Soulless (A Tanner Novel Book 43)

by Remington Kane

  “That doesn’t matter. They can live or die for all I care. They’ve already served their purpose by offering the contracts.”

  “They’ll be mad when my men and I spoil their fun. They paid to see Tanner and Soulless clash, to determine who’s better. What they’ll see instead, is both men being hunted down and shot dead.”

  Lorraine turned to stare at Mills. “Do not underestimate Tanner. He’s survived attacks by superior numbers before.”

  “Understood, but he’ll also be going up against Soulless before we even enter the fight. Hell, given Soulless’s history, he might find a way to blow up Tanner and do the job of killing him for us.”

  “How many men will you have altogether?”

  “Twenty-three. That includes myself and the two pilots I’ll have flying us in. We’ll all be armed to the teeth, have on ballistic vests, and we’ve all got combat experience. Tanner is used to dealing with thugs, motorcycle gangs, that type. Against men with the advanced military training we have, he won’t stand a chance. If I had to guess, my sniper will take him out. My guy could nail a fly from a thousand yards.”

  Lorraine was nodding as she smiled. “I’m finally going to make him pay.”

  Mills sent her a thumbs up. “Count on it.”

  Cody was at the ranch when he came across the offer of a contract to kill Soulless. It didn’t surprise him. There was a lot of animosity being directed at the man ever since his last contract in Mexico. Soulless had become a hot topic in the news, and his name had even been mentioned in the Stark Diner, where Cody’s neighbors decried the butchery Soulless had committed on children with his bomb blast.

  The previous day, federal authorities had visited Crash and Caroline’s home. According to Crash, someone claiming to be Soulless had posted on his website’s forum and made threats against him and Caroline. The Feds believed the author of the post might actually be Soulless, and they asked Crash to cooperate with them if Soulless ever posted again.

  “They want me to make myself a target, Cody,” Crash had said. “They want me to respond to the post with insults and make Soulless angry enough to seek me out, and then they said that they would protect me.”

  Crash declined the request. No way was he going to deliberately enrage a man like Soulless. He had his daughter and grandson to think about. If Soulless were able to track him down some way, Crash was afraid the man might blow up his house. Then again, since it was Soulless, he might attempt to destroy the town of Stark just to get to him.

  Cody told Crash not to worry. He’d decided that he would accept the contract on Soulless. This, despite the fact that Cody entertained the thought that the contract offer might not be real. He thought there was a chance it was sent by Soulless himself, as a way to lure Tanner into a trap.

  If so, it didn’t matter. One way or another, Soulless would soon be dead. But to kill him, Cody would first have to find him.

  When he was again contacted by the person hiring him to kill Soulless, there was information that would make finding Soulless much easier. The client claimed to have knowledge that Soulless was meeting with his bomb maker in an isolated location. The client didn’t say how he had come upon the information, and Cody didn’t ask, but he was now convinced he would be walking into a trap if he went to the suggested location. It might also mean that Soulless would be there. Cody thought the risk would be worth the reward of seeing Soulless dead. He thanked his “client” for the information and said he would check it out. He was off to Clear Valley, Ohio.

  Soulless had been awakened by Gwen the morning after he’d left the drunken post on the assassin’s website. Gwen had found him drooling and slumped in a living room chair with an empty whiskey bottle on the floor beside him. Some of the whiskey had spilled out onto the floor, but most of it had been consumed by Soulless. He had a hangover and felt even worse when he recalled what he had done.

  He was hoping he had only dreamt it, but no, when he checked the website, he found his message posted. There was also a long thread going on where others on the site debated whether it was real.

  Soulless went and tossed the laptop into the surf and told Gwen to pack up and be ready to leave. He wasn’t going to take the chance that the authorities would be alerted to the post and perhaps have a way to track his location.

  He set fire to the bungalow before leaving to destroy any DNA evidence. By the time they were on the highway and driving away, the fire had caught well, and embers had set other bungalows ablaze. He would later learn that a couple from Denver had died in the fire. They’d both been drunker than he was and were slow to respond to the smoke alarm and reach safety. A worker at the resort suffered serious burns when he made a heroic attempt to save them. It seemed that Soulless killed and maimed even when he wasn’t intending to do so.

  When Gwen read the post and the reason for it, she was incensed.

  “How can they just refuse to rank you?”

  “It’s their website; they can do what they want. And so can I. After I kill Tanner, I’ll track down the site owners and make them wish that they had never struck me from the list.”

  Soulless had been driving. He pulled over to the curb after only a mile.

  “Can you drive, Gwen? My head is pounding.”

  “I’ll find a coffee shop. You need liquid after all the alcohol you drank. The booze dehydrates the brain.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what I’ve read.”

  “I’m not hungry, but orange juice sounds good.”

  Gwen found a place to eat and there was a parking space nearby. After entering, they settled at a booth. A waiter brought them their drinks. Orange juice for Soulless and tea for Gwen. She ordered food for herself too, an omelet.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Gwen said. “When we travel, maybe we should wear disguises.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Soulless said, as he massaged the spot between his eyes.

