The TANNER Series - Books 1-3 (Tanner Box Set) Read online

  He was about to leave, after wiping down the room, when he heard a vehicle roll to a stop outside his door, despite the fact that the driver had cut the engine.

  He peeked past an outer edge of the curtain on the room’s only window and watched as three men exited a large, white pickup truck, while leaving their doors open to aid in a quick exit.

  The men were all heavyset, but also had the look of hard men. They each wore faded jeans with denim jackets and boots, and one of them was sporting a cowboy hat.

  The fattest of the three nodded towards the motel and took a gun out of a shoulder holster, the gun was big, a Desert Eagle, and Tanner knew he had to take the fight to them while they still believed he was asleep.

  Tanner stuck the Ruger he’d taken off the drug dealer in his side pocket and the automatic that had belonged to the pimp’s bodyguard, he tucked behind his back.

  With the shotgun pressed against his shoulder, he ripped open the door to his room and fired one barrel. Tanner watched bright blue eyes widen on the face of the fat man with the Desert Eagle an instant before his shotgun pellets obliterated them, and turned the man’s head to red mist.

  To his shock, the door to the room beside his had been kicked in while he was opening his own door, and the man with the cowboy hat was nowhere in sight. A scream came from the room, followed by a gunshot, but Tanner only took note of these things peripherally, because he was too busy emptying the second shotgun shell into the third man.

  The man fell atop his fat friend’s corpse, where he moaned, thrashed about, and died. Tanner dropped the empty shotgun and grabbed up the Desert Eagle, as cowboy hat came stumbling out of the other room, while struggling with a kid in blue boxer shorts for possession of a gun.

  The gun went off again and flattened a tire on the couple’s car, but the fresh-faced kid was doing his damndest to wrest it away.

  A topless girl in pink lace panties appeared in the doorway, saying, “Be careful, Billy!” When she spotted Tanner, she shrieked and covered herself with her arms. “Please don’t kill us, mister. Ricky getting hurt was an accident. I swear it.”

  Tanner didn’t know what she was talking about and didn’t care; he just knew that he had to leave before the cops came.

  He fired the Desert Eagle once into the side of the man in the cowboy hat and watched as the exit wound exploded in a shower of gore.

  After retrieving his shotgun, Tanner headed for the white pickup truck.

  The boy called to him. The kid was barely out of his teens and had dark hair and curious green eyes.

  “Why did you help us?”

  Tanner smirked.

  “Help? I’m pretty sure I killed all three of them, kid.”

  The girl came out of the room while shrugging on a flower print dress, and tossed the boy his clothing. When she looked at the flat tire and the dead men, her face collapsed and she cried.

  The kid went to her.

  “It’s all right, Cindy, we’re safe.”

  Tanner looked around. The interstate was too far away for anyone to have seen or heard anything, but the desk clerk was likely calling the cops.

  As he settled behind the wheel of the pickup, the kid called to him.

  “Hey! Take us with you, please?”

  Tanner opened his mouth to tell the kid to go to hell, but then realized that they would make good cover when he entered Vegas.

  Rossetti’s men would be looking for a man on his own, not a trio.

  “Get in,” Tanner said, as he started the truck, and afterwards, he tossed out the half can of beer that was sitting in the cup holder.

  When the girl disappeared back into the room, he nearly took off, but she emerged just seconds later with a duffle bag and ran towards them with her long blonde hair trailing behind her. Tanner told her to toss the bag in the bed of the truck, and off they went.

  As he drove by the motel office, he saw that the clerk was asleep in a chair with a beer bottle still gripped in his hand.

  When the man woke, he’d have an interesting day.

  Tanner headed for the highway, for Vegas, and for revenge.

  CHAPTER 7 - Dumb and Dumber

  Earl and Merle Carter were sitting at a booth inside Pogo’s bar in Vegas and talking excitedly about the price on Tanner’s head.

  Ten grand was huge money to their way of thinking, and although they had never killed anyone, they had hurt people for far less money, as they traveled through life trying to escape the hand fate had given them.

