Soulless (A Tanner Novel Book 43) Read online

  “Maybe they’ll just give you the things we ordered and leave. I only want to be careful.”

  Gwen kissed him. “I like that you’re looking out for me.”

  Soulless’s main concern was that he got the items he needed. If that meant keeping Gwen alive a little longer, so be it.

  Gwen was driving a rented truck to the location. When they were still a mile away, Soulless told her to head down a narrow road on the right. She did as he said, then stopped the truck when he told her to do so. It was time for him to get out. He was dressed in tan clothing and holding a long nylon bag of the same color. The bag contained a sniper rifle and a scope.

  He was going to travel in on foot and look things over first, then set up somewhere that gave him a line of sight on where the meeting would take place.

  He leaned back inside the cab. “Wait here for half an hour before heading back to the road and driving in. I’ll need the time to see what’s going on.”

  “And what if everything goes okay?”

  “Drive back here and wait for me to show.”

  “Be careful,” Gwen said.

  Soulless handed her a gun. “Keep that handy. You might need it.”

  “I hope not. I just want to do this deal and get out of here.”

  Soulless sent her a nod before heading off at a run. He was planning to circle around behind the abandoned mining town and locate the men waiting for Gwen’s arrival. He had done research on the area and learned that the mining town was said to be haunted by some of its former residents. Soulless didn’t believe or disbelieve in ghosts, or spirits, nor had he ever given such things much thought. His main focus was on sending people to the afterlife, not keeping tabs on their activities once they arrived there.

  He made good time getting to the abandoned settlement, then slowed and settled behind an old stone well that had gone dry decades before he was born. The well gave a good line of sight to the center of the location’s main road. That was where Gwen had been instructed to stop.

  There were three men there already with a truck of their own. Soulless was glad to see that truck. If they’d come in a smaller vehicle it would have indicated that they might not have brought what they were supposed to deliver. He eased closer to see if he could overhear the men’s conversation. Two of the men were Mexican. They were both taller than the American who was with them, and none of them was under six feet tall. One of the Mexicans wore a cowboy hat. Soulless got the impression he was in charge. All three of the men looked to be in their thirties.

  The man wearing the cowboy hat checked his watch. “She should be here soon.”

  “Did your guy in Europe say what she looked like?” the American asked. He had a long beard and longer hair that was tied back in a ponytail.

  “I asked him, but he said he didn’t know. He did say she had an Irish accent.”

  “Irish women are hot,” the American said.

  The third man remained silent. He had a thin build and stood motionless. There was a gun stuck in his waistband at the small of his back. In Soulless’s experience, those who were quiet were more dangerous than those that liked to talk all the time. If trouble started, he would kill the quiet man first.

  “Someone’s coming,” said the American.

  Gwen drove the truck over the cracked and uneven surface of an old road that was composed more of sand than the stone it had originally been constructed of. She was nervous. She was always nervous when picking up supplies or delivering the finished products she created with them. Her apprehension usually stemmed from a fear she might be walking into a trap set up by law enforcement. That was not the case today thanks to Soulless.

  He was the suspicious type, that was for certain, but she was happy to know he would be there if something went wrong. If the men did turn out to be undercover cops, Gwen was sure it wouldn’t matter to Soulless. He would kill them anyway.

  She couldn’t say what it was about him that attracted her so, but from the first time they’d met in Africa she’d felt an attraction for him. Until recently, she wasn’t sure what he really looked like, because he had always taken measures to conceal his appearance.

  He was certainly the coldest man she had ever been with. To say that Soulless was emotionally distant would be an understatement. The man never revealed anything important about his past and it was a rare thing when he smiled.

  As she drove within sight of the dilapidated buildings that had once been the offices and bunkhouses of a thriving mining business, she saw the truck and the three men standing in front of it. She didn’t see Soulless but knew he was there somewhere.

  Gwen brought the truck to a stop twenty feet from the men. Two of them appeared to be Mexican, but one of the men was as white as she was. When she stepped out of the truck, the man leered at her, and spoke Spanish with an American accent.

  “You’re a looker, you are.”

  Gwen ignored him and asked a question, also in Spanish. “Which one of you is Sanchez?”

  “I am,” said the man in the cowboy hat. “Do you have the rest of my money?”

  “I do. Do you have the things I ordered?”

  “Yes, but there’s a problem.”

  “What problem?”

  “You’re planning to make bombs. If any of that gets connected back to us we would have to go on the run, and that takes money. I want to renegotiate our deal.”

  Gwen gave a little laugh. “You’re trying to shake me down. Forget it. We had a deal. Give me my things and I’ll give you the rest of the money.”

  The other Mexican man, the quiet one, made a sound of annoyance. When Gwen met his gaze, she shivered. This man didn’t leer or talk of renegotiating. He was all business, and he was becoming irritated by the games his partners were playing. They weren’t there to renegotiate anything. It had already been decided that if she showed up alone, they would torture her until she transferred all of her money into their account.

