot,” before flattening himself against the wall near the door.

  A minute passed before the handle on the door began to turn, and Tanner realized that their young visitor had been steeling himself to make entry into the room. When the door opened, Tanner was behind it, as the boy who had opened it stood, listened, and panted slightly.

  As the intruder edged toward the bathroom, Tanner pushed the door closed with his foot while yanking a shotgun out of the boy’s hands. The boy spun around so fast that he tripped over his own feet and fell back on his butt.

  Tanner aimed the shotgun at the boy’s chest as Sara shut off the shower, then, Tanner introduced their uninvited guest to her when she left the bathroom.

  “Meet Antonio Scallato, boy assassin.”

  Antonio had been glaring up at Tanner with a look of defiance, but at the utterance of the word, “boy”, his face crumpled, and tears fell down his cheeks. He had failed yet again, and now his father would die.

  Maria flew down the stairs, rushed into the kitchen, then grabbed her husband by the arm.

  “Antonio is gone! His room is empty.”

  Scallato had been enjoying a cup of coffee. It sloshed onto the table and soaked the newspaper he’d been reading.

  “Relax, Maria, the boy probably just snuck out to see a girl.”

  “But what if he’s run away?”

  “Are his things missing?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll go check.”

  While Maria was gone, Scallato tossed the soggy newspaper into the garbage can, then leaned back against the sink as he thought things over. Antonio running away could be a good thing, perhaps a few years out in the world would toughen the boy. But no, the boy just didn’t have what it takes. If he had run off, the world would eat him alive and spit him out.

  Maria came back with a smile on her face.

  “His things are all here. Maybe you’re right, perhaps he snuck out to meet a girl.”

  Scallato ran a hand over his chin.

  “Why not eat dinner first? If he had gone out after eating, we might not have known about it for hours.”

  Maria’s face became a mask of worry again.

  “Do you think something is wrong?”

  “I don’t know, Maria.”

  “Patri,” Anna called to her father. She was sitting by the television in the living room. “The lights outside came on. I see Antonio, he’s back.”

  Maria let out a sigh of relief and went to the door to greet her son. Antonio stood in the doorway with tears running down his cheeks.

  “What’s wrong, baby?” Maria asked, but Antonio could only cry.

  Tanner and Sara were standing just beyond the reach of the floodlights of Scallato’s home, as they watched Maria greet Antonio. Tanner held a Glock, while Sara carried the shotgun they had taken from Antonio.

  Tanner had pushed the boy out of their room at the hotel and told him to go home and tell his father that he was coming for him in the morning. Antonio was too distraught and dejected to see through the lie and didn’t realize that Tanner and Sara would follow him.

  Now that Antonio had led them to his father’s doorstep, Tanner knew they had to strike hard and fast. If Antonio got the opportunity to utter his name, Scallato would be instantly on guard.

  As Maria draped an arm over Antonio’s shoulders, Tanner sprinted toward the door.

  As Maria went to shut the door with her free hand, Tanner rammed into it, entered the home, and saw Scallato standing in the kitchen near a table.

  Tanner aimed the Glock at Scallato’s chest as Sara came in behind him and slammed the door shut. Little Anna screamed and ran to her mother, then Maria rushed to her husband’s side, with her children clinging to her.

  Scallato’s face betrayed amazement at seeing Tanner alive. That was followed by a chuckle and a shake of his head.

  “Well played, Tanner. I wouldn’t have thought such a thing possible, but you truly are in my league. I see now that I was a fool to ever underestimate you.”

  “We all make mistakes,” Tanner said, as he and Sara moved closer. “But don’t make another mistake and put your family at risk. I have no desire to harm them or to torture you. Just walk toward me with your hands in the air and we’ll end this outside.”

  “I want your word that you won’t harm my family,” Scallato said, and as he spoke, he slid a knife free from the sheath on his belt. He also wore a gun in an ankle holster, but he knew that Tanner would shoot him dead if he tried to reach for it.

  “You have my word, Scallato. Neither of us will harm your family. Now, get over here.”

  Scallato let out a deep breath as his face twisted into a grimace, when he looked over at his wife, he spoke softly, but audibly.

  “I’ve failed you, Maria. Please forgive me?”

  All Maria could do was nod, as emotion choked off her voice and tears leaked from her beautiful blue eyes.

  After wrapping his arms around Antonio tenderly and placing a gentle kiss atop his son’s head, Scallato slit the boy’s throat open, while angling Antonio’s neck so that Tanner was blinded by the spray of arterial blood.

  As Tanner remarked earlier, the first rule of being an assassin was to survive no matter what.

  Maurice Scallato was a survivor.

  40

  In The Wind

  Scallato freed the gun from his ankle holster then moved behind Maria to use her as a shield.

  Tanner, although blinded by Antonio’s blood, fired off a shot at the spot where Scallato’s head had been. Sara was frozen in utter shock by Scallato’s casual murder of his own son, then was aghast and appalled as Scallato placed his gun to his daughter’s head and pulled the trigger. The child fell to the floor as three more shots rang out. Scallato had fired a trio of rounds into Maria’s back, before shoving her toward Tanner.

