The TANNER Series - Books 13-15 (Tanner Box Set) Read online

  The chief made a face and cursed under his breath.

  “I thought he looked familiar.”

  “Who is Burt Hodges?” Tanner asked.

  “He’s a man I’ve had my share of run-ins with, him and his late father,” Ellison said. “I guess you could say that he’s the local hood, although I’ve never been able to prove it.”

  “Is he dangerous?” Alexa asked, and the room became quiet as everyone stopped typing.

  Tanner broke the silence with a question.

  “Am I free to go, Chief?”

  “Of course, Mr. Myers, and thank you for your help today. That purse belonged to an elderly woman. She’ll be happy to get it back.”

  “It was my pleasure,” Tanner said, and he meant it. Chasing down the punk was the most fun he’d had in weeks.

  ***

  Tanner stopped on the way home and retrieved his pistol from where he had stashed it in the bushes. Once he had it back, he pulled away from the curb and headed towards their home. Alexa had lost her taste for pancakes and said that she would cook them something instead.

  “I didn’t think you needed a gun here, but now I’m not so sure,” Alexa said.

  “Why, because of that purse snatcher?”

  “No, his father, Burt Hodges. He sounds like he might be trouble.”

  “I hope you’re right; it would make things interesting.”

  “I don’t want things to be interesting, Tanner. I just want to live a quiet life and relax. I’ve done enough killing and faced enough danger to last me a lifetime. I would think that you had as well.”

  “Alexa, you know better than anyone who I am and what I do for a living.”

  “Yes, but that’s work. I’m talking about your life. Don’t you ever just want to relax and let it all go? You run every morning at dawn, practice your knife throwing and self-defense movements in the yard, and... what was that you were doing yesterday with the earphones on?”

  “I’m studying Greek, it’s one of the languages I don’t know and that ignorance could have cost me when I was in Greece going after Adams.”

  “So you were working? You promised me that you wouldn’t.”

  “It wasn’t work, not really, but I’m always learning something, I have to if I want to keep getting better.”

  “Is that why you’ve been wanting the two of us to take flying lessons?”

  “Yes, and I should have learned the basics already. Knowing how to fly may save my life someday. Once I learn, I’ll move on to helicopters. Being a Tanner is not just about knowing how to kill, it’s about being able to come out on top in any situation. To do that, to be a Tanner, it’s a never-ending struggle to be the best.”

  “That doesn’t leave much room for anything else, does it?” Alexa said.

  “Maybe not, but what there is, it’s all yours.”

  “And what if that’s not enough for me?”

  “I don’t know, Alexa. I guess that’s something you’ll have to decide.”

  They drove along in silence for a block, and then Tanner turned onto their street, Gentry Court. Word was that the development company that owned the forest land on either side of the road leading to the cul-de-sac had plans to build more homes.

  However, only trees faced out onto the road, and the only homes on Gentry Ct. were the ones where Tanner and Alexa were living.

  “Do you love me, Cody? If you do, you never say it.”

  “It’s not an easy thing for me to say, but yes, Alexa... I love you.”

  “I love you too, but I want all of you. I want Tanner and Cody, but if I have to choose, I’ll take Cody. I’d much rather have the man than the legend.”

  “I don’t think there’s a difference, and Alexa, Cody Parker is dead. He died in Texas at the age of sixteen.”

  Alexa reached over and touched him on the cheek.

  “Resurrect him. Let him have the life he should have had. I only stayed in America to be with you, but if we moved to Mexico, you could buy a ranch and live under your own name again. Don’t forget, I was also raised on a ranch until my family was murdered. We could buy a ranch and live the lives that Alvarado stole from us.”

  They had reached their house. Tanner parked in his driveway and turned off the engine.

  “You’ve been giving this a lot of thought, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, but the ranch was a dream I thought we could have only after you passed on the Tanner name to someone else. But to be truthful, I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to put my life on hold, and I don’t want to be sitting at home wondering whether I’ll ever see you again, every time you take a contract.”

  “What are you asking me to do, retire?”

  Alexa cupped his face in her hands.

  “I’m asking you to let the past go. Let’s buy our ranch, start a family, and live, really live. If you love me, then the choice shouldn’t be that hard for you to make.”

  “It’s not, but I choose both. I’ll take contracts, and I’ll be with you. That won’t make me any different than the thousands of other people who travel for work and return home to their families.”

  “Maybe, but those people don’t kill for a living.”

  Tanner smiled.

  “Many would if they could.”

  CHAPTER 5 – Tangled heart strings

  Amanda Zwicky was thirty-six, pretty, with dark hair and green eyes. She also seemed distracted by her boyfriend’s presence, as she and Sara were introduced.

  Seth Exley was a dozen years younger than his boss and girlfriend, Amanda Zwicky, and Sara was surprised that the good looking guard would be with an older woman. But then, Exley did have someone else on the side who was his own age, as Sara had discovered by accident.

  Exley left to attend to his duties and Sara and Zwicky went to Zwicky’s cramped office at the rear of the security department to talk.