  The quiet man pulled a gun out from behind his back to intimidate Gwen. As he brought it up, with the intention of aiming it at her, Gwen saw the right side of the man’s head gush blood and heard the boom of Soulless’s rifle. The other two men watched their partner’s body fall even as they reached for the guns that were tucked away in concealed holsters.

  Soulless’s gun boomed again. A round caught Sanchez in the chest and all but blew his heart out of his back. That left the American. He had realized where the shots were coming from and was taking aim at Soulless when Gwen shot him. She wasn’t a good shot. She’d been aiming for his chest and had shot him in the right knee. It was enough to drop the man to the ground and send his gun skittering away on the sandy surface of the roadway. It also set him to screaming in agony. Gwen shot at him again while walking closer. The round missed and buried itself in the ground.

  Soulless appeared at Gwen’s side. “Do you want me to kill him?”

  She shook her head. “I want to do it. I want to know what it’s like.”

  The man on the ground held up a bloody hand and spoke to her in English. “Don’t kill me! Don’t fucking kill me. I can get you money.”

  Gwen shot him in the head, with the bullet entering his open mouth. The man, still alive, went limp as his spine was severed. The wound was fatal, and he died a minute later when his heart stopped beating because of the blood he had lost.

  Gwen leaned over and looked at him. “His eyes are still open, but they’re different now. It’s like there’s nobody home anymore.”

  “That’s because he’s dead,” Soulless said.

  He moved around to the rear of the men’s truck. The liftgate made a racket as it moved upward. Inside the truck were two crates along with a fully powered pallet jack that could move and lift thousands of pounds. After finding a crowbar in the cab of the truck, Soulless went to work opening the crates. It looked as if everything they’d ordered was there.

  Soulless had to dig the keys to the truck out of Sanchez’s pocket. When he found a wad of bills wrapped up i
n a rubber band, he tossed them to Gwen.

  “Thanks, I can always use more cash.”

  Both trucks had liftgates. Soulless extended them before backing the vehicles up against each other. Gwen’s vehicle was slightly lower than the other truck. When Soulless moved the heaviest of the crates onto it by using the powered stacker, the liftgate groaned from the stress of the weight. It was the last of the crates, and Soulless lowered the truck’s rear door and secured it with a padlock.

  Before leaving, he claimed the men’s guns, then threw back the one the American had because it was a cheap piece of junk.

  “I’ll drive,” he told Gwen, and they left the old mining town the gift of three new ghosts.

  6

  The Calm Before The Storms

  Tanner and Henry arrived back in Stark on a beautiful summer day. There was nothing to be done concerning the contract until the custom items he ordered from Duke arrived, and so Tanner returned to the ranch and resumed life as Cody Parker. He was glad to be back. He’d only seen Sara and the children once in weeks and missed them. When he thought back to all the years when he lived alone, he never would have imagined he would wind up where he was now. He had a wife and two kids, had resumed living under his rightful name, and regained his family’s land.

  Then again, if the boy he had been before the tragedy that claimed his family had been asked what his future would be like, he would have described the life Cody was living. That is, if you ignored the part where he was an elite assassin.

  As a boy, he’d always seen himself as returning to the ranch someday to settle down and have children. He was proud of the legacy left to him by his father, and all the other Parkers who had come before him and worked the ranch.

  When, in the years to come, he handed over the title of Tanner to Henry, he would again be only Cody Parker, Texas rancher, husband, father, and perhaps someday, grandfather. It was a life the Parker men had been living for many generations, and Cody hoped Lucas would continue the tradition someday.

  Although he’d expected it, Henry was still saddened by the absence of Tracy Shea from the ranch. Tracy had completed her training and had returned home to El Paso. In her absence, Henry decided to go to a party one of his friends was throwing.

  Cody told him to have a good time and to relax for a few days. Henry had trained extensively to pass his tests and deserved the break. There was more training ahead of him, and he still had much to learn, but everything would come easier to him now that he knew he was capable of doing more than he would have believed possible. He admitted to Cody that he had felt like he couldn’t take another step while on his hundred-mile trek, and that the temptation to quit was powerful.

  Henry hadn’t quit. He had found a source of inner strength and carried on, and he came damn close to setting a new record.

  That knowledge, the knowing that he could push beyond his limits would never leave him, and it could prove to be the difference between life and death someday when it was Henry who would be going by the name of Tanner.

  Cody returned home to discover they had company. Their neighbors, Crash, and his daughter, Caroline were there, along with Caroline’s autistic son, Jarod. Although Jarod was several years older than Lucas, the boys played well together. Caroline and Sara were friends, and Crash was dating Franny.

  When told that they would all be staying for dinner, Cody was pleased. He liked his neighbors.

  Caroline and Crash were aware that he was Tanner and Crash was the creator of the website about assassins that Caroline maintained. Tanner was ranked number one on the site, with Soulless a distant second. Crash didn’t like Soulless, but felt he had to acknowledge the man’s successes as an assassin. It was his opinion that Soulless was a monster and the methods he often used to kill his targets were barbaric and over the top.

