He released the bat and picked up the Ka-Bar with the seven-inch blade. At a glance, Tanner could see that the blade’s edge was honed to a razor sharpness. His next victim was an uninjured man holding his own knife. The guy was so huge that the blade he held out in front of him looked like a toy in his massive hand. Tanner came at him fast and inflicted deep cuts on his wrist and fingers before firing out a foot to kick the blade from his hand. Finding himself defenseless, the brute soon found himself bleeding to death from four stab wounds that were delivered in under a second.
Although dying, the oaf was still useful, Tanner gripped the big man by his shirtfront and propelled him toward two of his friends, knocking them down. As the men were attempting to stand, Tanner appeared above them holding a bat. Eleven hard frenzied swings later and the three men were flat on their backs, suffering from broken bones, fractured skulls, and moaning as one.
There were three men still standing. They were the men Tanner had first struck with the bat. The guy who’d had his front teeth knocked out and the man with the bloody nose looked incensed, but the one with the injured knee was holding up his hands in a pleading gesture.
“I’ve had enough.”
Tanner was about to tell him to leave when the man with the busted teeth plunged his blade into the guy’s back, at the base of his spine. His victim fell to the ground while screaming as his legs gave out. The man who’d stabbed him spat at him.
“You’re a damn coward, Marvin!”
The man with the bloody nose nodded in agreement and raised the bat he was holding. “We can take him. I’ll hit him with the bat, and you stab him.”
Tanner waited for them to make their move. It didn’t take long. They came at him together, then the man with the knife tried to ease behind him while his friend took swings at Tanner to distract him. Tanner used his own bat to block the attack before going on the offensive. He sent a kick into the groin of the man with the bat, before swinging his bat behind him. The bat caught the guy at his rear in the face and did damage to his left eye.
To his credit, the bastard shook off the pain and stabbed at Tanner. The tip of his knife struck the head of the bat and became embedded in it. Tanner released the bat and the sudden weight of it pulled the knife from the man’s grip. He suffered a fatal blow as Tanner delivered a kick to his throat that crushed his windpipe.
When Tanner turned to deal with the last man, he found that he was on the ground in the fetal position, still suffering from the vicious blow to his groin. Tanner smashed a booted foot down on the man’s head several times and finished with a strike to his throat, he then turned to stare at Michael Kemp.
“Drop your knife.”
Twenty-nine seconds earlier, Kemp watched as eight of his men moved in to kill one man. Less than a half minute later, his men were dead, dying, or in a world of pain. When he looked at the man who had destroyed them, he was amazed to see that the guy wasn’t even breathing hard.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m the man who’s going to kill you. Drop that knife.”
Tanner unholstered his weapon and aimed it toward Kemp, who had stepped behind Franny while holding his blade to her throat. Kemp was still gripping Wendy’s wrist with his left hand. Wendy attempted to pull free, and Kemp went off-balance. To steady himself, he had to move the hand holding the knife and take a step backwards. With the knife removed from her throat, Franny moved away from Kemp, leaving a clear shot open for Tanner.
Two rounds were fired. They both struck Kemp in his abdomen. Tanner wanted him to die, but he didn’t want it to be quick. He didn’t know Kemp’s name, but he knew the man had led a gang that had been looting, killing, and raping. A quick death was too kind.
Kemp’s grip on Wendy’s wrist vanished along with his strength. He sat on the ground and looked down at his white shirt, which was rapidly turning red. Then the pain hit full force and he fell onto his back and groaned.
Wendy walked over to stand beside Franny while gawking at Tanner. “Mr. Parker, where did you learn to fight like that? It was like something you’d see in a movie.”
Tanner ignored Wendy’s question and asked one of his own, while he took the time to load a fresh magazine into his gun. “Are you two okay?”
Franny smiled at him. “We are thanks to you.”
Tanner pointed at Kemp’s pickup truck. The keys were in it, and it had been left running. “Let’s go gather up Jake and get out of here.”
