Laurel looked as if someone had punched her, as she bent over slightly and her eyes became moist.
“Why do you say he doesn’t love me? Is it that obvious?”
Sara’s mouth dropped open as the truth hit her.
“You love him. You’re in love with Tanner?”
Laurel wiped her tears away.
“Nothing is going on between us, not now, but at one time, we were close, at least I thought so.”
“When I said Tanner didn’t love you, I meant that he didn’t love anyone. He’s not capable of it.”
“What?”
“The man is a sociopath. It’s not possible for him to have feelings.”
“No, Tanner, he’s... he’s imperturbable? Yes, but he’s not heartless.”
“I think Tanner wants you and I think he’s willing to kill for you. If you have any feelings for Joe Pullo, you might want to break things off with Tanner before he decides that Joe is in the way.”
“You’re crazy! Tanner would never hurt Joe, they’re friends, and I told you, I’m not sleeping with Tanner.”
Sara gathered her purse and stood.
“You’ve been warned.”
Laurel walked Sara to the door, and as she watched the former FBI agent stride back to her car, she wondered just what it was about Tanner that obsessed the woman so much.
CHAPTER 30 - Rampage
The last of the patrons left the Cabaret Strip Club with bellies full of overpriced beer and minds brimming with unfulfilled fantasies.
Pullo had left hours earlier, and after Carl the bartender said goodnight along with most of the staff, the head bouncer, Bull, was the only man left with Johnny. The office door was open and Bull stuck his head in.
“The Carter brothers are here with the limo. They’re in the alley.”
“Is everything locked up out front?”
“Yeah, so why don’t we go out the back way here?”
Johnny agreed, and after turning out the lights, he opened the rear door of the office and stepped into the alley.
He didn’t see the limo, and when he turned to look at Bull, he saw that he was pointing a gun at him.
“What the fuck, Bull?”
Bull shrugged.
“Sorry Johnny, I really am, but Heinz is paying me a fortune for this. It’s enough to open my own club.”
“You scumbag! You sold me out for a few dollars?”
“No, I sold you out for a shitload of dollars. Now close your eyes and I’ll make this quick.”
Headlights brightened the alleyway, as the limo entered from the street. Johnny tried to take Bull’s gun away, but the big man was too strong and shoved him to the ground. When the limo rounded the bend in the alley, Bull was locked in indecision between shooting Johnny or firing at the limo, but when the vehicle kept coming, he turned to fire at it.
Brakes squealed as the gun went off, but the bullet went high as the limo slammed into Bull and sent him flying backwards, to land on his butt near the dumpster.
Johnny snatched up the fallen gun and walked over to stand above Bull, who was cradling his broken right leg. Bull gazed up at him and then raised a hand in pleading.
“No, don’t!”
Johnny fired two shots, one that struck Bull in the head, while the other hit his heart.
When he had dealt with the traitor, he turned to see Merle and Earl gawking at him.
“You boys just saved my life, consider your pay doubled, and shut and lock the gates.”
Merle and Earl were still staring at Bull’s body when Johnny went back inside to make calls.
“Merle.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t tell Johnny that your foot just slipped off the pedal, okay?”
“Okay.”
***
Despite the early morning hour, the doorbell rang at Laurel Ivy’s townhouse.
Pullo was staying over, and he went with Laurel to see who had come to call and woken them.
It was Laurel’s nurse, Maya, a young Asian woman, and her eyes looked red from crying.
“Maya, what’s wrong?”
“I’m so sorry, Laurel, but I really need to speak to you and it can’t wait until morning.”
Pullo yawned as he walked off towards the kitchen.
“I’ll let you two talk while I get a drink of water.”
After Pullo walked down the short hallway and disappeared into the kitchen, Maya reached into her jacket pocket and took out a gun.
Laurel backed away from her so fast that she bumped the entryway table and knocked over a vase.
“Maya... why?”
“A man offered me money, so much money, to kill Joe, but... I can’t leave a witness, I’m sorry.”
An instant later, Maya had dropped the gun and was gagging on the carving knife that Pullo had thrown from the kitchen doorway.
Eight inches of razor sharp stainless steel entered her throat, severed her trachea, and cut off her air supply.
For several moments, Laurel simply watched in shock and horror, but as Maya began thrashing about on the floor and desperately ripped the knife from her throat in an attempt to get air, Laurel moved towards her to help, but was held back by Pullo, who grabbed up the gun and kicked the knife from Maya’s hand.
“Let the bitch die,” Pullo said.
Laurel did so, but refrained from watching it take place, as she buried her face against Pullo’s chest and cried.
It took several minutes, but Maya died, and as if to mark her passing, Pullo’s cell phone began ringing upstairs in the bedroom.
He placed an arm around Laurel’s shoulders and led her up the steps, and then grabbed the phone off the nightstand and answered it on the sixteenth ring.
It was Johnny, who had just survived his own attack and betrayal.
Pullo told him what had just happened and they agreed to meet at the club.
Minutes later, Pullo and Laurel were in his Hummer and headed away from her townhouse.