  “I discovered the discrepancies in the computer log-in times and brought it to Mr. Quale’s attention. At first, I thought that one of the upper management had grown lax in keeping up with the security measures and had left their computer signed on, but it turned out that the files were being accessed at an hour when no one but our night security personnel and the cleaning service should have been around the building.”

  “Couldn’t they have taken them home to use?”

  “No ma’am. The encrypted laptops never leave the building, and surveillance video shows that they were all returned to their respective safes on the nights in question.”

  Sara cocked her head.

  “If the safes are all on camera, it seems to me that it would then be easy to figure out who had gone into the safe and taken out the computer.”

  “The safes weren’t under surveillance until I took over here. But the corridors outside the offices have cameras, and that was how we determined that the laptops were returned.”

  “But that would just be an assumption, correct?” Sara said. “They could have been kept out of the safes and smuggled out of the building.”

  “Yes, which is why I had cameras installed when I took over here.”

  “But a secured laptop is still being accessed without authorization?”

  Amanda Zwicky answered with a sigh.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you gone through all of the surveillance footage concerning the safe the laptop is stored in?”

  “Yes, Miss Blake, and we found nothing. That led me to a disquieting conclusion.”

  Sara understood.

  “You think that the files were accessed off-site?”

  “Yes, but for that to have happened, someone would need to have bypassed the biometric scanners that all of our laptops use. Even I can’t override those, and there are only seven encrypted laptops here in L.A. Six of them were stricken from the list after further investigation. The laptop that has been accessed is the one kept locked in a safe in Mr. Quale’s office.”

  “I assume that the laptop in the safe has had its biometric scanner checked for tamperi
ng?”

  “Yes, and there was nothing wrong with it. That laptop has been confirmed as the laptop used to access the information. Only myself and Mr. Quale have the combination to the safe in his office, but of course, I would never get past the biometric scanner. I would also have been seen on camera removing it from the safe.”

  “What if someone obtained a copy of Mr. Quale’s thumbprint? Could that be used?”

  “No, Miss Blake, not even if someone cut his thumb off. It still wouldn’t work. This is very sophisticated equipment, and Mr. Quale uses it on all his laptops, encrypted or otherwise.”

  “The evidence is pointing towards Mr. Quale being the culprit,” Sara said.

  Amanda Zwicky squirmed in her seat. She appeared to be uncomfortable with Sara’s observation about her boss. That impressed Sara, as did Zwicky’s reluctance to name Arthur Quale as a possible suspect, although it had to have crossed her mind.

  “I don’t believe that Mr. Quale is guilty. His anger and distress over this situation seems genuine to me.”

  “Still, he possesses the proper biometrics and has the combination to the safe.”

  “Miss Blake, whoever got to those files not only knew the combination to the safe and bypassed the biometrics, but there’s also a camera inside the room where the safe is kept. That camera, as well as the ones outside the office showed that no one was in the area during the times the files were last breached. It’s a mystery.”

  “It’s still beginning to sound like you may have been hacked remotely,” Sara said.

  “No, Miss Blake, we’ve looked into that. The laptop was never logged on to the Internet, that requires a separate password. Those files were accessed off the hard drive.”

  Sara smiled slightly.

  “As you say, Miss Zwicky, it’s a mystery.”

  ***

  Sara spent the next few hours talking to the other executives who had encrypted laptops, their assistants, and other employees at Burke L.A.

  Despite Quale’s misgivings, all were in agreement that Amanda Zwicky was an excellent security manager and that the security in the building improved dramatically since she had taken over the job.

  Sara had to agree, given what she saw around the building, as all security personnel seemed more professional than the ones employed at Burke’s main headquarters. She also learned that Zwicky had lobbied Conrad Burke for greater security and para-military training for some of the guards at all Burke facilities. In the memo, Zwicky cited the growing threat of not only terrorism, but also street gangs and other organized groups bent on crime and destruction.

  The cost of such training worldwide would be enormous and Conrad Burke had vetoed that idea. As for Sara, she was once again impressed by Zwicky.

  Amanda Zwicky had sent that memo directly to Burke after being in the company for less than a month. A bold move for a new employee.

  However, Sara did recognize one serious flaw in Burke L.A.’s security. It was the laptops. All of the laptops were of the same style and color.

  Biometrics or not, that made it easy to switch one laptop for another and could lead to confusion. Sara suggested to Zwicky that they order all new laptops in diverse colors and models in order to differentiate the encrypted, high security laptops from their regular counterparts.

  ***

  It took Sara a while to find the person she wanted, but while having lunch in the cafeteria, Sara finally located the company gossip. Every company had one, and at Burke L.A., the gossip was a woman from the mail department named Ruth.

  Sara pegged Ruth as a gossip after watching Ruth talk to over a dozen people before she ever sat down to eat.

  Several of the people Ruth spoke with had pointed Sara out to her, and Sara understood that she herself was a tidbit of gossip. A friendly smile was all the urging that Ruth needed to take a seat beside Sara.

  Ruth was around fifty, had a trim figure, and was energetic. Sara found her easy to talk to, and assumed that others did as well.

  ***

  “Oh yeah, I’ve been here for years and I know everyone. And because I deliver the mail, I get to visit each floor every day,” Ruth said.