They drove off as the dark clouds above finally released the rain, which came down in a torrent. Behind them were fourteen men who were either dead or dying.
16
Tables Turned
Joshua knelt beside Haley as she was stirring awake. Her eyes opened, took him in, then closed again. Joshua tried to wake her, but it was no use. The injury to her head was serious and she’d been slipping in and out of consciousness.
“She won’t wake up,” he told Miller.
Miller sent him a shrug, signifying his disinterest.
Joshua raised the gun he was holding and pointed it at Miller. When he saw movement behind Miller, he shifted the gun that way and saw that it was Naya.
Joshua glared at her. “I told you to stay in the car.”
“I know. I ignored you.”
Miller looked at Naya and raised an eyebrow. Naya answered him by nodding once. She had the Derringer tucked into a pocket of the jacket she wore and was waiting for a chance to use it.
She pointed at Haley. “Is she dead?”
“No, she’s not dead,” Joshua said. “But Haley needs a doctor. Miller, you pick up Haley and carry her to the car. If you try to hurt her, I’ll shoot you.”
Miller approached Haley’s prone form and crouched down in preparation to lift her. Joshua had turned away from Naya to watch Miller, and that’s when Naya brought out the gun. She jammed the double barrel of the small pistol against the left side of Joshua’s head. He jumped at the feel of the metal, cut his eyes toward her, and realized it was a gun Naya had pressed against his temple.
“Drop the gun, Joshua,” Naya said. Her words had as much steel in them as the weapon she was holding.
Joshua hesitated to act as he tried to think of a way to turn the situation back in his favor. He could come up with nothing. If he threatened to shoot Miller, Naya could promise to kill him afterwards. If he tried shooting Naya, it was a safe bet that she would pull her trigger and place a bullet in his brain.
Joshua dropped the gun. The key fob was in his other hand, and he dropped that too; after doing so, he begged Naya to help Haley.
“Take revenge out on me for what I did to you back at the house, but please get Haley to a doctor.”
Miller rose from the ground beside Haley, walked over, and claimed his property from the ground where Joshua had dropped it. After placing the key fob in his pocket and tucking the gun into his waistband, he slammed a fist against the side of Joshua’s head. Joshua was still groaning from the pain of the first blow when Miller struck him in the face. Joshua went down and Miller kept after him.
Miller had been a boxer as a teen. Of his twelve fights, he’d won ten of them, all by knockout. Those days were more than twenty years ago. Although he’d lost much of the hand speed and endurance he’d had at seventeen, he’d grown stronger, bigger, and he was filled with rage toward Joshua.
Joshua tried to defend himself, but he was no fighter. Most of Miller’s punches made it past his raised arms and caused ruin to his face. Joshua’s nose was broken, his lips split, and he was having trouble seeing out of his left eye. Joshua was on the verge of passing out when Naya shouted at Miller to stop.
Miller turned to look at her with his chest heaving from exertion, and there was blood dripping off the knuckles of his right hand.
“He deserves a beating.”
“He deserves worse than that; the son of a bitch burned me. Step away from him.”
Miller stood and backed away as Naya moved closer. She was holding the Derringer
out at arm’s length.
“Joshua. Look at me, Joshua.”
Joshua heard Naya’s voice over the sound of his own moans. He gazed up at her with his one good eye and saw her smile.
“You fucked with the wrong person,” Naya said. She pulled the trigger while taking aim at Joshua’s heart.
Agony exploded in Joshua’s chest. The pain eclipsed the aches of the beating by magnitudes. Had he been able to draw a breath, Joshua would have screamed.
Someone screamed for him. It was Haley. She had regained consciousness while Joshua was being pummeled by Miller. After witnessing Naya shoot her lover, Haley experienced a jolt of adrenalin that got her up and moving. Her flight reflex had kicked in and she tried to flee.
“You killed him! You killed Joshua.”
In a state of panic and without a sense of direction, Haley ran toward the bank of the stream. To call her movements running was being kind. Haley staggered along in a zigzagging motion, as she was affected by the concussion that caused her to experience vertigo. Haley stumbled, fell, made it back to her feet, then fell again.