Laurel had stopped shaking and took out her phone.
“Should I call Tanner? Is this what he was talking about when he gave me his number?”
“I don’t think he expected this, not an attack by a friend, but yeah, I guess he didn’t put anything past Heinz.”
“They wanted you dead, not me. Maya was just going to kill me because I was a witness and, what do we do with her body?”
“I’ll have it taken care of. The next time you go home there won’t be a sign of trouble.”
“Oh my God, I nearly died. You saved me, Joe.”
“I heard the vase break, if not for that...”
“Should I call, Tanner?”
“Yeah, tell him what happened and have him meet us at the club.”
***
Tanner had assigned Laurel’s number a special ring, and he awoke from a sound sleep after it rang only once.
“Laurel, are you all right?”
She wasn’t, and he could hear the tears in her voice as she told him what had happened. Afterwards, she passed the phone and Pullo filled him in on the attempt on Johnny’s life as well, and told him that they would all meet at the club, where they would plan a counter attack.
After ending the call, Tanner saw that Sophia had awakened and was staring at him.
“That was that doctor?”
“Heinz sent someone to her home to kill Pullo... and her.”
“Shit, are they all right?”
“Yeah, Joe handled it, also, someone tried to kill Rossetti, one of his own people, but he’s okay too, but they were all very lucky.”
Tanner grew silent as Sophia put on a light and rose from the bed.
“We’re safe here, right?”
“Yes, but we’re leaving anyway. Rossetti wants to meet at the club.”
Sophia put on her robe and went into the bathroom. When she emerged a minute later, she saw that Tanner hadn’t moved, but that his face had grown red with rage.
“Tanner... are you all right?”
“Get dressed; I’m putting you in a cab and sending you to the club.”
“Where are you going?”
Tanner’s intense eyes blazed and Sophia spotted the hate burning in them.
“I’m going back to that hotel of Heinz’s and I’m going to kill them all.”
***
Sophia pleaded with Tanner not to face Heinz’s men alone, but her appeals to reason fell on deaf ears.
After seeing that she was in a taxi and on her way to the club, Tanner drove six blocks and entered an underground parking garage.
The attendant was in the middle of telling him that he couldn’t park his car himself, when Tanner told him to pull up a file on the company computer. The young man gave him a strange look, but when the file was found, the man saw that it contained a photo of Tanner, and that it identified him as one of the owners of the property.
He wasn’t the owner, but had made a deal with the woman who did own it. The deal allowed him a permanent parking space in several of the garages she owned. In the space at this garage was a van, and that van held supplies and an arsenal.
In ten minutes, Tanner had donned body armor and wore a tactical vest over it.
He parked in the alley that ran behind the Rutherford Hotel and left the car carrying an AR-15, while an Atchisson assault shotgun was slung across his back. The tactical vest held a Beretta in its holster and there were spare magazines and shells for the three weapons.
He entered the hotel by the same second-story window he’d left it by the day before, after kicking in the plywood that had been fastened in place over it.
The noise brought three men stumbling into the hall with eyes puffy from sleep and Tanner shot them all and went looking for more. Only one man had been wise enough to carry a gun, but he never got off a shot.
Tanner assumed that Heinz would be in his suite, on the top floor of the sixth story building, but he needed to clear it before heading up, and so he went downstairs to the ground floor.
He was met by a group of men who had been playing a late-night game of poker.
Tanner opened up with the AR-15 on full automatic and killed three of the six men right away. As he reloaded, two bullets struck him in the chest, and despite the body armor, the pain was maddening and caused his eyes to tear up.
Tanner blinked the water of pain away and opened fire again, this time using three-round bursts, and after killing another man, the last two dived behind the oak reception counter.
If they had hoped that the massive and ornate service desk would protect them, they were sorely mistaken. The ammo from the AR-15, the .223 Remington’s ripped through the wood, the men, and the wall behind them.
After clearing the ground floor, Tanner heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs, but to his amazement, the elevator chimed and the old man who had been wearing the bathrobe the previous night emerged from the machine wearing the same again, but this time he was carrying a shotgun.
Tanner hit him with a burst from the AR-15 and the fool fell back into the elevator car with his feet sticking out, and the shotgun laying atop his body, while the doors of the elevator repeatedly opened and closed upon his legs.
Tanner took off at a run up the stairs and began firing the instant he spotted movement.
There were four men in their underwear on the second-floor landing. His shots caught them in their bare legs, taking the fight out of all but one of them. That man fired a shot that hit the web of flesh between the thumb and forefinger on Tanner’s left hand, causing it to drip blood and sting like a sonofabitch.
Tanner shot the man in the face and moved on, as the other three men moaned in agony from their wounds. Two of the men he recognized as his drinking companions from the night before, but he felt no pity for them, not after Laurel Ivy had nearly been killed.
As he opened the door to the third floor, the floor where most of the men were housed, Tanner got what he expected, as a brutal barrage of gunfire perforated the metal door with over a dozen holes, while four more rounds found Tanner’s vest, knocking the breath from his lungs.
Tanner recovered quickly, and his intent had not been to enter the floor, but to deliver a surprise and shut the door again.
