The Ultimate Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Bestsellers)

by Perkins, Cathy

  “Kora,” Corbin said, turning, giving her his nastiest look, “you better shut up and listen to me.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I’m not pissing around. I got to get out of here and I need some cash.”

  “What, exactly, did you do?”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m leaving and I’m not coming back.”

  “You serious?”

  “I am. So we need to settle up.”

  “If that’s true? You’re leaving, I’m celebrating. As for the cash, forget that. I don’t owe you shit.”

  “Hey”—he moved closer—”you bitch, all that money you have is my money. I put you on your back in the right crowd. I hooked you up. You’d still be pole dancing in some stinking club if it wasn’t for me, sweetheart.”

  “Shaun, back the fuck off. I’m warning you.”

  “You forget. I have something you don’t want spread around. And I know you have a lot of cash somewhere. Thirty from you will do to get me where I’m going. Travel expenses. I’m collecting from everybody owes me, and you owe me big time.”

  “Screw you. I made you the asshole big shot you think you are,” she said.

  “That right? Kora,” he said, “that video of what happened at the lake—you and the senator, half a dozen other big shots—you don’t want that out on the goddamn Net. You’ll get dead fast. So you want those tapes, you better dump the attitude.”

  She knew Corbin, and he was a vindictive little bastard. He’d do it, and that would be the end of things for sure.

  “I can’t give you what I don’t have.”

  “Fine. See you on the Internet.” He turned to leave.

  “Shaun, look. What I have is in a bank box. I can’t get anything until morning.”

  He stared at her. “Morning ain’t all that far off. Get it and bring it over to my place pronto. And don’t get stupid. Don’t talk to anybody about anything.”

  He downed the vodka, eyes closed for a second, then opened them and took a deep breath.

  “What you did must have been really stupid,” she said.

  “Just get my money.”

  “This isn’t good, Shaun.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He slapped the glass hard on the bar. “I need to use your bathroom.”

  “Jesus, can’t you just go home or to a bar?”

  “I need it right now.” He headed down the hall.

  She had a gun in a drawer in her bedroom. She had an urge to get it, shoot this prick, call the police, and say it was in self-defense. Mess the place up. Cut her lips. Give herself some bruises. But she had to get those tapes first. She was certain he’d do just what he said he would. The real question was, why didn’t the real slut—his mother, who’d dropped this abomination on the world—have enough sense to abort him? In her mind, Shaun Corbin was all the argument the pro-abortionists would ever need.

  He came back and walked to the door. The man couldn’t do anything he didn’t find a way to make a little bit gross.

  “Eight tomorrow morning with the money, Kora, baby?”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Banks aren’t open that early. I can’t be there any earlier than nine.”

  He stared at her. He was close enough that, besides his breath and the ugly mole in the center of his stinking forehead, she noticed how bloodshot his eyes were, and that he was afraid of something in a big way. Whatever he’d done, it had to be bad.

  “You messed up good this time, didn’t you, hotshot?” she said, taunting him. “What did you do?”

  “Don’t worry about it. You know when Oggie is coming back?”

  “No.”

  He left, throwing the door open and leaving it. Kora thought again about shooting the bastard. She could go over and just put a bullet in his peanut brain, then get the tapes and whatever he had and set his fucking house on fire.

  Being part of his little escort business was one of the biggest mistakes of her life. Maybe the biggest—and she’d made plenty of them. To calm herself down, settle her mind, she poured herself a very large goblet of Merlot. Then she fetched her .32 Smith from the bedroom and returned to the living room. She aimed it like she intended to do. She pointed. She imagined shooting Corbin in the head, shooting out that fucking mole. Beauty kills the beast.

  Then she’d do what she had been planning a long time—get the hell out of Tahoe.

  I hate my stupid damn life, Kora thought bitterly. She knew three things about herself: she had a high IQ, she was knock-down hot, and she was living a totally phony, rotten life. She didn’t believe in killing animals or eating meat, but killing assholes was definitely on her to do list.

  Bang bang, motherfucker!

  25

  Leon, in post-kill euphoria, left the mountain and headed past the casinos.

  “You talkin’ to me. Are you talking to me?” He smiled that same crazy De Niro smile in Taxi as he drove from Cillo’s to the GPS address for Jesup.

  He parked down the street from Jesup’s. She lived a quarter-mile from the government complex that housed the courthouse, police, sheriff’s and DA’s offices. His client already had one of his goons sitting on the street in case she made any attempt to come home. Leon found him asleep in his car. He didn’t bother to wake him.

