Soulless (A Tanner Novel Book 43) Read online

  “I don’t care if you tell her. By the way, does Franny know about your website?”

  “Yeah, but only recently. She brought it up in conversation and I admitted I was the man behind it. It would have felt like I was keeping something from her if I hadn’t mentioned that.”

  Cody stared at Crash. “You are keeping something from her, yes?”

  Crash raised up a hand. “My word to God. I have never, nor will I ever mention that you’re Tanner to anyone. You can trust me, Cody.”

  “I do. I also think Franny is smart enough to realize that I’m more than a rancher. I wonder why she was interested in your website.”

  “She said that she stumbled upon it and found it interesting. Do you think she suspects you’re Tanner?”

  “I don’t know. But it may be a conversation we’ll have to have someday. Living with us as she does, I doubt it will stay a secret forever. You know her well. What do you think her reaction will be?”

  Crash was silent as he considered the question. After several seconds passed, he shrugged. “I don’t know how she would react. I do know she likes you. I’m sure she’d be willing to listen to you if the truth ever came out.”

  “I hope so. I’d hate to lose her. I like her, she’s Sara’s friend, and the kids love her.”

  “If she brings it up, I’ll let you know.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  In Mexico, Soulless was lending Gwen a hand as she fashioned her bombs. Soulless had rented a small bungalow in a secluded area so Gwen would have room to work. She also wanted to test one of the devices, which would be detonated by a timer. To do that, Soulless had gone online and discovered a remote section of the desert where there would likely be no one around for miles in any direction. Gwen had set up a bomb there and rigged a timer to detonate it three days later.

  They returned to the area minutes before the blast was to go off and watched from a hilltop that gave them a view of the stark and barren valley below them.

  “Are we going to need three days for the bombs I’m making?” Gwen asked.

  “One day will be enough, maybe even hours. The key will be in getting the timing right so that A.J. Pirrello is caught in the blasts.”

  “And where will we be?”

  “Far enough away so we won’t become suspects, but near enough to the town so the news will carry the story.”

  Gwen laughed. “Honey, with what you have planned, the story will make the news everywhere. We could travel to Siberia and hear about it.”

  “I hope you’re right. The more people that learn about it, the better it will be for my reputation. The next time someone with money wants someone else dead, maybe they’ll think of hiring me instead of Tanner.”

  Gwen kissed Soulless. “We’ll make sure that Tanner is nothing more than a memory someday.”

  Soulless checked his watch. “The timer should detonate the bomb any second now.”

  The words had no sooner made it out of his mouth when the bomb went off. A cactus a hundred and sixty feet away was struck by the metal ball bearings Gwen had packed into her bomb. The cactus was over fifteen feet high. A chunk was now missing from one side and the top of the cactus was leaning over. Its weight would eventually make it topple. Other plants in the area were destroyed completely, and Soulless had felt a remnant of the shockwave created by the blast. It had forced a surge of compressed air past them.

  “That was impressive,” Soulless said. “Pirrello will look like he had been put through a blender once your bombs go off.”

  “We make a grand team,” Gwen said. And this time, it was Soulless who kissed her.

  A few days later, the bombs and the timers were ready. When he hadn’t been helping Gwen to construct her bombs, Soulless had been in the town where A.J. Pirrello lived. As part of his plan, he was following around an old woman. The woman’s name was Carlotta Pirrello; she was A.J.’s beloved grandmother.

  Carlotta was eighty-seven and a devout Catholic. She spent her days either praying in the church or devoting time toward a charitable cause. She had no enemies and hadn’t been known to utter an unkind word to anyone. A.J. and the rest of the Pirrello clan adored the old woman and thought she was a saint. It would never have occurred to any of them that sweet Carlotta would someday become the target of a ruthless killer.