The grenade exploded, causing the door to blow open and hang from one hinge, as the bottom hinge had been blown off by the explosion, even as the blast ripped apart several men.
Tanner slid the rifle around the edge of the doorframe and emptied its final magazine down the corridor, before trading the AR-15 for the Atchisson assault shotgun. Particles of debris and dust filled the air, but Tanner could make out four torn bodies lying atop the carpet, with two more casualties farther down the corridor.
That meant that he had encountered twenty men since entering the building, and he knew from his stay at the hotel the day before that there should be at least two more somewhere, not counting Heinz and Vance.
If the men were hiding, then so be it. Time was short, and doubtless someone passing nearby the building had heard the noise. Yet, he still had to get to the top floor and kill Heinz before the authorities appeared.
One of the missing men fired at him as he opened the door to the sixth floor. Before he could fire back, the man tackled him, and the two of them went tumbling down the stairs together.
Both the man and Tanner had lost their weapons during the fall down to the landing, and Tanner had banged his head on the wall as he landed, and was momentarily stunned.
The other man recovered first, and that’s when Tanner realized that it was the Frenchman who spoke only a little German.
The Frenchman’s eyes also widened in recognition as he grabbed the weapon nearest to him, pointed it at Tanner, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened, because the man had grabbed the AR-15, which was out of ammo.
After realizing his mistake, he made a leap to retrieve his own weapon, which was laying behind him on a stair, but when he turned back around to fire, Tanner tossed a knife that entered his left eye.
The Frenchman screamed in agony, but his pain was short lived, as Tanner ripped the gun from the man’s hand and shot him in the head twice.
“Heinz!” Tanner called, his voice filled with fury, as he ached to kill the man who had dared to threaten Laurel Ivy’s life.
However, vengeance was to be denied, because when he made it back up the stairs and onto the sixth floor, he found that the suites and conference room were empty.
Heinz had been wise enough to move somewhere else after Tanner’s destruction of his hit team, and the assassin would have to wait to get revenge.
Tanner made his way back down the stairs, where he found that two of the men wounded on the second floor landing still lived, but were too weak from their wounds to fight. He shot them with the Beretta to finish them off.
To his surprise, no sirens greeted his ears upon reaching the lobby, but he remembered that the once elegant hotel was well built and also surrounded by warehouses, which were closed for the night, while the street saw little traffic after daylight hours.
The sound of the grenade going off might have reached the restaurant on the corner, but he recalled that there was music playing inside, and it was an even chance that no one heard the sound, or if heard, they didn’t consider it menacing.
Whatever the reason for the lack of a police response, it was so much the better, and Heinz could return to find his nest in ruins.
The sound of running footsteps came from the area of the front doors after they crashed open, and Tanner nearly shot Johnny Rossetti and Joe Pullo as they came towards him with their guns up and ready.
They both stopped and stared at him, noting the blood dripping from his hand and splattered over his armor and clothing, and their guns fell to their sides.
“Heinz?” Johnny said.
“He’s not here, just his men.”
Pullo was swiveling his head about, searching for danger.
“How many me
n?”
“There should have been at least twenty-two, but I only encountered twenty-one.”
Pullo and Johnny glanced at each other, before looking back at Tanner.
“They’re all dead?” Johnny asked, and his tone was laced with amazement.
“Yeah,” Tanner said.
Johnny nodded at the body of the old man, which was lying in the doorway of the open elevator. The shotgun that had been lying atop the body was gone.
“The old man was unarmed?”
Tanner turned his head to look at the old man’s body, and saw another man step from the recesses of the elevator holding the shotgun.
Pullo knocked Tanner to the floor, as Johnny raised his weapon and fired.
The twenty-second man had been in the elevator and had been pointing the old man’s shotgun at Tanner’s back.
Pullo tackled Tanner just before the man fired. The pellets whizzed by overhead, missing the back of Tanner’s skull by mere inches, as Johnny fired three rounds into the man and killed him.
Tanner rolled out from beneath Pullo and the two men sprang up to their feet.
“I guess that was number twenty-two,” Johnny said.
“Thanks Rossetti, you too Joe, but what about Sophia, she made it to the club didn’t she?”
“Yeah,” Pullo said. “She’s why we’re here; she said that you were going after Heinz alone, which was stupid, Tanner, even for you.”
Tanner looked back at the man Johnny had shot, the one who had nearly blown his head off.
“I can’t argue the point, but Heinz needed to know that some things aren’t acceptable.”
“You’re talking about Laurel,” Pullo said, and Tanner acknowledged it with a nod.
Johnny turned and headed for the door.
“Let’s get out of here.”
The three men made their exit and headed back towards the club, leaving behind a slaughterhouse, and a lesson well taught.
CHAPTER 31 - Envious eyes
Tanner had thought he might find Sara Blake at the club, but Johnny explained that he didn’t want her to know about the latest attack on his life, as she was still upset that he had nearly been killed once that week.
The TANNER Series - Books 4-6 (Tanner Box Set Book 2) Page 36
