Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (118 page)

But then, she didn’t know what she wanted. She shifted a
little so the bullet wouldn’t go through the couch.

If you’re gonna do it, she told herself, do it now. End this
crazy fucking day with a killer’s dead body on your seven-thousand-dollar couch.

On the other side of the lake were two assholes who wanted
to control the universe. And then there was Jesup and her ex-con boyfriend, who
was probably a killer as well. It was a lot to think about. Overwhelming.

On the one hand, there shouldn’t have been anything to think
about. This killer was at her mercy. She could kill him and call Jesup and they
could get rid of the body.

But she didn’t do that. She was getting some other idea. She
felt it forming, emerging, growing.

It occurred to her they had something in common. She sold
sexual services to rich men. He sold murder services to those very same rich
men. Sexual services. Murder services.

That’s what they were. Highly paid service workers for rich
and powerful assholes. They got no respect. They were dark secrets nobody would
ever admit to.

I’m not going to kill him,
she thought, enlightened,
as if it was a powerful epiphany.
So what am I going to do?
And that’s
when a new idea began to emerge in her agitated brain. A crazy, beautiful, new
idea. Maybe the craziest and potentially greatest idea she’d ever had in her
life.

***

Leon had flirted with consciousness a couple times. Now, he
was awake for a moment and unsure of where he was, what was going on. He lay on
a couch, staring at the ceiling, not at all sure even who he was for a moment.
He struggled to put the pieces of his mind back together, remember where he was,
what had happened. He opened his eyes.

A female vision materialized through the swirling brain fog.
His vision struggled for focus. Breasts, mounds of white sweetness, thighs
swelling in front of him, rich and full. And a gun.

Memories started coalescing slowly, bits and pieces, streams
of memory looking to solve the puzzle of consciousness. Reality reforming into
understanding.

His gun! The instrument of his power and authority, the pen
with which he wrote the epithets of his conquests. For the second time, he lost
it.

His memory bubbled up out of the mental swamp, inchoate,
confused, fighting to free itself of the tangles, the predators of his mind. He
found himself staring at his Glock, the weapon’s nasty eye staring back at him,
ready to take his life.

Kora North, this hot chick behind the gun, said, “You’re
finally awake. Christ, I thought you were in a coma getting ready to die on me.
Then what? Getting rid of your body would be a big problem and what was I gonna
do? I couldn’t call the police, given my problems,” she said. “Then I thought,
just shoot him and call Jesup and her boyfriend and let them take care of the
body.”

Jesup and her boyfriend! That’s right, he thought. They took
her. Was she with them? But…but?

Kora, hopped up, all wild-eyed, then said, “So, how’s the
face?”

He didn’t understand.

Then she said, “I was going kill you, but then I decided
you’re more valuable to me alive than dead, in case you’re wondering. And right
in the middle of thinking about it, I got a call from Marco Cruz. He wanted me
to draw some maps for him. Here I am thinking whether or not to kill you, I got
this other badass on the phone. Been one of those days. Then I got an idea.”

She was dressed now in shorts and a midriff-revealing
T-shirt as she sat at the bar sipping from a large ceramic cup, the Glock lying
next to her hand. Her knee moved back and forth, revealing the smooth silk of
her inner thigh.
The highway to heaven or hell, depending,
he thought.

Leon forced himself to sit up, which influenced her to bring
up a second gun. A small caliber. Looked like a .32.

“You look like a vampire that’s been run over by an
eighteen-wheeler,” she said. “You’re wondering why you’re alive. Why I’m going
to give you your gun back. Well, it’s because you and I are going to make a deal
that’s gonna make us rich.”

Jesus, another deal! Everybody up here is crazy. Got to be
the air.

“The biggest deal of our lives. It’s time we form an
alliance, you and me. An alliance that can make us rich and protect us at the
same time.”

Then she starting talking—that sexy smirk on her face—about
what he was getting paid and how that was nothing compared to the possible
payday she had in mind. Then she started telling him he didn’t know what it was
like being on top of things.