  Soulless followed the old lady until he knew her routine. While doing so, he had come across the police hassling a teenage boy who’d been drinking on the steps of the church. The cops called the boy by his name. It was obvious they’d had dealings with him before. The kid tossed the bottle in the gutter, called the cops an unkind name, and walked away. Soulless followed him home. When the time came, he would need a patsy, and the boy seemed as good as anyone for the job.

  On Mondays, Carlotta would arrive at the church early and enter through a rear door she had a key for. Once inside the church, she would head to the building’s small kitchen where she would prepare meals for the priest, Father Nunes. Carlotta was an excellent cook and she enjoyed cooking for the father and packing away the week’s meals in a freezer for him when she was done. When she was finished with the task, she’d pray inside the church for an hour before heading home for an afternoon nap. Carlotta was spry for her age, but she did tire easily and required rest often.

  Soulless came upon her as she was leaving the church through the rear door. He clamped a hand over the old woman’s mouth and jammed a blade into her frail chest. The knife cut into her, while the force of the blow cracked her sternum. Carlotta died a few minutes later from blood loss. When she was discovered by the man who cleaned the church, the police came, and an officer realized Carlotta’s purse was missing.

  When A.J. and the other members of the family heard what had happened to Carlotta, they vowed they would find her killer and make him pay. While the town was run by a drug cartel, there wasn’t much crime to speak of. However, there were a few juvenile offenders who committed petty crimes, such as shoplifting and the occasional burglary.

  A seventeen-year-old kid named Dominic was one such crook. When two of A.J.’s young cousins kicked in the front door of the home Dominic lived in with his mother, they began searching it. They found Carlotta’s purse stuffed in a trash can behind the house. The wallet was empty, and the purse was stained with Carlotta’s blood.

  The cousins brought a battered Dominic to A.J. and the boy swore he knew nothing about his grandmother’s death and claimed to have an alibi. He had been playing soccer that morning with his friends.

  The friends were never questioned. Finding the purse at Dominic’s house had been enough evidence for A.J. to pass sentence.

  A.J. sliced open Dominic as if he were gutting a fish, then watched the boy bleed out as Dominic moaned and writhed in agony. When the boy’s mother went to the police the next day to say that her son was missing and she believed Dominic had been murdered by Pirrello, she was ignored, and later went missing herself.

  Carlotta’s funeral was scheduled to be held at the town’s cemetery on Saturday. She would of course be laid to rest beside her late husband. A.J. Pirrello would certainly attend the service of his sainted grandmother, as was intended by Soulless’s plan.

  Carlotta was murdered by Soulless in order to ensure that her grandson would be in the cemetery and at her gravesite. On the day of the funeral, Soulless would fulfill the contract, and his reputation as an effective, if callous, killer would be proven once more.

  7

  Last Minute Details

  Tanner and Henry returned to Colorado on the same day that Soulless killed Carlotta Pirrello. It was time to put things in place for the assassination of Joseph Krakoff. Duke and Lisa had come through and delivered the items needed ahead of schedule. Now it was time to put Tanner’s plan into action.

  Because there was no way to know when Krakoff would make a speech, Tanner might have to be in the area for a week or more. While there, he’d need to remain undetected. To aid in that, he had designed a ghillie suit that
would help him blend in. When he was lying down in the suit, he looked like another section of the landscape around the compound.

  Normally, he would have had to carry along a rucksack full of food and water that would have weighed nearly a hundred pounds. With Henry along, his apprentice could help keep him supplied. Henry had his own ghillie suit to aid in remaining undetected. As for the box, it had camouflage of its own.

  Tanner had asked Lisa to design a covering for the box that would help it to blend in. She had accomplished that by fashioning the covering so it had contours and resembled the ridge it was intended to rest on. Beyond that, while working from the photos Tanner had sent her, she had matched the color of the ridge as best as she could. Lisa had been instructed to make the outer shell strong, so that even if one of Krakoff’s guards was to sit on it, it would be able to support his weight.

