Young Guns Box Set - Books 1-4: A Tanner Series (Young Gun Box Sets) Read online

  YOUNG GUNS BOX SET - BOOKS 1-4

  A TANNER SERIES

  Remington Kane

  Contents

  Join My Inner Circle

  Acknowledgments

  YOUNG GUNS - BOOK 1

  1. Red Rain

  2. Armed And Extremely Dangerous

  3. Baby Hitmen

  4. Climb The Ladder

  5. Damsel

  6. Bean Counter

  7. Ambushed

  8. Where There’s Smoke, There’s Gunfire

  9. Kicks And Cash

  10. A Chink In The Armor

  11. Click!

  12. Let The Girl Go

  13. A Terrible Piece Of Luck

  14. Superior Firepower

  15. Hostage Crisis

  16. Payback

  YOUNG GUNS 2 - SMOKE & MIRRORS

  17. Girls, Girls, Girls

  18. A Face In The Crowd

  19. Memories

  20. Right Crimes, Wrong Face

  21. Plays Many Parts

  22. One Hoyt Too Many

  23. A Hole In The Ground

  24. Digging Deeper

  25. Teddy Bear

  26. A Long Shot

  27. Suspicious

  28. Could It Be Him?

  29. What’s With The Pants?

  30. There You Are

  31. Observation

  32. Hiring A Part-Time Spy

  33. Planning

  34. The Unexpected

  35. What’s An Ollie?

  36. A Complication

  37. Role Camouflage

  38. Garbage In, Goodies Out

  39. That Nagging Feeling

  40. James

  41. Squirrely

  42. Up To No Good

  43. California Dreaming

  44. Patsy

  45. Late Night Visitor

  46. Accidents Will Happen

  47. Caught In The Act

  48. Do The Right Thing

  49. Endings And Beginnings

  50. Mixed News

  YOUNG GUNS 3 - BEYOND LIMITS

  51. The Fastest Gun In The West

  52. More Than Meets The Eye

  53. Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On

  54. A Call From The Past

  55. On Your Marks…

  56. Hit The Hitter

  57. So Far, So Good

  58. The Safari Twins

  59. Feed Me!

  60. Freedom

  61. Nor Any Drop To Drink

  62. Letter From A Friend

  63. A Pain In The Neck

  64. Three Little Words

  65. A Promise Of Violence To Come

  66. Finish Line

  67. Goodbye And Good Luck

  68. A Well-Earned Rest

  69. My How You Have Grown

  70. Older And Wiser

  71. House Hunting

  72. Bad Timing

  73. Head Hunting

  74. Boundaries

  75. You’re A Vegetable

  76. Double Trouble

  77. Purple Drapes!

  78. Cookies And Milk

  79. Go Wee-Wee

  80. Boom!

  81. Hello, Mr. Smith

  82. All Eyes On You

  83. Pissy Pants

  84. A Word To The Wise

  85. Psst, Over Here

  86. The Choice

  87. You Have My Word

  88. Failure Is Not An Option

  89. Goodbye Again

  90. Fancy Meeting You Here

  YOUNG GUNS 4 - RYKER’S RAIDERS

  Prologue

  91. These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

  92. Seeking Answers

  93. Business Negotiations

  94. Game Interrupted

  95. One Last High

  96. Sneaking In

  97. Business And Pleasure

  98. Breaking And Entering

  99. A Waste Of Time

  100. The Nickname Fits

  101. Three For The Price Of One

  102. Let’s Talk

  103. A Very Dangerous Man

  104. Help

  105. Due Diligence

  106. Friends In Low Places

  107. Fight On

  108. Nosey Gets You Nowhere

  109. Live To Fight Another Day

  110. Talk Over Coffee

  111. No Cigar

  112. Well-Armed

  113. Practice To Deceive

  114. Dead Drunk

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Join My Inner Circle

  Bibliography

  Make Contact

  Join My Inner Circle

  REMINGTON KANE’S INNER CIRCLE

  GET FREE BOOKS & SHORT STORIES, INCLUDING THE TANNER NOVEL SLAY BELLS and THE TAKEN! ALPHABET SERIES.

  Acknowledgments

  I write for you.

  —Remington Kane

  YOUNG GUNS - BOOK 1

  1

  Red Rain

  PHOENIX, ARIZONA

  Professor Whittier Washington Branson Armstrong frowned as he returned his phone to the inside pocket of his suit coat. Armstrong had made the trip from his university to a downtown office building where he was to meet with a defense attorney.