  Leon used a simple lock-shock to get in. No alarm system on. Once inside, he went about his task fast and methodically. Before leaving Sydney Jesup’s bedroom, everything in piles, neat piles, Leon thought about what her clothes, the outdoor gear, and the pictures she’d taken of nature and stuff told him.

  The girl he had to hunt and kill was lean and something of a minimalist and a mountain girl. No excess. Nothing very sexy except for some short shorts. He held a pair up, felt the material against his face. But the tight-ass cop didn’t fit his model. Mountain girl. Cop family, from the pictures. She run to family in Sacramento, maybe?

  “Probably a nasty dike bitch,” he said his thought out loud.

  The facts about her behavior didn’t make much sense. She hadn’t reported the shooting at the hatchery. At Cillo’s, according to the report his client had gotten, she was sitting up in the car and nobody seemed to know how bad she was hit other than what the nephew, Marco Cruz, had said. Why did the guy not get rid of her, get away from the whole thing? Made no sense. What was that about?

  People are hard to figure, Leon thought. Why would this guy risk everything for some low-level DA’s investigator on a short list to get the bus for the scenic ride to eternity?

  Normally, Leon didn’t give a damn, the “why” about somebody to be taken out. But everything in this case hinged on the whys. Why was she anywhere around Tahoe, unless she was hit pretty bad? That made sense. But why was Cruz sticking with her?

  He used her tennis bag to collect her iPad, notebook computer, handwritten journals, and flash drives. He’d look at it all later and find some answers before turning it over to Thorp.

  There were a few pictures of the outdoors, of her and her lesbian girlfriends up in the snow.

  Some books. Law stuff. Stuff on the environment. Her furniture was simple and Ikea-cheap. Pictures on the desk of family, he assumed. Fucking cops all over the place. He smiled. That’s where she’d run—Sacramento. Home to the protection of family? Maybe.

  But they’d gone first to the bad boy’s uncle. Strange place to run. And her cop relatives might not be all that thrilled she was hanging with a criminal. And then this Marco refused to cough her up, refused to come home. They were up to something. Did they know each other before?

  Tracking was all about their past, their habits, comfort zones. Any good hunter knows running off in the woods is a waste of time. You need to understand the quarry. Maybe they’d headed back to Mexico.

  Maybe this Corbin, the wannabe, could tell him what the hell was going on. That is, if he was even still around.

  Runners are two kinds—those who planned ahead of time, expecting to be on the run, and those it happened to without warning. She was the latter,
and they usually left trails, contacting friends or relatives. But, this was a woman from Cop World. Ex-sheriff’s deputy, DA’s investigator. So she didn’t fit into any normal profile.

  Corbin, on the other hand, looked like a real fool. He botched the hit and was probably out there looking to fix it. Get it right. If he had half a brain, he’d have gone. Be on his way to South America.

  Leon left Sydney Jesup’s place and followed the GPS to the address he’d been given for Corbin.

  26

  The boy lived back in the hills about two miles or so from the center of South Lake. Hard to find at first, with all the curling roads. No fucking streetlights. Houses hiding back in the trees. But he found it eventually.

  Leon parked out of sight of the house, on a feeder road just off Needle Peak Road, and walked. He took the tennis bag with him to add to it if the PI had anything of value.

  He slipped up into the woods behind the unlit house and came down toward it slowly, his cougar on the hunt walk, as he liked to think of it. He stared at the little nondescript house. No vehicle out front.

  Where are you, boy? You gone? You best be long gone.

  It was a dark street with no traffic. The houses in here were a little ragged. Not very active. Not the ski-bum crowd. Poor whites working the casinos, most likely.

  Leon, the tennis bag slung over his left shoulder, weapon in his right hand, went into the backyard, past a car up on blocks, and found a side door with not much in the way of a lock. He put the tennis bag down in the kitchen and searched the house. Shaun Corbin proved not to be home, but he hadn’t run off. His bags were out and packed, and it looked like he had plans on taking a long vacation. Even had a map on the table. Florida.

  You’re still here, boy. How dumb are you?

  Leon brought the tennis bag into the living room.

  “You got to come back for your stuff,” Leon said to himself.

  And I’ll be here. We’re gonna have a little chit chat about how this mess happened.

  He didn’t expect to learn much about the whereabouts of Jesup and her new buddy, but he could learn a little more about the client and the situation.

  Why hadn’t Corbin gone? Hanging around to say goodbye to friends? Or was he out on the hunt, hoping to fix things.

  Too late for that, boy.

  Leon wore a Black Diamond headlamp with two tiny LED bulbs. Gave him a small amount of light, but didn’t create a beam the world could see.

  Unlike Jesup, this boy was a pig. His place was a fucking disease incubator, a biohazard zone. Jesup had been minimalist, if a bit messy. This guy was a junk collector. Everything was shoddy. Man never dusted or cleaned. You could smell the mold.