The next time she rose, Naya was at her back and pointing the Derringer at her. Haley had seen her shoot Joshua. She couldn’t be allowed to tell anyone. Naya took aim at Haley’s head and pulled the trigger. At least she tried to, but the trigger seemed frozen.
Miller called to her. “You have to cock the hammer to fire the other chamber.”
“What?”
Miller was about to repeat himself when he saw Haley make it to her feet again. He raised his gun, sighted in on Haley, and fired three times. A trio of slugs entered Haley’s body, to rip through her and exit out her breasts. She hit the ground and her body rolled toward the lip of the bank and into the stream, to be carried away.
Joshua had been a witness to Haley’s murder. The shot to his chest had caused damage but wasn’t fatal. He released a cry of emotional pain as he watched the woman he loved be slaughtered. The sound went unheard by Naya or Miller because it had coincided with a loud clap of thunder.
A torrent of rain began falling and Joshua felt himself slipping away. Miller had beaten him to the edge of unconsciousness, and now he was teetering over that edge. He passed out, and it was a mercy, for it would grant him a reprieve from having to deal with Haley’s loss.
Naya and Miller were getting soaked to the skin, but Miller insisted that they make certain Joshua was dead. Naya rushed over to Joshua and pointed down at him.
“He’s dead. I shot him in the heart.”
Miller had his shoulders hunched against the rain and was blinking water out of his eyes. “I don’t see any blood.”
“In this rain. It’s all being washed away. Anyway, I shot him in the heart. There wouldn’t be much blood.”
Lightning struck the ground four hundred feet away. Naya jumped at the sound, then she turned and began running.
“I’m getting back in the car.”
Miller gave Joshua a last look and followed her. The rain was coming down so forcefully that he could feel the weight of it on his shoulders.
Once he was back in the car, he wiped the water from his face, then asked Naya to hand him the Derringer. When he had it, he lowered the window and chucked the gun into the stream. The Glock followed. He explained his actions to Naya.
“They’re murder weapons. We don’t want to risk being caught with them.”
Naya nodded her understanding and put the heat on in the car. Ten minutes later, they were back at the house on the hill, out of the rain, and believed themselves to be safe.
They were wrong.
17
Revelation
Tanner drove Kemp’s pickup through the driving rain with haste yet also with a degree of caution. There was debris on every street, including bodies. Whenever they came across an unmoving form, Tanner would stop and shine the headlights on the person and honk the horn. None of them moved or showed signs of life. In most cases, it was obvious by their wounds or vacant eyes that they were dead.
Franny was seated beside him with Wendy on her right. Tanner was aware that Franny had been watching him from the corner of her eye and understood the reason for it.
He had bested eight men armed with clubs and knives, and he had done so with ease and efficiency. He’d been given no choice but to do so, and there had been no way to keep Franny from witnessing it.
Cody Parker was a cattle rancher from Texas. When surrounded by eight men intent on harming him he should have been killed or beaten to a pulp. He didn’t have a mark on him, and he had inflicted pain and death on his opponents without hesitation and while displaying great skill at hand-to-hand combat.
Franny was no fool, and she had been in his household for more than a year and seen things that were incongruent with Cody’s identity as a cattle rancher. What she may or may not suspect about him, he didn’t know, but he hoped it wouldn’t lead to her wanting to leave the ranch and seek employment elsewhere. Along with being the best housekeeper he and Sara had ever had, Franny was a friend and considered family by himself, Sara, and the children.
They reached the building where he’d left Jake and Tanner pulled the truck to the curb. He told Franny and Wendy that he would need their help in getting Jake to the truck.
It was tough to see beyond the windows because of the driving rain, but upon stepping out of the pickup, Tanner noticed that Jake’s motorcycle was in pieces. It looked as if someone had rolled over the machine with something heavy and had done so several times.
The street was deserted, and yet, a throng was still gathered over by the courthouse despite the rain. They were the die-hard protestors determined to get to Kyle Anderson and string him up.