“You’re always working from dead-man paycheck to dead-man
paycheck. Doing other people’s dirty laundry. Like some Mexican hitman with no
life beyond what he’s told to do. A working dog for the man.”

She was insulting him. Trashing him. He couldn’t believe
this woman.

Then she said, “Maybe you don’t want to be one of the big
boys…Maybe”—she flipped her hair back from her forehead with her gun hand—”you
like being the hired help, cleaning up their shit and getting paid like a
janitor compared to what’s out there. That what you like, cleaning up some
asshole’s crap? ‘Cause I got a feeling you’re a better man than that.”

This would have been the point where, he wondered, had he
his weapon, he’d have just flat out killed the lady to shut her up.

“How long was I out?” he mumbled.

“A long damn time. Which is a good thing. It gave me a
chance to think things through.”

Then, to his utter disbelief, she got up, walked over,
dropped the Glock next to him, put the .32 in her back pocket, and walked over
to look out the window. He realized it was dark outside.
How the hell long
have I been asleep?
he wondered. Then he realized he needed a pill. And
there was his gun, right there.

He picked it up and aimed at her.

She turned and looked at him. No fear blossomed in her smoky
eyes. The chick had liquid nitro in her veins. The second badass female he’d run
into. These fucking women up here…

Kora said, “No, I’m not scared. You wanna know why? You want
me to help you and I haven’t given you the information you really need. And
because I turn you on. And because I have a proposition for you. And because you
strike me as a smart man who’s sick and tired of being nothing more than a gun
gardener mowing other people’s lawns. That’s why you won’t pull the trigger.”

She walked over and he saw that her gun, which she now
pointed at him, was a Colt NP Cobra, aluminum frame, two-inch barrel. She
handled it like she knew how to handle it.

“Killing me,” she said, “would only prove one thing—that
you’re stupid. Too stupid to live.”

He couldn’t believe this.

Then she said. “Let’s put the guns down and get you fixed
up. I’ll get some ice to take down the swelling. You need an anti-inflammatory.
And maybe a little food. A protein shake. And stay off the booze. We can talk. I
got everything you want, including Jesup and her boy toy.”

That’s when he realized the gun was empty.

She said, “Here’s the thing. We need to learn to trust each
other…hard as that is for two people who don’t trust anybody.”

She got the clip from the bar and put in on the table next
to the couch. All he had to do was grab it. But he figured she’d pull that
little popgun and shoot him before he could get locked and loaded.

She chuckled, came over, and planted a light, delicate, warm
kiss right on his bruised mouth, like he was a child, or maybe a dying patient.

She said, “I got a feeling we’re gonna make one hell of a
team.”

Her smile widened, like a new dawn flooding into the dark
world of Leon, the Professional. It was like his fantasy world, the one he
needed so desperately in his isolated existence, had suddenly become his real
world. Emotions, feelings, foreign and strange, moved through him like an alien
invasion. She seemed highly amused by his situation.

“You want to hear me out?” she asked.

He nodded that he did.

This woman had a plan. And she started telling him what her
plan was, how all this money was involved, how Jesup and Cruz were going to rob
the lawyers. How they had the plans and were working with some security
installer guy named Dutch. And how she was the inside girl. Then she went off on
his clients like they were the two worst people on planet earth.

“I know it violates your sense of self,” she said.

Kora North spelled it all out like this was her thing. He’d
watched movies that featured female killers and badasses and that was fine, but
he never really believed they could actually exist. Just something for the
imagination. Comic-book chicks. But he was looking at something very different
here. If ever the real thing existed, he was looking at it.

“Jesup and Cruz are coming over to pick up the interior
drawings of Rouse’s place I drew for them.”

She showed him the drawings she’d done on printer paper.

“You can kill them, but you’ll be killing the greatest
payday of your life.”

She’s got it all figured out.

She took a sip of whatever she was drinking and then told
him the rest of her plan. At first he resisted the implications of it, but the
more she talked—the more she added what the future was going to look like for
them
—he found himself actually paying attention. And it all came from the
mouth of the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.

