Lit Fuse (A Tanner Novel Book 44)

by Remington Kane

  Kate,

  As I said on the phone, I have no idea what might be on this tablet or if its information can be retrieved, but I know you’ll do your best. Let me know if you find anything interesting.

  PS—say hello to Michael for me.

  Cody wrote that last part and smiled. Despite having forgiven him for an earlier transgression, Michael Barlow still feared that Tanner would someday seek vengeance on him and Kate. He knew that by telling Kate to let Michael know he said hello, that it would make the man paranoid and have him wondering if there was something ominous underpinning the comment.

  Tanner had forgiven Michael completely, but it didn’t hurt to keep the devious man uneasy about his intentions. And besides, it was fun to mess with him.

  After sending the package off, Cody saw that Caleb had yet to return to the truck. Looking around, he saw that there was an electronics store in another strip mall that was across the road. He walked over and went inside the store on an impulse, after donning sunglasses and pulling his cap down low. Although he didn’t know all the facts about what had happened to Joshua, Cody suspected that it was tied to the riot somehow. When he spotted a computer tablet that was a match for the one he’d mailed off to Kate—minus the bullet hole—he decided to buy it. He had a feeling it might come in handy. As he walked around the store, he added a pair of spy cameras to his purchases, along with several burner phones.

  He’d come to California to relax and spend time with his family, but the riot had changed that. There might be nothing of interest on the small computer tablet, and Joshua may have just been mugged or run across the wrong people, but Tanner’s gut was telling him different. He believed that tablet would contain information and that Joshua was involved in something dangerous. If he was wrong, he’d have a new tablet he could use, a few burner phones, and a couple of spy cameras. Then again, if his gut was right, he’d be better prepared to deal with what could lay ahead. He paid cash for his items and left the store.

  When he crossed the road and returned to the pickup truck, he found that Caleb had filled the back seat with toys for Lucas and Marian.

  “What did you do, buy out the store?”

  “These can be the toys they play with whenever they’re here.”

  “Thanks, little brother, they’ll love it.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” Caleb said. “Let’s get back and make fast work of that barn roof, then we’ll take the kids down to the lake, and later we’ll have a barbeque.”

  Cody grinned. It was going to be a great day.

  21

  The Way Of The World

  While Cody was enjoying his time with family, Joshua was in misery inside a hospital in Alameda. His pain wasn’t merely physical. He was in mourning over Haley’s death.

  He had come to inside the hospital while a doctor was examining him. Instead of telling the truth, Joshua lied and told the doctor he didn’t know who had beaten him and shot him because the person wore a mask. He had suffered a slight concussion from the beating Miller had given him, along with a broken nose, fractured eye socket, and four loose teeth. He also had a broken heart. He had loved Haley and now she was gone, shot down like a rabid dog. Joshua was determined to make Miller pay for that.

  A detective from the San Padre Police Department came into the room Joshua shared with an old man. The old man had been wheeled out of the room to have a procedure performed, leaving Joshua alone with the detective.

  The cop introduced himself as Detective Ed Collins. Collins was in his fifties and had thinning hair and weary eyes. His entire demeanor spoke of his fatigue, and he sighed with pleasure after taking a seat by Joshua’s bed.

  Joshua could imagine that the detective had had a very busy day that probably started before the sun came up. He considered telling the man everything he knew and about witnessing Haley’s murder, but he pushed that idea out of his mind. He didn’t want Miller arrested for Haley’s murder. If that happened, the man would hire an attorney and deny having ever met Haley, which was true in a way. Miller and Haley had crossed paths only for a moment, and Miller snuffed out her life as if she were nothing more than an insect. No. Joshua didn’t want Morgan Miller to go to jail; he intended to send the man to hell.

  He would lie to the detective as he’d lied to the doctors. Once he was healed enough and out of the hospital, Joshua planned to find Miller and make him suffer. As for Naya, he had plans for her as well, but Miller was the focus of the red-hot hatred boiling away inside him.

  Detective Collins removed a notebook from an inner pocket of his suit jacket along with a pen. After flipping through the notebook to find a fresh page, he began asking Joshua questions.

  “How did you get shot and beaten, Mr. Mullins?”

  “I don’t remember much. The last thing I recall was walking along the stream in San Padre with my girlfriend, Haley, when a man in a ski mask pointed a gun at us.”

  “Your doctor told me that you were suffering short term memory loss. That’s not uncommon after a beating.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s scary not being able to remember.”

  “What’s Haley’s last name?”

  “It’s Kent.”

  “And her description?”

  Joshua described Haley. When he mentioned that she had blue hair, one side of Collins’ mouth curved into a smile.

  “I told the doctors that I’m worried about Haley. I’m surprised she hasn’t visited me yet. Was she the one who brought me to the hospital?”

  “No, it was a young couple. They reported that they came upon you near the stream, but you were alone when they found you.”