  Tanner and Henry first needed to place the box in the right position on the farthest ridge. They had to accomplish that task without being seen and while lugging along a box that resembled a boulder. If anyone spotted them, Tanner’s entire plan would be in jeopardy.

  They reached the first ridge without seeing anyone. However, when they were halfway to the second ridge Henry detected a noise and nodded twice in succession quickly, which was the signal to take cover. They dropped the box where they were and lowered themselves on either side of it, from more than a few feet away they looked like part of the scenery. A moment later, three of Krakoff’s elite guards came into view carrying rifles. They didn’t wear uniforms but had shaved heads and wore beards.

  The guards came within sixty feet of them before turning around and looking back at the compound. One of them, the man on the right, took what looked like a cigarette out of a pocket, but once it was lit, the aroma of marijuana was wafting in the air.

  “I don’t know why we can’t smoke this back at the compound,” the guy said. “Krakoff doesn’t give a shit if we rape the women, but he doesn’t want us smoking weed. Does that make any sense?”

  “You can bet he smokes it,” said the man in the middle, “and he saves all the really hot bitches for himself.”

  The third man, the one on the left, said nothing, but only held out a hand so he could take a toke of the weed. It was passed to him, and he took a good hit off it before handing it to the man standing in the middle.

  After that, they went on to talk about a trip they were taking to get supplies and started complaining about someone named Darren. It sounded as if Darren was their supervisor. Fifteen minutes later, they had moved on, with two of them heading right, and the man who’d been in the middle heading back the way they had come.

  Tanner raised his head up slightly and looked around. He saw no one and stood. Henry did the same and they continued toward the ridge. Up close, it was obvious the beige color of the covering on the box wasn’t a perfect match for the shelf of rock it would be placed upon. Even so, it was close and unlikely to be subjected to scrutiny. The contours were spot on, and it blended into the rock and became a part of it. To help hold it in place and make it meld in even more, a clear adhesive was applied along the seams where they met the rock. The epoxy dried in a matter of minutes and Henry went to work sanding it smooth while Tanner kept watch.

  Two more guards came along while they were working, but they were far off and had their backs to Tanner and Henry. They waited for the guards to move on, then Henry went off on his own to see if he could spot more of them. What Tanner had to do next would make noise, but it couldn’t be helped if the box was to be secured in place.

  Henry scouted the area with binoculars while lying down, then sent Tanner a text.

  All clear.

  Tanner took out a battery-powered hammer drill and drove two bolts through pre-drilled holes in the bottom of the box. He did it in quick succession to limit the noise. Four bolts would have been better, but he was pressing his luck by making so much racket. Henry sent another text when Tanner had finished driving the second bolt home.

  Someone heard that. There are at least four guards headed this way.

  After closing the box, and putting the tool away, Tanner attempted to move the box, but it held fast to the rock. Henry returned to his side and they moved back the way they had come while keeping low. Concerned that they would never make it to cover before one of the guards crested a hill and could spot them, Tanner told Henry to lie down and blend in with the scrubland around them. That turned out to be a wise decision.

  They heard the whine of a small engine moments later and realized it was coming from above them. Someone had sent out a drone to investigate what had made the sounds the guards had heard. The small aircraft flew over them while making a circular pattern in the sky. They had left their car beyond the border of the cult’s property, but it was a distance easily traveled by a drone. If the vehicle was detected, a full search would commence, and Tanner and Henry might need to fight their way out of the area.

  The sound of the drone’s engine faded but continued to be heard, which meant it hadn’t been sent too far out. Men appeared. There were eight of them, and they were spread out in groups of two. Tanner couldn’t raise his head up to view the drone, but the men walking their way were at ground level and easy to spot. If they stayed on their present course, one of the pairs would walk within feet of them. The men kept coming. They were holding rifles, but they were pointed at the ground.

  “Stay still, don’t even breathe,” Tanner whispered to Henry. The men grew nearer, and it was obvious the pair closest to them were on a path that would cause them to step on them, thinking they were just more solid ground.