  The lawyer was interested in hiring Professor Armstrong to act as an expert witness in an upcoming trial. Unfortunately, the attorney was called away on a separate matter and had to cancel the meeting. Armstrong only became aware of the change in plans as he was walking down a corridor toward the lawyer’s office.

  As a way to make amends, the lawyer suggested meeting for lunch the following day, and assured Professor Armstrong that he would pick up the tab. That was fine with Armstrong. It meant he would get out of his classroom in the middle of the day, something that rarely occurred. However, with the winter break on the horizon, his workload was light, and he could spare the time.

  Armstrong walked back toward the elevator, then stood before its mirror-like doors. His reflection revealed a black man in a blue suit holding a briefcase. The professor kept his hair cut short and wore a trim beard. He was fit, despite never exercising, because he rarely ate breakfast and didn’t care much for sweets.

  A growth spurt in his late-teens had brought him up to a height that was just shy of six feet, and although he was nearing forty, Armstrong’s boyish good looks caused more than one of the young ladies in his economics class to develop a crush on him.

  The professor was divorced from an ex-wife who came to realize that she wanted adventure more than she wanted a stable home life. Armstrong had full custody of their thirteen-year-old daughter, Megan, while his ex-wife traveled the world as a photojournalist. With the holiday season having arrived, Armstrong assumed his daughter would soon receive the yearly care package sent by his ex.

  These packages invariably arrived with several age appropriate gifts, along with a card and a short letter professing love.

  The previous year’s package remained unopened and sitting on a shelf in the basement. Although still a child, Megan was no longer a kid. The pain of rejection caused by her mother’s voluntary absence from her life was a wound that could not be salved by a yearly box of goodies and well wishes.

  Megan no longer cared about her mother, and had given up on the fantasy of her one day returning to them. Consequently, Armstrong and Megan were closer than most fathers and daughters, and Megan was the priority in his life.

  Armstrong, who went by the name Whit, rarely dated. He had decided long ago to give up thoughts of a serious relationship with anyone until his daughter left high school.
Once Megan was an adult, then it could be about him and his needs. Until that happened, his daughter would have his time and attention to herself.

  Over a minute had passed since Armstrong pressed the DOWN key on the elevator and the machine had yet to rise from the basement parking area.

  Since it was only two floors down, the professor headed for the stairs. The meeting being postponed had one benefit. It allowed him to get home earlier, and on a day when he had already stayed later than usual at the university.

  Although Armstrong had enlisted his neighbor, a retired nurse, to keep an eye on Megan, his daughter was still home alone. That was a recent development, and one which Megan had campaigned for weeks to achieve.

  “I’m not a baby, Daddy. I’m thirteen now, a teenager. I’ll be going to high school next year,” Megan had told him.

  Armstrong finally agreed that his daughter no longer needed a babysitter, who had been the retired nurse, a woman named Fran. Fran had been watching Megan at her house after school until Armstrong returned home an hour or two later.

  Even Fran told Armstrong that he was babying the girl.

  “When I was Megan’s age, I was not only home alone, but I was watching my younger brother and making dinner for my parents, who both worked. She’ll be fine, Whit, and if Megan needs me, I’ll still be right next door.”

  All had been going well, but Armstrong still didn’t like the idea of his daughter being home alone.

  Armstrong stepped through the stairwell doorway and into the underground parking garage.

  As he looked around to get his bearings, he heard a frightened scream echo off the walls. The sound, although panicked and high-pitched, was masculine.

  The scream was accompanied by the sound of running feet somewhere off to the right, then followed by that same voice calling for help. The cries for help ceased abruptly, and were replaced by what sounded like someone punching. Armstrong assumed that a fight had broken out.

  The professor rushed toward the sounds. As he ran, his briefcase banged against his leg as his eyes scanned for the source of the disturbance.

  The parking garage was nearly devoid of vehicles. The building housed a dental lab, several lawyers, and two accountants. It was after six p.m. and nearly everyone had gone home for the day.

  Rounding a corner, Armstrong saw a strange sight. There was a man wearing a raincoat, complete with rubber boots and a hat. All of it was in that same bright yellow that Armstrong’s mother used to dress him in when he was a boy venturing out to school on a rainy day.

  The thing is, there was no rain. It hadn’t rained in weeks and the city was suffering through an extended period of drought conditions. The man in the yellow raincoat looked as out of place as a surfboard amid a winter landscape.

  The wearer of the raincoat was on his knees, with a man in a gray suit pinned beneath him. He appeared to be hammering blow upon blow onto the other man’s midsection.

