Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (99 page)

The men stopped but didn’t go back up on the porch. They
were staring at the car.

Marco said, “I need some painkillers. You have Vicodin or
anything? And if you have a medical kit—”

“Boy, you don’t understand nothin’. You picked up the wrong
goddamn woman to bring up here on my property.” Tony Cillo’s face muscles
tightened. “You get that bitch outta here fast. Drop her wherever. In the
fucking lake if you have to. Just away from here.”

“Hey, the lady’s got wounds that need to be cleaned. And
there’s a fucking shooter—”

“Get her outta here now, Marco. Call me when you don’t have
her anywhere near you. She’s poison. Go. I’d as soon nobody knows she’s with
you. Call me when you’re rid of her. Move before these guys see her. She might
end up with more than two bullets in her. I’ll explain about that crazy bitch
later when you’re rid of her. Go!”

Marco, enraged by his uncle’s attitude but seeing the
gathering of his friends, knew he had to leave. They looked like they had
already recognized her.
Something going on here in paradise that can’t be
good,
he thought.
I stumbled into a real mess.

Marco said, “I’m going, but I got a shooter out there
looking for her. You have a piece on you?”

“Sorry, can’t help you there,” Cillo said. “You need to get
rid of her and get rid of her fast. Go, and don’t be thinking of coming back
here until she’s out of your hands. And don’t get into her shit, Marco. You’ve
had enough trouble in your life. Time to know when to fold ‘em, as the song
says.”

Marco turned and went back to the car. He slid in behind the
wheel, turned the key, and backed around, glancing one last time at his uncle,
then pulled out.

“You aren’t winning any popularity contests up here,” Marco
said. “What’d you do, kill all the babies?”

She had her arms wrapped around her stomach, her face pale,
and it seemed to him her side had new blood. Then he saw blood on the steering
wheel. “What’s this?”

“I was going to take the car and go. Didn’t work out so
well. Couldn’t get over the damn console.”

He shook his head.
I left Mexico and the border to get
away from this kind of crap
. He needed to deal with her real quick, and he
had no desire to be out on the road, especially in daylight. He was going to
have to pull over and deal with the wounds whether she liked it or not.

He was very pissed at his uncle’s attitude, but maybe, once
he understood what was going on, he’d have a change of mind. But first he had to
deal with this woman, then get her off his hands fast.

“If I’d stopped for that cup of coffee at Starbucks…”

Sydney Jesup grimaced and nodded. “I’d be dead and you’d be
seven dollars poorer.”

5

Sydney knew Cillo and the men who’d come down to greet
Marco. They ran the loan-sharking business among other things. “I wish you had
told me who your uncle was,” she said as they drove down the dirt road through
the heavy lodgepole pines.

“I had no reason to think it mattered.”

“I said I was with the DA and sheriff’s department. Nobody
there I saw is a normal, law-abiding citizen. Maybe two plus two?”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t been up here in over seven years. And
you weren’t interested in bringing in the law, so I figured you were on a
different path.”

Realizing the magnitude of the impact this was going to have
on both of them, Sydney said, “This isn’t good. You need to drop me off and get
out of this.”

“Maybe you need to tell me what the hell is going on.”

“Maybe the best thing for you is not to know anything from
me. Sooner you’re free of me, the better.”

“Yeah, well, first things first. You have bullet wounds. You
need medical attention, and I’m not free of you until I know you’re not going to
die on me. Been through that kind of mess. I don’t need a repeat.”

She didn’t ask what that was about. Her little fantasy
relationship in her mind was now over. “The wounds are minor, and I’m not going
to be your problem.”

“What the hell did you do you have so many enemies?” Marco
asked.

“It’s what they think I can do that’s the problem.”

“Who are they?”

“Everybody who stands to profit from the biggest, most
corrupt deal this lake has ever seen.”

The car bounced in a rut and she made a painful grunt. Marco
slowed and found a spot where he could pull off the road. He backed in between
some pines and stopped.

“What are you doing?” Sydney asked.

“We’ll wait a bit. I don’t want to be running around in this
car while there’s still some twilight, not with a shooter out there. We need to
get those wounds wrapped. You die on me with your blood and DNA all over my
car…won’t look good.”