  Tears rolled down Joshua’s face. He didn’t need to fake them. “I’m worried about Haley, Detective. Please find her. Do you think the couple that found me might know something about her?”

  “I’ve already spoken to them on the phone. They didn’t mention seeing a woman. They had been attacked as well earlier by a different assailant, or rather the man was. He had a knee injury. He was treated and released.”

  “I guess a lot of people were hurt last night, huh?”

  Collins sighed again, this time it was born of sadness and not fatigue. “The last count I heard was that there were thirty-nine dead. That includes three cops. There were over a hundred injured, and eight people are missing; Miss Kent will raise the number of missing up to nine. On top of that, Flat Town is one big ash, and more than half of the downtown area was destroyed.”

  “I saw some of the looting going on while I was there.”

  “There was looting all right, and the bank and the credit union were broken into. I’ve been a cop for over thirty years, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Collins asked Joshua a few more questions before rising from his seat and heading for the door. Joshua asked him again to find Haley, although he knew her body might never be found. And yet, Joshua had hope. He had survived being shot, maybe Haley had too. He didn’t believe she was alive, but he prayed it was somehow true.

  After the detective left, Joshua stared up at the ceiling and imagined the torment he would inflict on Miller when he confronted the man.

  Joshua would be surprised to know that Miller was looking for him, or rather, his body. Miller wasn’t having much luck because he was under the assumption that Joshua was dead. Miller had sent someone to San Padre Hospital to ID the body of a Joshua Grant, since he and Naya were unaware of Joshua’s surname.

  The man who went to the hospital called and told Miller that Joshua Grant wasn’t the man he was looking for. When Miller asked him how he could be sure, the man, who was named Carter, laughed.

  “Joshua Grant is black, and your guy is white, right?”

  “Yes. But listen, Carter. I need you to find that body and check his effects. Someone had to have found him.”

  “Maybe he was taken to a different town. I bet the morgue here needed help dealing with all the bodies.”

  “That might explain it. Contact other hospitals and see wh
at you can find out. Either way, keep me informed.”

  “Right,” Carter said.

  Naya had been listening to Miller’s end of the phone call. When Miller put his phone away, Naya had a question.

  “Who’s Carter?”

  “Andrew Carter works for me. He’s a private detective.”

  “Why do you need a private detective?”

  Miller smiled. “Carter helps me dig up dirt on people. There’s nothing he won’t do if I pay him enough.”

  “Is he good at what he does?”

  “Oh yeah. He’ll find Joshua’s body, and hopefully the computer tablet.”

  “And what happens now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why are we still in San Padre?”

  “I need to keep an eye on things here and monitor anything going on at city hall. If some other corporation tries to gain control of the land where the slums were, I’ll alert my superiors and they can move in. That won’t happen. By the time our competitors evaluate the situation here and have numerous meetings about it, we’ll have already moved in and made a deal with the city.”

  The sound of loud voices and car horns could be heard coming from the direction of the gates. That area could be viewed from a room on the home’s top floor. Miller and Naya went up there to see what was going on.

  There were news vans and police cars at the gates. The owners of the rental home had a telescope set up on a tripod on the other side of the room; it was pointed toward the ocean. Naya dragged the telescope over to the other window to look down upon the scene at the gates. When she saw two police officers on motorcycles escorting a BMW through the gates, she told Miller about it.

  Miller shrugged. “Maybe there are still protestors around who hate the rich. They weren’t all ours.”

  “The guard at the gates is wearing a uniform. How come the guys guarding the gates last night didn’t wear them?”

  “They weren’t regular guards. The company that handles security here offers two layers of service. There’s the regular armed guards who wear the uniforms, and then there are the ones you saw last night.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “If the guards in the uniforms run into trouble, they call the police to back them up. With the other guards, the trouble gets handled and the police know nothing about it.”

  “You know some interesting people.”

  “The man who runs the security service also hires out mercenaries. Hexalcorp uses them now and then.”

  “I’m surprised that Hexalcorp doesn’t have their own people to handle things like that.”

  “We did at one time. It was what we called a strike team and was headed by a guy I knew named Steve Bennett.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They ran into someone who was better than they were. After that, Hexalcorp decided to hire mercs from outside the company. These new guys are good and run by a man named Tibbetts. Although, I was told that two of his people died during the riot last night.”

  “They had men in town too?”

  “Of course, they were the ones who started the riot once Anderson was found guilty. Some of them pretended to be cops, and some pretended to be protestors. The real protestors and the real cops followed their lead when violence broke out. You didn’t think I left things to chance, did you?”

  Naya kissed him on the cheek. “I should have known better, but what’s with all the news vans?”

  Miller got the answer as he checked his phone. “Ah, they’re here with Dr. Anderson. He was the one the police escorted home and the media jackals followed him here.”

  “I guess they grew bored of talking about the riot.”

  “Something else will catch their attention in a few days and they’ll be off to cover that. Right now, the riot is big news.”

  “That reminds me, I have to make a few phone calls to touch base with my people. I’m sure some of them are sitting in jail right now.”