  Tanner had been attempting to clear his vision of Antonio’s blood. When he felt Maria’s body collide into him, he reached out to take hold of it and mistook the female form to be Sara’s.

  “No! Sara no!”

  Sara had been stunned into inactivity, but Tanner’s voice brought her back to herself. She leveled the shotgun at Scallato, who was running to her left while looking over his shoulder. She fired the weapon an instant after Scallato dove to the floor. The shotgun pellets destroyed a window, and Scallato popped up from the floor and jumped through the splintered remains of the window frame.

  “Sara, thank God,” Tanner said. His vision had cleared, and he saw that Sara was all right. After lowering Maria dead form to the floor, Tanner looked beneath the table and saw the bodies of her children.

  “He killed them? All of them?” Tanner asked in a hoarse voice. He looked ghastly. His face was stained red with blood, as were the front of his clothes. He was not the only one covered in gore, as Sara had taken spray from wounds as well.

  Tanner grabbed the shotgun from Sara and passed her his weapon.

  “Stay here and use your phone to call Durand. If I don’t come back, don’t come out until sunrise or until Durand sends help.”

  Sara appeared to have barely heard him, as she gestured about at the carnage.

  Tanner shook her shoulder with one hand.

  “Hey! Stay with me. You have to be able to defend yourself while I’m gone.”

  “Yes, right, I’m good, I’m good, just go and kill that bastard. Oh Tanner, please kill that monster.”

  Tanner left the home the same way Scallato had, by leaping through the damaged window.<
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  He saw the light pouring out from the nearby shed, but he took the time to make a circuit of the home before heading toward the structure. The shed was empty, but there were signs that something secreted away behind a wall had been removed.

  Tanner searched through the woods that bordered the home for an hour, then came upon the rope that had been buried in plastic at the base of a tree. The rope dangled over the edge of a sheer drop that ended in a landscape filled with boulders. Scallato must have rappelled down the rope and fled into the night. He was gone, long gone.

  Tanner returned to the house, but called to Sara before entering, so she’d know it was him.

  She was in the living room holding a wet towel, which she had used to wipe off the gore, crime scene forensics be damned.

  Tanner looked better than he had when he left. He had torn off his sleeves, wetted them in a stream, and used them to clean his face.

  A face that told Sara everything she needed to know.

  “He’s gone, isn’t he?”

  “Scallato’s in the wind,” Tanner said.

  41

  Beyond Personal

  At sunrise, Tanner leaned against the back wall of Scallato’s home and marveled at the man’s inhumanity. Inside the house, Durand’s people were wading through the carnage as they searched for a clue as to where Scallato might have gone

  Sara was in Tanner’s arms with her head resting against his chest, and every so often, she cried.

  Durand’s people had given them new clothing that resembled hospital scrubs and they had washed off the gore. However, the scent of Antonio Scallato’s blood lingered in Tanner’s nostrils, and he guessed that the memory of it always would.

  Tanner thought back to his early years, and of a conversation he’d had with his mentor. Spenser pointed out that even an assassin had rules, and that the Tanner’s all lived by a code of conduct.

  “A Tanner never kills the innocent, Cody. A Tanner kills the murderers, the butchers, or those who facilitate their butchery. I won’t go so far as to describe what we do as a force of good, but someday I’ll stand before my maker and proudly proclaim that I never murdered anyone, but I killed them, oh yes, and at times with a righteous anger.”

  As Tanner returned from the memory, Sara asked him what they would do next.

  He took her by the hand and led her over to a tree. After pacing back and forth for a moment in an uncharacteristic state of agitation, Tanner gazed at Sara, and she saw that he looked worried, and appeared to be uneasy.

  “What Scallato did in there… I… I hope you know I would never do that.”

  Sara had been leaning with her back against the tree. She took her weight off it to reach over and take Tanner’s hand.

  “I once hated you more than anyone and believed you were the scum of the earth, but Tanner, not once would I have thought you capable of… of… that, that slaughter, I mean he killed his own children… that poor little girl. No, oh baby, no, don’t ever believe that I equate you on any level with Maurice Scallato. You are his superior in every way and someday soon you’ll put that monster in his grave.”

  Tanner took Sara in his arms.

  “It may not happen soon; it may even cover a span of years, but I promise you this, I’ll track down Scallato and kill him if it takes me the rest of my life.”

  Sabella Barbieri was sure that she was in trouble, but she had no idea what kind or how bad the evidence was against her.

  She had been tracked down in Rome overnight, rousted from bed, and driven to the airport. Once there, she’d been placed on a helicopter and flown to Sicily. Not once during any of it were her questions answered. When she tried to press the issue, she was told that she would be cuffed and possibly tasered if she didn’t remain quiet.

  The helicopter landed in a field near a house that had multiple crime scene units parked nearby, while a wide area surrounding the home was taped off and guarded by local and regional police.

  What is this all about? Sabella wondered.