Sydney had no desire to hang around anywhere near the Cillo
crowd. Her sense of good fortune at getting picked up by Marco took a bit of a
hit. She trusted none of them. As far as she knew, they could well be the ones
who sent the shooter.

“I’m not bleeding that much. Just get me across the lake.
There’s a house there that isn’t occupied—”

“I will, just not yet,” he said. “In daylight, this car
stands out like a Roman candle.” He glanced at the seat and the floor mat.

“Sorry I’m messing up your car. And your homecoming.”

“Yeah, well, it is what it is,” he said. “Let me get
something to wrap those wounds.”

He popped the trunk, then got out. She saw him check the
bullet holes on his way to the back. When he returned, he had a T-shirt and neat
little stack of boxer shorts. At least they looked clean. In fact, new.

He opened her door and she reached out for them. “I can
stick these to the wounds. That should contain any further bleed-out. I have
this doctor friend in Tahoe City. It’ll be dark soon. And I’ll pay for cleaning
and repairing your car.”

“Let me take a look at the wounds. See how bad they are. I
can wrap a T-shirt around and use the shorts to put enough pressure—”

“Not necessary. I can just stuff them against the wounds. I
don’t think they’re all that bad.”

His eyebrows arched. “Relax. I’m not operating. Just trying
to see how bad you’re hit. I’ve had plenty of field first aid, and I’ve seen
about every kind of wound there is.”

“My doctor friend—”

“Right now, I’m your field medic, so stop arguing. Scoot
your legs out so I can reach you better.”

After she’d complied, he gently pulled her shirt up to look
at the side wound. She peeked, and it looked nasty. At least a three-inch cut.

He said, “It may have nicked a rib. You’re lucky. You turned
just a little and something vital would have taken the bullet.”

He put a folded pair of his shorts on the wound and told her
to hold it against it. Then he pulled out a pocketknife and made a cut in the
T-shirt so he could rip it to make a long strip. He wrapped it around her torso
and reached around to tie it, their faces close, making her look off at the
trees.

She mocked herself for reacting to this guy like she was
some teenybopper, feeling her cheeks get hot and her pulse quicken, wondering if
her breath was as foul as it tasted.

“No major terrible with that one,” he said, pulling back and
checking his handiwork. “You’ll probably need stitches. Or some QuikClot would
work. Let’s see the leg.”

No way.
“I don’t think that’s anything. I’ll just put
something there and we can get out of here,” she said, feeling a lot more
defensive about the location of that wound and the guy all over her, with her
smelling from the sweat and working all morning with fish. The thing about him
was his easy cockiness.

He paused and leveled dark-chocolate eyes at her. Not
hostile so much as irritated. “Look, when somebody jumps into whatever swamp
you’re in, pulls you out, and wants to make sure you don’t continue to bleed all
over his new Shelby, maybe just let him tie up your wounds, all right? That too
much to ask?”

“No, I guess not.”

“And get over being sensitive or whatever. Believe me, I’m
only interested in saving my car, not in seeing if you’re put together different
from every other female on this suffering planet. Okay?”

Fuck you,
she thought. “Yes, okay.”

“Unzip and I’ll help you pull the jeans down.”

For want of something better to come at him with, she said,
“I figured you for Jockey briefs.”

“I don’t like confinement. Of any kind.”

She hated that he could get a smile out of her so easily.
She blamed her ridiculous reaction and lack of willpower on being dehydrated and
the loss of blood. He did have a good sense of humor and, no doubt, had a long,
sad trail of broken hearts behind him.

Then he said, as if to mollify her, “Believe me, if getting
close to your crotch excites me, I’ll have no choice but to shoot myself.”

She let out a sardonic chuckle.
You win,
she thought,
then said, trying to be as nonchalant about it as he was, “Fine. I guess
there’ll be no foreplay.”

“You’re in a Shelby. What more foreplay do you need?”

She smiled and shook her head.
I hate this guy,
she
thought.
He’s way too smooth.
She focused a moment on the woods. The
rustle of squirrels chasing each other. Tahoe, sub-alpine, had not escaped the
heat wave scorching the West or her own personal heat wave from this guy
examining her up close and personal.