  “I think you should try to make yourself look older, and maybe feeble enough for a wheelchair. I’ll get a uniform and pretend to be your nurse.”

  “Do you think that’s necessary?”

  “I don’t think it will hurt us to take precautions. An old man and a nurse should go unnoticed.”

  “We’d need new IDs.”

  “I have a contact here that can get them for us.”

  “Here in Florida?”

  “No, in Washington DC. We could stop there and have them made. He does great work. There are three of them, he works with his grown son and daughter. We could get drivers licenses, birth certificates, and passports. They’d be as good as real too. He has connections in government.”

  “That doesn’t sound inexpensive.”

  “It’s not. The last time I bought an ID package from him, it cost me twenty-five thousand. That was four years ago.”

  “We’ll do it, and I’ll pay for it. But I’ll need to look old already when we visit them. I don’t want them seeing my real face.”

  “I can handle that. I’m good with makeup and costumes. I used to be an actress.”

  Soulless had been draining his glass of orange juice. He sat it down and looked across the booth at Gwen.

  “When were you an actress?”

  “In school and a few years after that. I loved making costumes and handling the makeup and the wigs. I can make you look old, and maybe I’ll age myself too.”

  “And what about the bomb making, who taught you that?”

  “My grandfather. He used to make bombs for the IRA. I suppose if I’d had brothers, he’d have taught them instead. I’m glad he taught me. I get a thrill out of working with explosives.” Gwen’s eyes lit up. “I love it when things go boom.”

  Soulless ordered another glass of juice, and decided he could eat something after all, and ordered rye toast with butter. After he received the juice and the bread, Gwen asked him a question.

  “What did you do before you became an assassin?”

  “I worked with my father. He wa
s a carpenter by trade and worked as a handyman. He could build and fix almost anything, and he taught me what he knew.”

  “You’re a fixer all right. You fix other people’s problems by ending them.”

  “It pays much better than building shelves and staircases,” Soulless said.

  After leaving the restaurant, Gwen had driven east, and they resettled themselves in a motel room along Route 1.

  Soulless was feeling better, but he still had a slight headache. Gwen had made a stop and bought a cheap new laptop. Soulless used it to check out the assassins website. The consensus hadn’t changed. Most believed the post he’d made was real. They were also in agreement that if it was real, Soulless was a loser.

  There were those who stood up for him. One had the screen name Soulless Fan #1, and another was Ted’s Girl. They told the others on the site that Soulless and Tanner would be meeting soon and that the issue would be settled once and for all.

  Once again, Soulless felt as if Soulless Fan #1 was reading his mind. He did intend to go after Tanner. Then again, he had stated as much in his drunken rant.

  After leaving the website, Soulless checked for messages. When he found he’d been offered a contract, it cheered him. Someone still considered him to be an assassin. But when he read the details and learned the target’s name, suspicion entered his mind.

  The intended target was Tanner.

  “Someone wants to hire you to kill Tanner?” Gwen said. “Oh, that’s grand that is. It means you’ll get paid to do something you were willing to do for free.”

  “I think it’s a trap. It might be Tanner trying to lure me to a certain spot.”

  Gwen had been smiling, the grin faded as she considered Soulless’s words. “A trap would be too risky.”

  “Not necessarily,” Soulless said. “If it is Tanner, I’ll never have a better chance to kill him. I’ll also have you helping me.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Do you know how to make small explosive devices. Something similar to a hand grenade?”

  “I can do that, yeah. I can even make it so you can set a timer for it to go off, or just pull a pin and release it.”

  “Will it be difficult to get the proper supplies?”

  “A trip to the supermarket can take care of that, and maybe a hardware store.”

  “We’ll stop in Washington to order the IDs, but we won’t be able to wait for them.”

  “They can ship them to us, for an extra fee. But why can’t we stay and wait for them?”

  “According to the message I received, Tanner will be in Ohio in four days. They say he’ll be there looking for a target.”

  “Where in Ohio?”

  “Someplace called Clear Valley.”

  Gwen looked up Clear Valley on her phone. “There’s a coal fire burning underground there. The whole area has been deemed unsafe.”

  “It will be for Tanner,” Soulless said, and he accepted the contract.

  17

  The Gang’s All Here

  Tanner hiked into Clear Valley ten hours before the scheduled time that he’d been told Soulless was meeting with his bomb maker. He moved carefully while dressed in colors that would help him to match his surroundings. Anyone setting a trap for him would assume he’d show up early to scout out the area, and he was certain there was danger ahead.

  He was still half a mile away from the floor of the valley when he heard the sound of voices coming from his left. One of them sounded like a woman, the other a child. He approached the area where they were. It was near a small lake. The odor coming from the water was unpleasant, because it had been tainted by the fumes from the coal fire. A number of trees in the area were near the cracks in the ground where steam escaped. Those trees were white and bare, having been killed off by the high level of carbon monoxide in the air.

  Tanner wondered why the woman would bring her child to such a place to play. It certainly was unfit as a picnic or playground spot. When he was closer, he saw that there were two children. The girl he’d heard was about eight, and there was also a boy of five. The boy had been quiet while he played with a toy soldier.