  Her wondering stopped after she approached the home and saw Jacques Durand staring at her. To her amazement, Tanner was there, alive and without so much as a scratch. Standing beside Tanner was Sara Blake, and she looked mad enough to claw Sabella’s eyes out.

  Sabella forced a smile onto her face as she was about to say how relieved she was at Tanner’s survival.

  The words turned into a gasp of pain. Durand had seized Sabella by the arm and dragged her to a coroner’s wagon. Once there, he ordered a forensic tech to unzip the body bags and show her Scallato’s handiwork.

  “These are Scallato’s wife and children. The bastard murdered them as a distraction so that he could escape from Tanner.”

  Sabella’s face contorted as she shook her head in denial. Then, she ran to a tree, bent over, and vomited. It was so violent and sudden that she fell to her knees. As she attempted to get up, she felt the cold metal of a gun at her temple.

  Tilting her head, she saw her longtime friend and past lover, Jacques Durand. There was a look in his eyes she had never glimpsed there before.

  “Tell me where I can find Scallato.”

  Sabella said nothing. Durand knew the truth about her, and what he didn’t know, he could guess. However, what could he prove?

  When Durand spoke, it was as if he were reading her mind.

  “I can’t prove a thing, Sabella, but I know that you were the person Scallato called his, ‘pet cop.’ If you know where he is and don’t tell me, I will kill you.”

  Sabella let out a wail, collapsed into her own vomit, and a sleeve of her jacket soaked up the vileness, after turning over onto her back, she stared up at Durand.

  “I don’t know where he is, Jacques. I swear it on Monique’s grave.”

  Durand’s face twisted into something unrecognizable as he leaned over and forced the barrel of his gun into Sabella’s mouth.

  “Do not ever mention my wife’s name again or God help me I will kill you.”

  Sara stepped closer to Durand and laid a hand on his arm.

  “Jacques, don’t do it. She might yet prove useful in tracking down Scallato.”

  Durand’s anger faded as he looked at Sara, and he removed his gun from Sabella’s mouth. With Tanner and Sara beside him, Durand left Sabella lying on the ground.

  Once she finished weeping, Sabella sat up, then stood. After wiping tears from her eyes, she looked around and saw a female agent staring at her. Sabella figured that the woman was there to keep her from leaving, and that Durand would soon take her in for an interrogation.

  Sabella wandered up the hill where there was a view of the town in the distance. She was standing near the spot where Scallato had rappelled over a hundred feet down a rope to his freedom.

  Sabella gained her freedom without the rope, as she stepped out into space and plummeted to the rocks below.

  42

  There Can Be Only One

  Twenty-seven days later. Four hours North of Barnaul, Russia

  Maurice Scallato hovered the helicopter low over the house and scrutinized the snow that covered the landscape. There were no footprints other than those made by small creatures, while any animal hoof marks larger than that were all many meters distant from the home.

  The whirring blades of the helicopter cleared most of the snow off the helipad, but Scallato planned to have its surface redone with heated coils someday. The important thing was that there were no tracks on the roof, not even those of a bird, and that’s what mattered most.

  Scallato purchased the luxury home under the name of Ivan Yenin, his new identity. His companion was his mistress, Veronika, who was now Mrs. Ivan Yenin, his new wife.

  He had escaped Sicily and made it to Rome. Once there, he told Veronika that Maria had shocked him by asking for a divorce, and that she was moving with the children to America. Scallato knew Veronika was smart enough to know that he was lying about at least some of that, but she was also wise enough not to pry.

  When the news stat
ions reported that a Sicilian carpenter named Maurice Rizzo was wanted for committing the vile and despicable act of slaughtering his own family, it caught the attention of many. When it soon followed that Maurice Rizzo was, in fact, a legendary assassin named Maurice Scallato, the story was the lead for days.

  It had been Durand who let the truth be known in his guise as a true crime writer, and he excoriated Scallato while calling him a coward and a despicable human being.

  Durand revealed that Scallato slaughtered his own family to escape from another assassin who had tracked Scallato down to kill him. And while he didn’t mention Tanner by name, those in the know, and within the criminal underworld knew of whom he spoke.

  When asked if he would be writing a book about Scallato someday, Durand answered yes.

  By murdering his own children, Scallato had made himself into one of the most despised people on the planet. A sketch of the man was being broadcast all over the world, as a massive manhunt was on for him.

  With so much attention on him, Veronika learned the true fate of Maria and the children. When she confronted Scallato about it, he told her that Tanner had backed him into a corner from which he had only one way out.

  Veronika surprised Scallato by telling him that she didn’t care what circumstances transpired to cause him to resort to such an extreme reaction. All she knew was that Scallato was hers now, the thing she’d always wanted. Veronika promised Scallato that she would give him an army of sons.

  That was when Scallato decided to marry Veronika under his new identity, and he promised her that he would triumph over Tanner in the end.

  Scallato may have escaped Sicily, but he was now a top priority of law-enforcement. It was believed he would go into hiding, to someday emerge with a new face.