Then, in the midst of this, her phone rang. It was them.
“Now he wants me to meet him at the dock near the restaurant,” she said after
ending the call. “So you need to decide. You can kill him now, or you can kill
him twenty million dollars richer down the road. It’s not just money. It’s all
that dirt they have on people. Imagine the power behind that. Think for a
second. Instead of a hired gun, a grass cutter, what it would be like to be the
big dog for once in your life. That’s what I want. I’m sick of working for other
people.”

Henry Craven Lee, presently Leon the Professional, had
become mesmerized. Dazzled. A little disoriented.

He felt an overwhelming desire to surrender to this crazy
woman and what she was up to. He’d never felt anything like this before. He was
in love. It was a very strange, very exciting feeling.

46

Waiting for dark, Marco suggested maybe, with the big party
coming up and the hired gun out of the picture, Thorp might have a temporary
change of heart.

“Sending out a bunch of goons right now, with the guests
coming in, might not be something he wants to do. I’m sure he’ll have major
security at Incline, but he might wait until the party is over.”

“That makes some sense,” Sydney agreed. “But where Thorp is
concerned, sense doesn’t always rule. I’m not relaxing.”

They waited until the lake began to settle down, after some
speedboat races, before heading down the coast. Sydney drove the speedboat
fairly close to the western shore past Tahoma and Rubicon Bay before crossing
Emerald Bay and turning southeast toward the Keys.

They passed the lake’s two behemoth paddle-sternwheelers,
the
Tahoe Queen
and a little later the M.S.
Dixie II,
plodding
along on the way back to dock with their dinner guests.

“If she’s not going to work out, what’s plan B?” Marco asked
as they slowed.

Sydney said, “I hear Rio is booming.”

She said it with a sense of dark humor, but Marco figured it
wasn’t far off the mark if Kora flaked out on them.

Sydney eased the speedboat down the Keys’ east channel into
the Keys Village and main boat slips. She found an empty slip near the channel
entrance where, if need be, they could make a fast run out into open water.

“I hope you’re right about Kora,” Sydney said as they
checked their Bluetooth communications, compliments of Dutch Grimes.

“She’s gonna play,” he said. “We have too much on her and
she’s looking at the money.”

There were a lot of people out and about. Most of the crowd
gathered near the Ketch Restaurant. Marco glassed the area, the parked cars,
people coming and going from the Ketch. There were a lot of boats to hide in,
and the parking facility stretched all along the harbor and the cove. But it was
the best time to make an appearance. The last of the boats out on the lake were
coming in, so there was nothing unusual about them docking.

Marco gave Sydney the night glasses. “Keep me posted if
anybody looks like they don’t belong.”

He took his cell and made the call. Kora answered
immediately. He told her to come over to the Ketch area and toward the entrance
channel. He closed the phone and started to climb out.

Sydney said, “Tell you the truth, I thought she’d be gone.”

“Kora’s looking for that big payday. But I was a little
worried.”

***

Kora North left Leon and her condo. She walked across the
street to the Ketch and headed down along the line of boats moored along the
inlets. She didn’t know if she’d convinced Leon or not. Maybe he was just
playing her.

She was nervous and struggled to make the walk your basic
evening stroll at the end of another great Lake Tahoe day. Let the men check her
out, their women get irritated. People over on the tennis courts, talking at the
docks, waiting to be seated at the restaurant.

This could end in a bloody shootout, or this Marco could see
that she was playing games, and then what? So many things going on. All those
big shots coming into Incline Village. All the money.

And here she was between two badass killers, one in her
condo, the other waiting for her, and the most powerful man in the Sierras
wanting her to be his Daisy for the weekend Great Gatsby Gala.

It doesn’t get any better than that, Kora thought
sardonically.

***

Marco, now up on the dock, spotted Kora rolling toward him
through the lights on the dock, those long legs making her real hard to miss
even in a crowd. Hips snug in black shorts, blouse tied across the open midriff,
a big-money body, but his focus shifted to the people she passed, people moving
around the docks and the boats. He studied the crowd in front of the restaurant
looking for a particular type but not seeing anyone who looked suspicious.