  Caroline greeted Cody with a bright smile and a peck on the cheek. Sara had said once that she thought the younger woman had a crush on him. If true, she had never crossed a line and attempted to be more than friends. Caroline was a blonde in her twenties with blue eyes and a curvy figure. Cody was attracted to her physically, liked her as well, but would never think of cheating on Sara.

  He was married, he had taken a vow to be faithful unto death, and he would keep it. As a Tanner and as a man, he valued his vows and always kept to his word. That aside, Caroline was pleasing to look upon.

  Franny was several years younger than Crash, but the couple were a good fit personality-wise. They both liked their independence, had been married once before, and had no desire to marry again. They were content to live separately and come together to relieve the ache of loneliness. Franny was busy with her duties at the ranch, and Crash filled his time with business pursuits and tinkering with his drones, which were his passion.

  Dinner was pleasant and conversation involved the things going on in the town. Stark was a small, normally quiet community, but there was occasionally something worth talking about. The latest topic of conversation involved the mayor, Jimmy Kyle. He’d been caught on camera climbing out of the bedroom window of one of his married staffers when the woman’s trucker husband returned home unexpectedly from a trip to Laredo. A neighbor with insomnia had filmed Jimmy climbing out of the window at four a.m.

  Several people had been shown the video before the mayor became aware of it. The mayor paid his lover’s neighbor a visit, and the film was no longer seen, while the neighbor suddenly had a new car in her driveway. Jimmy Kyle had money. It was assumed he had used some of it to keep that video from being posted online. As for the staffer, she was reassigned to work at the town’s library.

  “Has the mayor ever been married?” Caroline asked Cody.

  “I don’t think so. And he was the playboy type, even back in high school.”

  “I’ve heard the same said about you from some longtime residents,” Caroline said. “And I’ve met several women who remember you fondly from high school.”

  “Cody was never a playboy type, but he was no monk either, and he always attracted women since I’ve known him,” Sara said.

  “You were an exception,” Cody said.

  “What’s that?” Franny asked.

  “Sara was not a fan of mine when we first met,” Cody said, and a smile played on his lips.

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s a long story,” Sara said. “Maybe I’ll tell it to you someday.”

  Franny was staring at Cody. “I’m sure it’s interesting.”

  After dinner, Crash walked over to the stables with Cody so they could talk in private. Cody’s black Labrador, Lucky, tagged along, while walking a zigzagging path to investigate odors and the trail left behind by squirrels and other small animals he considered prey.

  “Were you working on a contract when you were gone, Cody?”

  “Yeah. And I still am. I’ll be fulfilling it soon.”

  “I figured, since you haven’t been around much lately. The word is that Soulless was offered one too, but I don’t know who the target is.”

  “Has he taken many contracts since he failed to kill General Kwami in Africa?”

  “Oh yeah, the guy has been on a tear. The people on my website’s forum think he’s trying to do with volume what he can’t do with quality.”

  “What’s that?”

  “To surpass you as the best assassin. It won’t work. The man will never be as successful as you because he lacks the skills you have. He’s a butcher, where you’re more like a surgeon.”

  “I wouldn’t underestimate him. I wrote him off in Africa and he managed to survive that train wreck that I thought had killed him. He’s also damn quick with a gun.”

  They reached the stables and Cody walked over to his horse, Thunder. The animal whinnied when he spotted him, and Cody gave him a carrot as a treat. Along with apples, carrots were kept on a shelf in the stable. Afterward, he began brushing the horse down. The animal had been kept well-groomed during his absence, but Cody wanted to let the horse know he hadn’t for
gotten him. In the morning, he would saddle up Thunder and go for a ride with Lucas.

  “For some reason, Soulless is gaining a fanbase on my site,” Crash said. “I know he has an impressive record when it comes to killing a target, but his methods are abhorrent.”

  “Is he still ranked at number two?”

  Crash sighed. “Yeah. I’d loved to rank him lower, but the numbers don’t lie. He does kill most of the targets he goes after. His record would have been perfect if you hadn’t beat him to the target in Africa.”

  “He wanted to kill me for it, and I’m sure he still does. If we meet again, I will kill him.”

  “You’d be doing the world a favor.”

  When Cody was finished brushing the horse, he gave him another carrot, before putting him back in his stall. Crash spoke more about his website as they returned to the house.

  “There’s a young assassin named Coburn that visits the forum on my site. He tried to accept a big contract and was turned down because of his lack of experience.”

  “A hitter visits your website and leaves messages on the open forum?”

  Crash shrugged. “It happens, but mostly it’s the lower-level assassins complaining about their ranking. I get lots of threats. Thank God Caroline makes sure that we can’t be hacked. If certain people knew I was the man behind the website, I think some of them would pay me a visit.”

  “I know Henry checks it out sometime, but he would never engage with people on it.”

  “How’s the kid coming along?”

  Cody smiled. “Apprentices are given tests in order to move on to the final stage of their training. Henry passed both of his. He’s going to be the next Tanner. And I don’t want any of what I just said to make it onto your website.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, Cody. But I would like to tell Caroline. She’s as big a fan of you Tanners as I am.”