“I’m here looking for the woman who’s with Wendy, Franny Facini. Give me your hand and I’ll help you inside the building.”
The man rose with a grunt. When he tried putting weight on his knee again, a look of agony crossed his face. That grimace of pain was replaced by an expression of annoyance when he saw that the keys were missing from his motorcycle’s ignition.
“Shit! One of those bastards stole my keys.”
Tanner asked him his name as he helped him hop along on one leg past the damaged entryway doors.
“I’m Jake Banack. And hey, thanks for saving my ass. Did you kill that dude that hit me with the bat?”
“He’s dead.”
“Good!”
They stopped talking as they looked around the building’s lobby. A leather sofa was smoldering in a corner, telling of a failed attempt to set the building on fire. Tanner left Jake in a sitting position and leaning against a wall. Before going upstairs to find Franny and Wendy, he needed to see to the sofa and make certain it didn’t erupt into a steady blaze. There was a fire extinguisher attached to the wall beside the elevator. Tanner used it to smother the flames building in the sofa. With that handled, he told Jake he was going upstairs.
Tanner came across the bodies of the four rapists Franny had killed. Next, he found the dead legal assistant, and the mercenary in the ski mask, along with the body of the lawyer, Townsend. The scene made him clench his jaw. Franny had met with serious trouble but appeared to have survived it. She might not be as fortunate again.
Franny and Wendy’s wallets and purses were lying nearby. Tanner picked them up and carried them along as he searched the rest of the offices. When he was satisfied that Franny wasn’t still in the building, he returned to the lobby. He told Jake what he had found and handed him the purses.
“Wendy must be scared out of her mind,” Jake said.
“I’m going to her apartment and see if they’re there. Once they’re safe, I’ll come back for you,” Tanner said, while removing a gun from an ankle holster. He held it up and spoke to Jake. “Do you know how to use this?”
Jake smiled. “After six years in the army, I’d better know how.”
Tanner handed him the gun. “You might need it. I think this riot is far from over.”
Jake took the weapon and did a press check to make sure it was loaded. “Thanks again. What’s your name?”
Tanner hesitated before answering. Franny would eventually talk to Jake, and she knew him by his real name of Cody Parker. If he gave Jake the name of Tanner, Franny might wonder why and piece together the fact that he was an assassin. Having two identities could get confusing at times.
“I’m Cody Parker. Franny works for me.”
“And you’ve walked into this nightmare to help her? You’re a hell of a boss.”
“Franny helps to take care of my children. She’s become family.”
Jake told Tanner the fastest way to reach Wendy’s apartment and ended his words with a plea.
“Mr. Parker, keep Wendy safe, okay?”
“I plan to. And I’ll be back when I can.”
“Good luck,” Jake said.
Tanner left the building and headed for the real estate office and the apartment above it where Wendy lived. As he passed scenes of lawlessness and anarchy, he wondered if Franny hadn’t escaped the frying pan only to find herself walking through fire.
9
Batter Up
Joshua had settled in with Haley under the tree after Tanner left. A few minutes later, he heard three distinct splashes take place upstream. It sounded like people were jumping into the water. He left Haley’s side and went to the bank of the river to see if he could spot anyone. He saw them all right. The bodies went drifting by while bobbing up and down in the water. One of them was Peter.
“Oh my God,” Joshua whispered. The men guarding the gates must have tossed the bodies down the hill to get rid of them. A few miles downstream, the water merged into a wide bay; once there, the bodies might be lost forever.
When a soft moan came from behind him, Joshua jumped as if it had been a loud scream. He moved back under the tree and found that Haley was regaining consciousness.
“Haley, baby, wake up.”
Her eyelids fluttered, closed, then sprang open. Joshua felt relief at seeing her awake and leaned over to kiss her. Haley pushed him away, rolled out from under the blanket, and vomited onto the grass. She was on her hands and knees with her blue hair hanging down and obscuring her face. When she was done retching, she laid down again, then reached up to feel the lump on her head.
“What happened, Joshua? Where are we?”
“We fell down the hill and landed in the stream.”
“What hill? And oh, I’m so dizzy.”
“We were up on the hill trying to get past the guards… don’t you remember?”
“I remember heading up the hill, but then I was here.”
“You must have a concussion, and there’s a cut on your right side that our guardian angel bandaged up.”
“What cut?” Haley said, as she moved a hand to her side and felt the bandage. “Ow! It hurts. My head is pounding so much that I didn’t notice the cut. And who’s our guardian angel?”
“The dude that saved our lives. We came close to drowning before he came along.”
Haley looked around. “Where is he?”
“He left. I think he was going into the city to look for someone.”
Haley sat up, intending to stand, but she lay back as the world swam around her. “I’m so dizzy… and tired.”
“You’ll never be able to walk out of here. I have to get you help.” Across the stream was the road Joshua and Haley had driven on when they first visited San Padre. There were no cars on it. The National Guard had halted traffic going in and out of the city.
Haley mumbled something that Joshua couldn’t make out.
“What was that?”