  Neither of them was very bright, nor good looking, or personable. They weren’t blessed with any discernible talents and as far as friends and family went, all they basically had was each other.

  The Carter boys did have one thing going for them though, animal cunning, and that, plus an unending desire to be rich, was what powered them through their empty and meaningless lives.

  They looked out the window at the activity taking place in front of the pool hall, where Rossetti’s men were gathering to go after Tanner.

  “That big guy in the suit is named Aldo,” Merle said. Merle was five-foot-eight and scrawny, with a long face, thin lips and dull gray eyes. His brother Earl was a carbon copy of him, except for the color of his hair. Merle’s hair was dark brown, while Earl’s was two shades lighter.

  They weren’t twins, but they were born the same year. Merle popped out of his mother’s womb on a bitter January day and Earl followed on a similar day the following December.

  Earl leaned across the table.

  “You think Aldo will lead us to Tanner, but so what? That just means we’ll get to see him kill Tanner.”

  “Maybe, but I hear that this Tanner is a badass, so maybe he’ll get a chance to run from Aldo and his boys and straight towards us, wounded and ripe for the plucking. Anyway, Aldo will have more luck finding him. I have no idea where to look for him, do you?”

  Earl leaned back in his seat.

  “Hell, he could be anywhere for all I know, so yeah, we’ll tail Aldo and his boys and hopefully get a shot at Tanner.”

  Merle reached across the table and punched his younger brother playfully on the shoulder.

  “We’re gonna get that money and then it’s party time.”

  Earl grinned back at him, for like his brother, he had no real clue who they were going after. But they would learn, and the lesson would be a bitter one.

  ***

  Sara and Garner were in the FBI’s Las Vegas Division awaiting word on Tanner.

  Sara stared at Garner and wondered when the man slept. She had seen him disappear into his hotel room in the company of two blond sisters he’d met in the casino, and both women looked tired and, Sara had to admit, sated, as they left his hotel room early that morning.

  Sara was about to knock on Garner’s door to hassle him and tell him to get his shit in gear, when the man opened the door, fully dressed in a charcoal hued suit, and smiled at her from a freshly shaved face.

  “I’m ready when you are, partner,” Garner said, and the way he said it, as his eyes roamed over Sara, she knew that he meant he was ready for more than just work.

  She had ignored the double entendre and headed for the elevator.

  “Special Agent Blake?”

  Sara broke free of her memories and turned to face an agent named Whitman. Whitman was twenty-three and a rookie, but Sara thought the man seemed professional.

  “Has something happened?” Sara asked, as both she and Garner rose to their feet, ready to move.

  “Yes ma’am, our two agents in the field are reporting that several of Rossetti’s men are heading out of Vegas and that there are now rumors that Rossetti’s placed a price of ten grand on Tanner’s scalp.”

  Garner whistled softly.

  “That kind of money will bring out any hood with a gun.”

  Sara thought for a moment before speaking.

  “We’ll wait here. If Rossetti’s men or anyone else bags Tanner we’ll hear of it, and if he makes it to Vegas, then we’ll be he
re and ready for him.”

  The agent excused himself and Sara and Garner sat down again.

  Garner stared at her, and for once, he was looking into her eyes.

  “You want this Tanner badly, don’t you?”

  “Marty spoke to you, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he said it was personal for you, but he didn’t say why.”

  “Just know one thing, Garner.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll do my job and try to bring Tanner in so that we can question him and gather info on the people who have hired him, but if he resists at all, I’ll kill Tanner, and a smart man wouldn’t get in my way.”

  “I hear you, Sara, and I’ve got your back all the way.”

  Sara smiled at him.

  “Thanks, Jake; it’s nice to know you’re not a total jerk.”

  Garner smiled back at her.

  “Nobody’s perfect.”

  CHAPTER 8 - It’s just Tanner

  As Tanner drove along, Billy and Cindy told him their story.

  They had both lived on a ranch in Colorado that was bigger than most towns. Billy was a drifter who hired on as a ranch hand, while Cindy’s family had worked on the ranch for generations.