  “Hey!” Armstrong said. “That’s enough now. The guy is already flat on his back.”

  The man in the rain gear spun around and Armstrong gasped at the sight of him. What he had mistaken as the sound of punches being thrown had been the thumping of repeated stabbing, of flesh being punctured, pummeled and ripped.

  The front of the yellow raincoat was splattered with blood, and more of the red gore was dripping from the knife the killer was holding.

  Armstrong was unable to see the man’s face, as the hood he wore was accompanied by a mask, like the type worn for Halloween. The white mask was also mottled with blood, and resembled a skull.

  Frozen in shock, Armstrong did nothing as the thug rose up from the floor to stand above his victim. When the knife-wielding assailant rushed toward Armstrong with the blade held high, the professor broke from his trance and turned to flee. He was too slow.

  The man with the knife gripped the collar of Armstrong’s jacket with one hand, spun him around, and brought the knife down hard, plunging the eight-inch blade against Armstrong’s chest. The impact of the blow staggered Armstrong, and he instinctively shot a hand up to evaluate his wound.

  Only, there was no wound. A bruise would likely form at the point of impact, but the knife had not penetrated flesh. Instead, the tip of the blade had passed through Armstrong’s suit coat and struck his phone, which was in the jacket’s inside pocket.

  Both predator and prey were given pause by the stroke of luck, but Armstrong recovered first. He swung his briefcase up and caught his attacker on the chin. The blow was a good one and it knocked the thug in the raincoat off balance.

  Before he could recover, Armstrong swung the briefcase again, this time hitting the man on the side of the head. The blow dropped the guy to one knee. It also opened Armstrong’s briefcase and scattered its contents across the floor of the parking garage.

  The man looked up at Armstrong with eyes dazed from the blow that had been delivered. Armstrong had not only stunned the murderer, he had also succeeded in knocking loose the mask. It hung about the man’s neck by a piece of broken elastic.

  The man who knelt before Armstrong was in his forties, black, with light skin and large brown eyes. There was a zigzagging scar across the bridge of his nose. Although disoriented, the hoodlum still held on to the blade, which he swung back and forth in front of him, while he struggled to regain his senses.

  Armstrong tore his gaze away from the guy’s face and ran. Knowing it would take too long to reach his car and unlock it, Armstrong headed for the elevator, the doors of which were sitting open. As he neared it, he saw why the elevator had failed to respond to his earlier summons.

  There was a piece of wood, a board, keeping the doors from closing. Armstrong kicked the obstruction free, leapt on the elevator, then pounded on the button that would take him up to street level.

  As the doors were closing shut, Armstrong spotted the killer in the raincoat running toward him. Although the man had to hold it with his hand, the mask was back in place.

  The bloody knife was leading the charge, but the effort was too late. The elevator doors shut, locked, and the elevator ascended.

  Armstrong was safe.

  The man in the bloody raincoat hammered on the elevator doors in impotent rage. His name was Lionel McCall, and Lionel knew that Armstrong had gotten a good look at his face.

  He considered rushing up the concrete ramp to beat Armstrong to the street, then follow the professor and kill him. But in his bloody outfit, Lionel knew he would only draw the attention of a cop.

  Lionel McCall shed the rain gear carefully, then doused it with lighter fluid. He halted as he was about to set the evidence ablaze. He had spotted an envelope. It was one that had fallen from the briefcase of the witness in the blue suit.

  When Lionel picked it up and read it, he grinned. It was a credit card bill addressed to Professor Whittier Washington Branson Armstrong, and it gave his home address.

  Lionel set the bloody clothes and mask on fire, despite knowing the sprinklers in the building would extinguish the blaze. That was all right with Lionel, between the fire and water, any DNA evidence would be consumed, diluted, or washed away.

  Before the building’s fire suppression system could activate and soak him, Lionel walked past his victim, a former prosecutor who kept an office in the building. After taking the stairs and exiting through a rear door, Lionel made a call.

  His employer, who was also his brother, Daryl, answered on the third ring.

  “Is it done?”

  “Yeah, but there was a problem.”

  “How bad?”

  “Bad enough that I can’t say over the phone.”

  “You’re using a burner phone, right?”

  “Yeah, but you never know.”

  “Shit. Are you still downtown?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get to the Starbucks on Central Avenue, I’ll pick you up in the limo.”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “I’ll be there in four. And Lionel, whatever went
wrong needs to be fixed.”

  “It will be,” Lionel said, and smiled down at the envelope in his hand.

  2

  Armed And Extremely Dangerous