“Why are my clothes damp?”
“We fell in the stream.”
“Right, you said that. God, my head hurts.”
“You stay here, and I’ll go get help.”
“You fell too. Were you hurt?”
“No. I guess I got lucky.”
She touched his cheek. “I’m glad you’re all right. I… I love you, Joshua.”
Joshua grinned. It was the first time Haley had ever said that she loved him. “I love you too,” he told her, and leaned in for a kiss. Haley stopped him by turning her head.
“Don’t kiss me. I just vomited; my mouth is gross.”
Joshua kissed her anyway. And yes, her breath had been fresher, but he didn’t care.
Haley’s eyes crossed and she lay back. “I’m so dizzy.”
“I’ll go get you help. I think you need a hospital.”
“Be careful,” Haley said, then she drifted off to sleep.
Joshua was worried about Haley’s condition and went looking for a working phone. Both his phone and Haley’s had been rendered useless after having gotten wet in the stream. Tanner had also remarked that the cell service was down. Joshua figured that one of the mansions overlooking the beach might have a landline phone he could use. The problem was, how to reach the houses. Going back up the hill to ask the guards to help might only end up getting him shot, and the nearest house was over a mile away.
He sighed. If someone knocked on his door during a riot, he be damned if he’d let them in. It was more likely that someone might threaten to shoot him with a shotgun.
There were homes that were much closer. The mansions overlooking the beach, which were a quarter of a mile behind him. Summer was over and that meant that several of the homes would be empty. If he could find a way inside one, it was possible he could locate a working landline and summon an ambulance for Haley.
Joshua made certain that Haley’s breathing was good before leaving her and walking through a stretch of trees to reach a forty-eight-foot-high wall. The stone wall separated the beachfront properties fro
m the small, wooded area that bordered it. The wall ran on for hundreds of feet and ended where it merged with a cliff that was over a hundred feet high. Atop that cliff was the scenic overlook that Joshua and Haley had been on the previous day.
Joshua had been an avid rock climber during his years at college. When he saw that there were divots in many of the stones making up the barrier keeping him from the beach homes, he believed he could use them to climb up the wall.
After digging his fingers into a shallow depression in a stone that was a foot over his head, Joshua brought up his left foot and stuck the toe of his running shoe into a divot that was at waist level. Seconds later, he was seven feet off the ground and making steady progress toward the top of the wall.
Although it was fading rapidly, there was still enough daylight left to see by. That was when Joshua realized it would be too dark later to make the climb down. On top of that, the stones might be slippery from the looming rain that was certain to come.
He shook his head. He’d worry about that later. Right now, he needed to get help for Haley. Joshua kept climbing in a slow, methodical manner, determined to make it up and over the wall.
Franny and Wendy were making detours and avoiding large groups of people as they made their way to the real estate office; the same was not true for Tanner. The assassin headed toward his destination by taking the shortest path possible, thanks to directions given to him by Jake Banack.
He still had to skirt around car fires, scenes of looting, and groups of marauders, but Tanner never diverted onto a side street. The fact that he wore a gun on his hip kept most at bay. One look into his intense eyes was enough to make many people wary of him, but not all.
As he was approaching a pawn shop being broken into by four men, one of them pointed a metal bar at him and issued an order. “Turn around and go back the way you came if you know what’s good for you.”
“I’m just passing by.”
The other three men turned from their efforts to get through the pawn shop’s locked metal gate and joined their friend. Two were also holding metal bars, while the last man had a baseball bat. There was something smeared on the bat that looked like blood.
The first man spoke again. “Everything on this block is ours, and nobody gets past us.”
Tanner increased his pace and left his weapon sitting in its holster. He didn’t need a gun to deal with the four fools. His first blow was a kick that landed into the groin of the man holding the bat. As the man bent over in pain, Tanner took away his bat. He ducked as one of the other men swung a metal bar toward his head, then straightened up and shoved the head of the bat into the man’s face. There was a crunch of cartilage as the man’s nose was destroyed; the blow had enough force behind it to knock him out. Blood poured down his slack face as he fell back against one of his friends, a guy with long hair, causing the friend to lose his balance and fall to the ground.
Again, an iron bar was swung at Tanner’s head. He blocked it with the bat and buried a knee against the soft gut of the man who tried to hit him. The guy he’d taken the bat from charged at him with his head down. Tanner stepped aside and smashed the bat against the back of his head. The blow had been brutal and broke the bat in two. The man who’d fallen to the ground had regained his feet and was raising his weapon over his head in preparation to strike. Before he could take a swing with his iron bar, Tanner grabbed his long hair and yanked on it, making the man twist sideways. He then rammed the jagged end of the bat against the thug’s backside. The splintered wood tore through the fabric of the man’s pants, punctured his scrotum, and ripped into his ass. The looter screamed and the metal bar clattered to the ground.
“Fuck this,” said the punk who’d taken a knee to the stomach. The words had been spoken as he was running away. Tanner had smashed the face of one of his friends, cracked the skull of another, and jammed a broken bat up the ass of a third. Two of them were out cold, and the man with the bat handle sticking out of his ass screamed as if he were on fire.