  The owner of the ranch was a man named Hank O'Grady and Hank’s only son, Ricky, had become obsessed with Cindy.

  Cindy never liked Ricky much, because he was spoiled and had knocked up a friend of hers when the girl was fourteen and Ricky was eighteen. Cindy’s friend had an abortion and her family moved off the ranch, while Ricky went off to some fancy college.

  When he returned to the ranch to stay, he went after Cindy, practically stalking her, while threatening to have her father, the ranch foreman, fired.

  Meanwhile, Cindy had fallen in love with Billy, a fact that Ricky ignored. Eventually, the two boys fought, and Cindy claimed that Ricky fell on his own knife, but Tanner suspected that maybe Billy helped him to fall on it. In any event, they were on the run.

  “Ricky’s dead?” Tanner asked.

  “No. Billy and I took him to the ranch infirmary and they said he’d be fine, but we ran anyway, because Mr. O'Grady would have had Billy hauled off to jail, or probably worse.”

  “So what’s your plan?” Tanner said.

  “We were going to Mexico,” Billy said. “But then we figured we’d go to Vegas and hide there until things died down some, and Cindy has always wanted to see the Grand Canyon, so we’ll go there soon too.”

  The three of them sat together in the front seat, as the truck’s back seat was so cramped that it could cripple a midget.

  The young and tasty Cindy was seated beside Tanner, with Billy to her right, and Tanner could feel himself growing horny. The whore in Brownsville had taken the edge off, but after having been locked away for months, he needed more than one woman.

  Cindy had been eyeing him now and again, and at first, Tanner thought it was sexual interest, but then he realized it was just fascination with him because he had killed three men.

  She was wary of him, which made her smarter than Billy, who accepted him as a friend right away.

  Not smart, Tanner thought.

  There were men out there who would kill Billy to get to Cindy, either to rape her, or to sell her to white slavers for a tidy profit.

  Tanner had never been into either activity, but if he had been, he would have murdered Billy upon meeting him and Cindy would have been his, to do with as he pleased.

  The road curved right and the slight centrifugal force made Cindy lean against Tanner. He felt her softness, smelled her scent and felt his cock stir.

  As soon as Rossetti was dead, Tanner planned to head somewhere tropical and bang the crap out of anything hot, blonde, and female.

  “Mr. Tanner,” Cindy said.

  “It’s just Tanner.”

  “Oh, okay, thank you for helping us, Tanner, and we can pay for the gas and food along the way.”

  Tanner would have preferred it if Cindy repaid him with her body, but he kept that to himself.

  “I actually thought those men had come for me. There’s a man named Rossetti that wants me dead.”

  “Why does he want to kill you?” Cindy asked.

  “Self-preservation, he’s trying to kill me before I can kill him.”

  Cindy’s eyes widened. “Oh,”

  “This O'Grady, he sent men after you instead of the law, so I guess that means he’s a mobster of some kind?”

  Billy nodded.

  “He’s not fully legit. He owns a whorehouse and probably deals in weed too, but he ain’t connected or nothing like that; he just owns a lot of things and people.”

  “He owns my daddy,” Cindy said, while making a face. “My daddy was actually trying to get me and Ricky together. He said we’d be set for life if Ricky married me, nevermind what I want.”

  “But O'Grady will send more men after you, right?”

  “Yeah, if they can find us,” Billy said.

  “He sent three the first time, so he’ll probably send more?”

  “I guess. O'Grady runs the county and he’s got hundreds of men working for him.”

  Tanner thought about that and a plan formed in his mind, a plan that might help him kill Rossetti.

  CHAPTER 9 - The 90 pound lot lizard

  When Sara learned that a man fitting Tanner’s description was a suspect in a multiple homicide at a New Mexico motel, in her mind, it reaffirmed the fact that Tanner was headed towards Vegas.

  However, when she learned that the dead men were all employees of a Colorado rancher named Hank O'Grady, she became confused.

  She then talked to an agent in Colorado who provided her and Garner with background on Hank O'Grady, while saying that he would get back to them with more detail once he talked to a friend who worked on O'Grady’s ranch.