  When they were six paces away the sound of the drone grew louder, and a radio crackled to life with static. The men stopped walking, and one of them spoke into the radio.

  “This is team four. Repeat that—out.”

  “Darren said to head back. The drone spotted nothing but a couple of mule deer. Maybe that’s what Jenkins said he heard.”

  “Mule deer don’t make much noise.”

  “They do when it’s rutting season.”

  “Is it rutting season?”

  “Go find them deer, drop your drawers, and bend over. If they start humping you, it’s rutting season.”

  The guard laughed into the radio. “I think I’ll pass on making that experiment. We’re heading back in now—out.”

  “Copy that.”

  The guards turned and headed toward the compound as the drone did the same. After a minute passed, Tanner raised his head and looked around.

  “It’s safe to move,” he told Henry.

  They retrieved supplies and the sniper rifle and scope Tanner would be using from their vehicle and headed back to the ridge where he would set up. There was no way to know when Krakoff would decide to make his next speech from the balcony, so all Tanner could do was to be ready for it. In order to do that, he had to stay in place up on the ridge and wait. He might be there for a day or as long as two weeks.

  With Henry along, he wouldn’t have to take the chance or have the need to slip away to gather fresh supplies when his provisions ran out. If he left the ridge when Krakoff decided to make a speech, returning to it would be too risky due to the drones that would be sent out in advance to monitor the area. Like himself, the rifle was camouflaged and blended in with the landscape, and Tanner would get only one chance to make his shot, to activate the second rifle secured in the box.

  Afterward, the guards would be swarming over the area, and with its front sitting open and exposed after having fired, the box and the rifle it concealed would be easy to spot. That couldn’t be helped, and Tanner had a way to turn it into an advantage.

  Along with bringing supplies to Tanner, Henry had other duties to perform while they waited for Krakoff to appear. It involved their survival after the contract was fulfilled.

  When Tanner was settled in atop the ridge and appeared to be a part of its surface, Henry wished him luck and retreated back to their vehicle on his own. The wait
had begun, and it was time to be patient.

  The night before Carlotta’s funeral was to take place, Soulless and Gwen entered the cemetery past midnight again. The forms they carried were heavier than Soulless had imagined they would be. Their surfaces were fashioned to resemble the aged stone and granite surfaces they would be covering, and they also mimicked the feel of stone. He was glad to have Gwen along to help him.

  The work took hours and had to be performed without the use of flashlights or lanterns in case someone saw them and became curious. Fortunately, there was a clear sky and a mostly full moon. As is the case with just about anything involving multiple parts, there was one piece that proved difficult to fasten in place.

  Gwen cursed as they tried once again to secure it to the surface of a stone cross and fasten it beside another piece that it was designed to fit snug against.

  “Damn it. There’s always one fecking piece that wants to be a bitch.”

  “We’ll have to use the epoxy we brought along,” Soulless said.

  “But then the seam on that side won’t be perfect. If anyone notices it could ruin everything.”

  “We’ll have to take the chance. It would be worse if we left it off completely.”

  They used the epoxy, then had to press against the piece for an hour until the adhesive dried enough to hold the weight it was securing. When they were satisfied it would remain in place, they made certain they left no trace of their visit behind.

  Before leaving, they stood and looked at their handiwork.

  “Does it look odd?” Gwen asked.

  “They look bigger, but I doubt anyone will notice.”

  “The caretaker might notice, since he’s used to looking at them.”

  “You could be right about that,” Soulless said.

  Early on the morning before Carlotta Pirrello’s funeral was to take place, Soulless paid a visit to the caretaker of the cemetery. The old man lived alone in a small ground floor apartment in the town. Soulless clamped a hand over the man’s mouth and nose as he straddled his hips. The man bucked wildly in his bed and tugged at Soulless’s wrists, while struggling to breathe. He wasn’t able to break Soulless’s grip or buck him off.