Wendy rushed toward the building’s entrance, eager to reach her boyfriend and make sure that he was all right. Tanner caught up to her and put out a hand to stop her.
“Let me go in first. There could be trouble.”
Wendy nodded while nibbling on her bottom lip.
Tanner stood to the right of the damaged entry doors and called to Jake. When he heard a reply, he smiled.
“I’m still here, Mr. Parker. Did you find Wendy?”
Wendy could restrain herself no longer and rushed past Tanner and into the building’s lobby. Jake was where Tanner had left him, but he was no longer alone. There was a body on the floor several yards away from him. It was a man with a bandana covering the lower part of his face. A single gunshot wound was visible on the gray T-shirt the corpse wore. Laying near his right hand was an old revolver. There were two boxes near the body, each containing an expensive video game system. The man with the revolver had looted the merchandise.
After Wendy and Jake kissed and rejoiced in finally being together, Jake pointed toward the figure on the floor.
“That guy ran in here when the rain started. When he saw me sitting here, he took a shot at me and missed. I didn’t miss.”
“I’m glad I left you the gun.”
Jake grinned. “Not as glad as I am. But my knee is no better than when you left me, and it’s swollen. I’m going to need help getting out of here.”
Franny and Wendy were glad to see that Jake had their purses. They had both been dreading going back up to Townsend’s office to retrieve them.
When Franny spotted a clock that was on the wall above the elevator, she pointed at it. “Is that the right time?”
“Yeah,” Tanner said.
Franny shook her head in wonder. Barely two hours had passed since the riot began, and yet it had felt more like ten hours to her.
Tanner helped Jake to stand, then Franny and Wendy supported him as they moved outside. The pickup was as Tanner had left it. He unlocked it and Wendy and Jake took the rear seats while Franny sat up front with him.
He had turned the truck around and was headed toward the highway when he saw a massive glow on the horizon. Vehicles were coming. There were a lot of them, and they were large. It appeared that the National Guard was making an appearance in force.
Not wanting to be detained or questioned, Tanner took the truck off-road. They were a hundred yards into the woods when several helicopters flew overhead. Whatever remained of the protest and rioting was soon to be quashed as the National Guard arrived in greater numbers.
Tanner found a path through the sparse woods that was parallel to the route he had traveled on foot earlier. It was a rough ride, and he was forced to back up and find a different way forward several times, but eventually he reached the cleared land that bordered the stream.
He brought the truck to a stop when he arrived at the spot where he had pulled Joshua and Haley out of the water.
“Why are we stopping here?” Franny asked.
“I have to check on someone, two people actually. I ran into them on my way to find you and the woman was in bad shape. I want to see if they’re okay.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No. Stay here and get behind the wheel. I’ll be back in ten minutes or less. If there’s trouble, or I don’t come back in that time, take off, and I’ll find you later.”
Before Franny could respond, Tanner had left the truck and stepped into the rain. She moved over to sit behind the wheel and heard Jake make an observation.
“Your boss is a hell of a guy, Franny.”
“That he is,” Franny said.
Tanner came upon the leather vest Haley had been wearing along with the thermal blanket that had been covering her. He was beginning to think her absence from the scene was a good thing, but then he spotted Joshua.
Tanner grimaced as he took in the damage to Joshua’s face. Someone had really worked the young man over good. One eye was closed, his lips cut and swollen, and his nose broken. When he placed a hand on his chest to check if he was breathing, he felt something hard beneath the fabric of the hoodie Joshua was wearing. It turned out to be a small computer tablet, and it had a bullet hole in it. A check of Joshua’s chest revealed the bullet wound, and the rear of the bullet. The slug’s force must have been spent by its path through the computer tablet. And yet, it still had enough energy to pierce Joshua’s flesh. Its impact with the tablet had jammed the device against his chest and caused the skin around the wound to form a rectangular bruise that was a deep purple.
Lit Fuse (A Tanner Novel Book 44) Page 10