  “They’ll be bailed out by tomorrow, which will make them more loyal to Die Fistulous. When we need them to protest something again, they’ll be there.”

  Naya grinned. “Useful idiots.”

  Miller nodded. “If we didn’t use them, someone else would. It’s the way of the world.”

  22

  Dead Or Alive

  Cody was glad to see Franny send him a smile as he walked into the kitchen at the farmhouse for lunch. Sara and Franny had talked after breakfast, and Sara was relieved to find that Franny was adapting well to knowing the truth about Cody.

  After the children ate, they followed their Uncle Caleb out to the barn to see the horses, while Sadie was busy supervising the teens she was helping through the charity. That left Cody, Sara, and Franny alone together.

  “I spoke to Wendy this morning, Cody. She said that Jake’s X-rays showed that nothing was broken. His knee was dislocated though, and he’ll have to rest the leg for a few weeks.”

  “That’s better than needing surgery. How is Wendy doing?”

  “She’s sick to death that she lost everything in the apartment fire, but the good news is that when she went there to look at the damage, she found her cat.”

  “Who owns the real estate business?” Sara asked.

  “Technically, Wendy does, since we signed the paperwork just before everything went to hell. I explained what happened to my aunt when we spoke on the phone this morning and she feels horrible about that. Instead of having a viable business, Wendy wound up with nothing. The good news is that my aunt is releasing Wendy from any obligation to pay. At the same time, she’ll allow her to use my Cousin Boyd’s customer list and contacts. Thank God that all that information was kept in cloud storage.”

  “It sounds like your aunt is the one suffering from the loss of the business,” Cody said.

  “She is. But my aunt can get by without the income, and sad to say, she also realizes she has limited time left because of her illness. When I told Wendy that my aunt was letting her off the hook, she cried and told me to thank her.”

  “A lot of people lost their livelihood and homes because of that riot,” Cody said. And although he didn’t mention it, he suspected there was a reason behind it other than the madness of a mob bent on destruction.

  That night, Miller was alone in the office and looking out the window at the ocean. It had been a brilliant day and the Pacific had sparkled like a blue jewel. Now that it was night, that jewel gave the impression of being an undulating liquid shadow of unlimited depth. Miller never swam at night. Being in the water at night was one of the few things that frightened him. Failure and the possibility of being imprisoned were two other fears. He could avoid going into the water at night, but if the information on his missing tablet wound up in the wrong hands, failure and imprisonment could be imminent.

  He turned away from the window as his phone rang. It was the private investigator, Andrew Carter. He was reporting that he’d had no luck locating Joshua.

  “How is that possible, Carter? His body must be somewhere.”

  “You told me that he should have been found by the stream. With all the rain we had last night, maybe the stream flooded its banks and swept the body away.”

  Miller considered that as he thought back to how the stream looked when he’d been there with Naya earlier. It was swollen, yes, but he doubted the water had risen high enough to carry Joshua’s body away.

  “No. The body should have been found there by someone.”

  “Unless some ghoul took it away, I should have located it. Let me ask you something, Miller. How sure are you that the guy is dead?”

  Miller remembered his last sight of Joshua. The man had looked dead, and he was certain that Naya had fired a bullet into his heart, but people have been known to survive incredible injuries.

  “I guess it’s possible that he’s alive. If so, he’ll be near death. The man was shot in the chest, and badly beaten too.”

  “That could explain why I haven’t found his body;
he’s still using it. I’ll start searching for him first thing tomorrow.”

  “Why not tonight?”

  “It will be easier in the morning when there are visiting hours at the hospitals. I also have a few contacts who wouldn’t appreciate me calling them this late.”

  “All right, but this is a priority, Carter. Find Joshua and get that computer tablet back.”

  “If he has it, I’ll get the tablet from him. But what about after?”

  “After you retrieve the tablet?”

  “Yeah. You thought this guy was dead. Does it please you to know he might be alive?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Everybody dies someday, maybe this guy’s day is near, if you know what I mean.”

  Miller did know. Carter was asking him if he wanted him to kill Joshua once he got the tablet back from him.

  “Yeah. Joshua doesn’t strike me as being very healthy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he died any day now, or maybe suddenly disappeared. I’m thinking both things could happen.”

  “They could. That sort of thing happened before. Around that same time, I came into some money. Maybe I’ll wind up with money again.”

  “The same amount?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can see that happening,” Miller said, telling Carter that he was willing to pay him to kill Joshua and get rid of the body. “Call me when you find out something.”

  “You got it,” Carter said, and the call ended.

  Miller tapped his fingers on his desktop as he thought about Carter. While the man had never failed to track down someone and could be relied upon not to talk to the authorities, he wasn’t the most trustworthy man in the world.

  Two years earlier, Carter had tracked down a low-level executive who had embezzled half a million dollars from Hexalcorp. The man had stolen the money so he could leave his wife and run off to Mexico with a stripper.