  “It sounds like Tanner’s stumbled into more trouble,” Garner observed.

  “Those men could have been after the reward money Rossetti’s placed on Tanner’s head, but it’s not likely since they were from Colorado. The desk clerk at the motel said that there was a young couple staying there too, and the car they left behind had Colorado plates. It was registered to a William Benton, age 20.”

  “Then it sounds like Tanner could be driving a car with Colorado plates if he took the dead men’s ride.”

  “Yeah, but I wouldn’t bother looking for them, I’m sure that by now he’s switched them out.”

  ***

  Sara was correct, because Tanner, along with Cindy and Billy, was inside a diner off I-10, north of Phoenix, Arizona.

  He had already replaced the Colorado plates for a different set he’d taken off another pickup truck, but held on to the Colorado plates, which he figured he could use later on.

  The diner was full of truckers, because it was part of a truck stop that offered diesel engine repair and a truck wash.

  Every man in the place eyed Cindy with lust in their eyes, but they’d take one look at Tanner and keep their distance.

  After eating a large breakfast, Tanner told the kids that it was time to get back on the road.

  As Tanner pulled out of the exit and onto the highway, he hadn’t noticed the woman watching him from the cab of a big rig, a woman that knew him, and also knew that there was a price on his head.

  ***

  Two years ago, Tina had been one of the best pieces of ass that money could buy.

  She’d been a high-priced call girl then, working out of Las Vegas, and many men had paid upwards of five grand a night to sleep with her.

  But that was before she became a meth addict.

  Now she was a 90 pound lot lizard, with scabs on her lined face, and she traveled around to different truck stops giving blowjobs for twenty a pop, no pun intended.

  She had just raised her head up from the lap of a black trucker who stank of cheap cigars, when she spotted Tanner walking towards the pickup.

  Tina studied Tanner while swallowing the trucker’s load, no pun intended, again.
The man had paid ten dollars extra for the service and a stick of gum would mask the taste later.

  It was Tanner she was seeing, she was sure of it, although the man looked thinner and darker than she’d remembered him. And Tina did remember him, as a smile crossed her wet lips.

  She’d been comped to Tanner on several occasions and he had been one of her favorite clients, because the man actually knew how to fuck. She’d even come once or twice with Tanner, a rare event for her.

  Still, Tina couldn’t say she ever really liked him. Tanner was a cold man, not cruel, and he never hurt her the way some men had, but she knew that she had been something to fuck for Tanner and nothing else.

  There had never been a hint of cuddling after sex, no sense of affection and, thank you Jesus, the man never asked her how she became a hooker, as so many others had over the years.

  As Tanner drove out of the lot, Tina kept repeating his license plate to herself until she had it memorized. Afterwards, she climbed down from the rig and went inside the ladies room of the diner, where she sat in a stall. After removing the gum from her mouth, she made a call.

  “Hey Eddie, it’s me Tina. Yeah yeah, how’s tricks? That one never gets old, Eddie, but listen, isn’t there a finder’s fee for spotting that guy Tanner?”

  There was a pause on the line and then Tina heard Eddie shouting a question at someone. When he spoke to Tina again, he told her there was a thousand dollar finder’s fee to anyone who knew where to find Tanner.

  Tina’s hand trembled. With that much money, she could keep herself in crystal for weeks without having to suck one dick.

  She told Eddie what she knew and told him that she’d hitch a ride to Vegas to collect her money. She tried not to think about what would happen to Tanner because of her, even though she could guess why Rossetti was looking for him. No, all Tina was thinking about was her next hit of ice, but then, that’s what made her an addict.

  ***

  Aldo learned of Tina’s tip an hour later, when Ramone called and gave him the details.

  Ramone had also passed orders down through their network of dealers that they’d pay a grand to anyone who spotted Tanner’s pickup and kept it in sight. They didn’t have people in Arizona, but they knew people there and Ramone told Aldo to be on standby near the border, and wait for Tanner to enter the state.