Tanner watched the last man run off before he continued on his way.
10
No Shelter From The Storm
Franny and Wendy were nearing their destination when they came across yet another scene of violence. A news reporter and his cameraman had ventured into the chaos to get exclusive video of the riots. Instead, they became two more victims. Their van was on fire and both the cameraman and the reporter were being kicked to death by a mob of twelve teenagers who were all holding liquor bottles.
Franny thought the news crew might already be dead, as neither man raised a hand to shield themselves from the blows. She and Wendy viewed the scene while concealed behind a car that had its windows broken and its tires slashed.
Remarkably, one of the teens was using the news camera to film the event. Franny hoped that the crew hadn’t been reporting live. If so, horrific images were being broadcast.
When the group was satisfied the men were dead, they stood panting and gazed down at the result of their savagery in silence. The quiet was broken when one of them told the others that they should go trash the high school. There were shouts of agreement and the mob moved on. When Franny looked at Wendy, she saw that she hadn’t been the only one crying.
Wendy shook her head. “This is a nightmare.”
Franny took the younger woman’s hand and urged her to get moving again. If they could make it to Wendy’s apartment, they might be able to wait out the riot there until order was restored. As they moved past the bodies of the news crew, Franny said a silent prayer that Cody had been unable to enter the city. She would be sickened if anything happened to him because he’d been attempting to help her.
She then thought about her employer, and all sense of concern for him vanished. Cody Parker was not a man whose safety you needed to worry about. Franny was also certain that he would find her. Cody had told her that he was on his way to help her. Having come to know the man’s character, those words were as good as a vow. He would find them, and the way things were going, he might be the reason she and Wendy survived.
A hardware store took up a corner lot on the street where the real estate office was located. It had been looted and cans of spray paint were scattered outside the store’s broken display windows. Franny and Wendy walked past the shop and around the corner to find that the real estate office had not been spared.
It was on fire, as was Wendy’s apartment above it. Nearby, Franny’s rental car lay on its side, having been overturned. The windshield was broken, and the car seats had been ripped open by a blade.
“Oh God no,” Wendy said. “My cat! What happened to my cat?”
She left Franny’s side and headed toward the enclosed staircase on the side of the building that led to her apartment’s entrance. Flames had begun eating at the wooden structure and Wendy was forced to turn back after climbing only three steps. Franny had followed her to stop her, fearing that Wendy would attempt to enter the inferno above. Whatever was inside the apartment was being consumed by flames.
Wendy was sobbing as she imagined the worse for her cat, whom she had named Garfield. Franny hugged her, trying to give comfort, then spotted something that could offer true hope.
“Wendy, look in the street, past the gutter.”
Wendy sniffled and wiped at her eyes. A fire hydrant a block away had been struck by a delivery van earlier. The broken hydrant was sending water twelve feet into the air. That water was running along the gutter, and in the light of a street lamp, tiny paw prints could be seen leading away from the burning building.
“He got out,” Wendy said. “Garfield made it out.”
“It looks that way,” Franny said. “I’ll help you look for him when it’s safe to do so, but right now we need to keep moving.” While she was speaking, Franny was gazing down the street where a group of men had just walked around a corner several blocks away. She could tell by their silhouettes that they were wielding some sort of clubs.
Wendy nodded in agreement a
s she saw where Franny was looking, and they headed past the hardware store, going back the way they had come.
“What about Jake and your friend, Cody? They won’t know where to find us.”
Franny realized Wendy was right, then saw a way to leave a message for them. She grabbed up one of the cans of spray paint scattered on the ground and rushed back to stand in front of the real estate office. She used the fluorescent green paint to write a message on the sidewalk. Along with Cody and Jake’s names, she added an arrow to indicate which direction they should take to locate them. She repeated the message on the corner, with an arrow drawn to show the path they were taking.
Wendy pointed at the ground. “That’s clever.”
“I just hope it’s enough,” Franny said. When she looked at the figures she had seen in the distance, they appeared to be much closer than before. “Let’s get going again.”
“Where to?” Wendy asked.
“My hotel. It’s a long walk, but it’s all I can think of.”
Wendy quickened her steps. “It sounds good to me.”
Franny kept pace with Wendy, as somewhere nearby, a woman screamed, and a man cried out in pain.
11
Useful Idiots
Joshua made it up to the top of the wall. The climb had taken him longer than he would have believed and left his arms trembling from the effort. He sat on the wall to catch his breath and let his muscles rest. He still had to climb down the other side, although it was a shorter distance to reach the sand of the beach below him, since the area slanted upward. Still, it had been a long time since he’d done anything so strenuous.
Joshua could see off into the distance from his new vantage point, and what he saw sickened him. The sky to the east was orange from the fires Naya had set in the slums. More flickering orange light came from the city’s downtown area where the riot was still taking place. The fires there were many and scattered over a larger area.
Lit Fuse (A Tanner Novel Book 44) Page 6