  “Is it a pleasant place to work? I’ve gotten the impression that everyone here is all business.”

  Ruth let out a snort.

  “All business? Not by a long shot, why take what happened on the loading dock this morning. You see, there’s a girl that works down there and she...”

  By the time Ruth had to get back to work, Sara knew more about Burke L.A. than most of the people who worked there, including who was suspected of sleeping around with a coworker’s lover or spouse.

  To her surprise, the security guard Seth Exley and Quale’s assistant Rebecca Holloway weren’t on Ruth’s radar, at least they weren’t linked together. However, there was a name on the list that surprised Sara.

  She left Burke L.A. that afternoon with much to think about, and had plans to follow Seth Exley later that night. But before going home to her grandmother’s house for dinner, she was meeting someone for drinks.

  ***

  Sara recognized Jacques Durand from the photos of him she’d seen on the Internet. She joined him at the bar, and after introducing herself, the two of them moved to a table for more privacy.

  As she walked along with Durand towards their table, Sara noticed that there were several cracks running lengthwise over a wall to her right, and it reminded her that the area had suffered a quake recently. She had already come across the site of one building which had partially collapsed, as she was driving around the city, but the resilient L.A. populace seemed neither spooked nor disheartened by the recent quake.

  The earthquake, which was thought to be minor, had claimed three lives in an outlying area where the tremor had been blamed for causing a mudslide. But L.A. had suffered through dozens of significant earthquakes over the last hundred years, and there would undoubtedly be more. The city not only endured, but thrived.

  Durand pointed at the cracks in the walls.

  “They said that recent earthquake was minor, but it did not feel minor to me. And have you heard about the survivor they discovered?”

  “What survivor?” Sara said.

  “That mudslide killed some people, and just this morning they uncovered a man who was still alive. I don’t know all the details, but they say that he somehow had a source of air, but little water. He’s extremely dehydrated, but expected to live.”

  “Oh my God, that quake was weeks ago.”

  “Yes, some men refuse to die at the hands of fate,” Durand observed.

  Jacques Durand was a former French policeman and Interpol Agent turned true crime writer. He was in his fifties, had brown wavy hair, and a pair of sleepy eyes.

  The eyes were deceptive, as Durand was as sharp as they came. If Sara had to describe his demeanor, she would have to classify the man as cool. She also loved his accent.

  In a way, Durand reminded her of Tanner. Durand was a man who had faced danger while working undercover as a narcotics officer, and later faced more peril during his years with Interpol. He knew how to handle himself, was full of confidence, and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of him.

  Durand had written three best-selling books about true crimes and the criminals that committed them. His latest project was of particular interest to Sara, although it was Durand, and not Sara who had initiated the meeting.

  Durand had reached her through her former partner, Jake Garner. Sara learned that Jacques Durand was doing research for his next book, the subject of which was the elusive hit man, Maurice Scallato, who was otherwise known as “The Ghost.”

  That was all Sara needed to know to agree to meet and she was fortunate enough to have business in the L.A. area where Durand was currently living.

  Sara and Durand were on a first name basis by the time the waiter brought Sara her drink, and she felt relaxed around him.

  “You are a very beautiful woman, Sara. Please tell me that you have a thing f
or gracefully aging Frenchmen.”

  Sara smiled.

  “I didn’t before, Jacques, but I might be developing one.”

  Durand laughed.

  “I know that I asked for this meeting, but tell me, how may I help you?”

  “I understand that you’re writing a new book about a dangerous man.”

  “I take it you have an interest in Maurice Scallato?”

  “I do. I work for The Burke Corporation in Connecticut. Recently, several associates and I were in London and one of my associates came under attack. To make a long story short, I later learned that Maurice Scallato had instigated the violence, however, he didn’t take part in it.”

  “How certain are you that Scallato was behind the attack?”

  “I have no reason to think that the person who told me this was lying. That person is dead now, but he was acting on Scallato’s behalf, although he said that he had never met him.”

  Durand smiled.

  “The only people who have met Scallato are the dead. It’s one reason he’s called ‘The Ghost.’ Also, if what you’re saying is true, it’s a first. Scallato doesn’t use surrogates to kill. Unless...”

  “Yes?”

  “This associate of yours, he’s an assassin himself, isn’t he?”

  Sara tried to hide her surprise at Durand’s perceptiveness, but knew that she had failed when Durand began chuckling.

  “I have developed very good sources over the years, Sara. One of them informed me, discreetly, very discreetly, that you have a particularly interesting associate there at Burke. But have no fear, I can keep a secret. However, in exchange, I want to know everything, also, understand something, Maurice Scallato has targeted your assassin for death, and he may succeed at any time.”

  “You’re saying that he’ll keep coming?”

  “No. It is worse than that. From my research I’ve learned that Scallato kills for money, yes, but he also kills for pride. Your assassin has made a name for himself, and that brought him to Scallato’s attention. He will kill the man to prove that he’s better, that in fact, he’s the best, and from all I’ve learned about him, he’s right.”

  “No, he’s not, our assassin is better,” Sara said, and with more conviction than she meant to convey.