  The woman and the girl were talking while the woman took a needle and thread to a pair of socks. Not far away, Tanner could make out a large pop-up tent. It was yellow, dirty, and someone had placed a white patch on one side. Its wide flap was open, revealing an empty interior with sleeping bags laid out.

  The thought crossed his mind that they could be a part of a trap set by Soulless, but it seemed improbable. Any trap Soulless set would probably involve an explosive or something else that could cause death in large numbers.

  Given the location, Tanner was beginning to wonder if it was really Soulless who had hired him. The area was reputed to be devoid of people, while Soulless would be more inclined to want to choose a populous area.

  The woman had to be warned that she and her children were at risk if they stayed. Tanner slipped off the green ski mask he was wearing and stuck it in a back pocket before approaching them. He didn’t want to frighten the children.

  The boy heard him when he was fifteen feet away. He stood, walked over to his mother, and pulled on her sleeve. The woman gasped when she turned and looked at where her son was pointing.

  “Hello,” Tanner said.

  The woman had been seated. She stood quickly and took her daughter’s hand. She was about thirty, had dark hair, an attractive face, and gray eyes. Her daughter resembled her, as did the little boy, only his hair was blond and his eyes blue. Their clothes were worn and dirty, but their faces were clean.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I was going to ask you that,” Tanner said.

  “We live here,” said the girl.

  “Here? You mean in that tent?”

  “Yes,” the woman said. She had only met Tanner’s eyes for an instant before looking away.

  “The air quality is bad here. You should find another spot to settle.”

  “Luke said we have to stay here,” the girl said.

  “Who is Luke?”

  The girl made a face, like she had a bad taste in her mouth. “He’s Mama’s boyfriend.”

  “Take me to him. He needs to know that it’s not safe here.”

  “No,” said the woman. “Luke wouldn’t want to talk to you.”

  “Where is he?” Tanner asked, and he saw the woman look in the direction of the tent. Now that he was closer, Tanner could see that the tent wasn’t the only structure. There was an old motor home off in the distance, near the spot where the dirt road ended. Tanner could only make out a corner of it. It was about six hundred yards away and concealed behind trees.

  “You can’t go over there,” the woman said in a meek voice, after realizing Tanner had spotted the motor home.

  “What’s your name?”

  The little girl answered. “Mama’s name is Vera. I’m Haley, and that’s Brett. Brett don’t talk since Daddy died last year.”

  Tanner smiled at the little girl. “I’m Tanner.” He looked back at the woman. “It’s not safe here, and I don’t mean just the fumes in the air and the cracked earth. There may be something going on here soon that could get you hurt. You need to take your children and leave, at least for a little while.”

  “And go where?” the woman said.

  “Anywhere,” Tanner said. He had warned the woman, but she seemed reluctant to leave. “I’ll go look for your boyfriend. Maybe he’ll listen.”

  Tanner strode toward the tent while headed for the motor home. Behind him, Vera took out her phone to call Luke and let him know that they were coming. Tanner, ever alert, saw the phone and didn’t object. The sooner they made contact with Luke the better it would be.

  Soulless was at the motor home. He had walked into the area an hour earlier from a different direction than the one that Tanner had chosen. When he came across the RV, he recognized it for what it was—a meth lab.

  Clever, Soulless thought. Clear Valley was an ideal spot to set
up a methamphetamine lab. Because of the odors already in the air, the fumes produced by cooking meth would go unnoticed. Add to that the unlikelihood of anyone visiting the area, and the lab could cook without fear of discovery. That is, if someone hadn’t lured two elite assassins to the spot.

  Soulless had come upon Vera’s boyfriend, Luke, while Luke was sitting outside in a folding lawn chair and smoking a cigarette. Soulless had slipped up behind him and placed a knife to his throat. Luke was thirty-six, lanky, and had dirty brown hair that hung down to his shoulders. He begged Soulless not to kill him.

  “Are you alone here?”

  “No man, I got my girlfriend and her kids with me. She ain’t bad-looking, you can have her if you want.”

  Soulless removed the knife from Luke’s throat and told him to stand up and face him. Soulless was wearing a ski mask. It was nearly the same color of green as Tanner’s. There was a gun holstered on his hip and a rifle hung from his back. In a pouch secured around his waist, he carried several of Gwen’s homemade hand grenades.

  When Luke was facing him, Soulless looked him up and down.

  “Did you just tell me I could rape your girlfriend?”

  “Yeah man, or her daughter too if you want. Or even the boy if you’re into that type of shit. Take anything you want but just don’t hurt me.”

  “Where are your loved ones?” Soulless asked. He was being sarcastic by referring to Vera and the kids as Luke’s loved ones, but the jab went over the meth cook’s head.

  Luke pointed. “They like to hang out by the lake. It’s that way.”

  Soulless was about to tell Luke to call his girlfriend and have them come to the motor home when Luke’s phone rang.

  “Can I answer that?”

  “Do it, and make it so I can hear the caller.”

  Luke answered the call and placed his phone in speaker mode. Vera’s quavering voice came through; it was obvious she was worried.