She surrendered, pulled down the zipper, and tried to help
with the pants, lifting her behind up off the seat as he tugged. Once her jeans
were down around her ankles, he gently pulled her knees apart to see the wound
on her inner thigh. It wasn’t as big as the one on her left side, but it still
stung.

Even more than she hated that she smelled, was being all
sweaty and bloody. At least she had on nice underwear. The thought made her eyes
roll, and she shook her head at how ridiculous this was.

“What’s short, fat boy shooting?” he asked, showing no
interest in her discomforts, not sensing her embarrassment.

“A Glock fitted with a suppressor. And a TLR light.”

He pressed against the wound with his boxer shorts. “You
need to get these wounds cleaned up and professionally wrapped, but for now,
this’ll have to—” He stopped as a car came down the road from his uncle’s place.
It came fast. A Lexus. They watched it shoot past. The driver never looked in
their direction. From what she could see, it wasn’t his uncle.

She sat there, legs apart, smelling terrible, looking like
shit, blood everywhere, this guy hovering over her, both of them staring out at
the road. She hated feeling helpless, and now she was starting to think that at
any moment, she could fall unconscious from lack of fluids and blood.

“I’m uncomfortable,” she said. “Really uncomfortable.”

“Let’s get you wrapped and out of here.”

He folded the blue boxers up against the cut, then wrapped
another T-shirt strip around her leg and tied it snug. “That’ll hold you.”

He helped get her pants back up and zipped, then moved back
and said, “This doc in Tahoe City somebody you can trust?”

“Yes. First I want to go to this house on the lake. It’s
really secluded, and I know the people who own it. I check on the place from
time to time when they’re gone. Get me there. It’s a mile south of Tahoe City,
where he lives. We can switch out vehicles there if you want.”

He nodded. His expression of dark humor gave way to edginess
now as he looked carefully down the road both ways before he closed her door,
walked around to the driver’s side, and got in. He started the engine, and that
deep, powerful rumble was unlike anything she’d been riding lately.

“Is there a sweeter sound than that?” he said.

“It’s nice.”

You were really going to steal my car?”

“Just borrow it.”

“You’re looking a little pale. Sit back and relax.”

“Don’t go toward Incline,” she said. “You’ve been away a
long time. There’s a new parkway around the main drag.”

“Wouldn’t Incline be faster?”

“It might be better if you go around South Lake and up the
89. Most of my problems emanate from Incline Village.”

She thought, I’m a wreck, somebody’s trying to kill me, and
this guy’s uncle is embedded with Tahoe’s underworld. Could it get any better?

If she wasn’t in so much pain at the moment, she would have
laughed at the insanity of it all.

***

Marco Cruz had to get rid of this woman and her problems,
but he was stuck with her right now. He couldn’t just leave her out there
knowing somebody wanted her dead. And him. And now he was getting interested in
whatever the real issue was, given how his uncle had reacted.

“Answer me one question,” he said as he curled down to the
main road at Zephyr Cove and headed toward the State Line casinos. He was
surprised at the amount of traffic. “Is whatever you’re involved in something
that’s more than a personal vendetta or a revenge situation?”

“It’s all of the above. Just drop me off and your uncle will
explain the situation. I don’t have the energy right now.”

“You can’t leave me in the dark,” he said. “You’re going to
have to talk to me at some point.”

“Not right now. I don’t have the energy.”

He nodded. The dehydration and loss of blood were taking her
down. He had to get over to that house she wanted to go to and get some fluids
in her. Then he had to find out what this was all about.

But he also had an urge to get her situated and just get on
out of here. Head for San Diego or Phoenix. Tahoe wasn’t looking so good any
more.

6

When they were halfway between Zephyr Cove and the State
Line casinos, Marco’s cell rang. He looked at it, but didn’t answer.

“Your uncle?” Sydney asked.

Marco nodded. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m
not thinking you should hang around Tahoe. After this doc friend of yours fixes
you up, and you still don’t want police involvement, is there a safe place for
you to hide out until you fully recover? You have friends or relatives somewhere
away from Tahoe where you can recuperate?”