  Leon opened windows just a quarter inch—not far enough they would notice, especially at night—to let in some fresh air and allow him to hear anyone approaching.

  “Well, let’s see what a PI has in his collection,” Leon said. There was a bunch of stuff out on the coffee table, but first he opened a backpack he’d noticed and pulled out computer disks, dozens of paper files, notebooks. There were dozens of CDs with dates and names. He opened some of the manila envelopes. Man had pictures of young girls doing bad things to older guys. Blackmail kind of stuff.

  Busy little PI bugger, aren’t you?

  Some of them looked like the same motel rooms. Or cabin rooms. Serious porno stuff going on. Leon chuckled. A couple of young pussy looked like prison bait. Even some gay stuff. Kinky scene, this Tahoe underbelly.

  Then he turned to the stuff out on the coffee table. More photos, tape recorder, videos.

  “What have we here?”

  The photos were all of the same girl with various men. Not your run-of-the-mill hooker. This lady love was in a class by herself. This was serious stuff. Marilyn with an even better body. No surplus on this package. Stop a fucking train. “The best for last, my boy.”

  Some girls just had that combination of sweet kid looks and a shape that wouldn’t quit. On the back of one photo, her name: Kora North. The more he stared, the more enraptured he became. There was something about the girl. Perfection, to be sure. But in a unique way.

  Figuring it could be a long wait and, being jetlagged, Leon moved to the recliner, but he didn’t like the looks of it. He went into the kitchen and got a towel, wet it, and cleaned off the leather recliner. Before sitting down he tightened the curtain, then began to look over what he had on Jesup.

  The more he read from her files and from the PI’s, the more he began to wonder what the hell was going on here in little old Tahoe. What the client was up to his eyeballs in. Who was the PI gathering all this stuff on, and for what, exactly?

  He went back to the hot chick, the train-stopper. Some of these dudes in the pics had to be among the rich and powerful set. Lake Tahoe, with its bad-boy history…looked like some of those bad habits were back in vogue. What was the little snoop up to? Must be some blackmail goin’ on. This guy was up to his eyeballs in the muck.

  C’mon home, Corbin. Can’t wait to meet you.

  He found a file on Jesup. Pictures taken with a telescopic lens. Had a couple partial nude shots in her place. Man had been tracking her. Had all kinds of records on her. Even tapes of phone calls. A big investigation. Newspaper clippings of a girl named Karen Orland who’d drowned in Fallen Leaf Lake.

  Corbin had a big profile on the woman. Her past in Sacramento. Her friends and relatives. Habits. Mountain rescue skier in the winter. He knew where she worked out, ate. Had a picture of her coming out of a breakfast place called the Red Hut Waffle Shop.

  Leon couldn’t wait to get to the computers. He finally turned off the tiny light. Settled back in the recliner, his weapon on his lap. He was a light sleeper, but right now, he was a little more exhausted than usual. Still, he kept going back to the photo of Kora North. Never had he seen a more beautiful, more perfect woman. He wondered if, in person, she was half as fine.

  He drifted off with his usual sleep protocol. He loved to imagine himself hunting down world leaders, killing them, feeding the news cycles, and playing with the government agencies hunting him. Taunting them. It was a kind of masturbation of the mind for Leon.

  But on this night, after enjoying his kill in New York and his battle with the old man, he went to Kora North, having various forms of sex with her in his mind until he finally drifted off.

  27

  Just before sunrise on Tuesday morning, Marco and Sydney slipped out of a still-sleeping Markleeville.

  Sydney felt guilty about dragging Marco further into this. She sensed he was already in deep yet was still serious about dumping her and going to his uncle, hat in hand. He was angry about what had happened, but she knew she was growing on him. Now a lot depended on what Gary Gatts could tell them—if it turned out the shooter was some random guy and not coming from Thorp, then she couldn’t expect Marco to join her “crusade.”

  The Mountain View Restaurant squatted off the side of the snaking mountain road in the pines about six miles from Markleeville. A sagging dining hall, faded red paint, and a sign over the screened-in porch announced that you could “catch ‘em yourself” along with a colorful drawing of a fish.

  “Is that the place?”

  “Yes.”

  The sun began its rise and would come with a vengeance. Another hot day ahead.

  Suddenly, a small horde of leathered, tattooed bikers came roaring around the bend from the opposite direction and pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant. It was awkward for a moment, as Marco slowed as if also going into the restaurant but then continued on, the bikers no doubt assuming their presence was enough to scare off any regular citizenry.

  They drove around the curve; Marco found a place just off the highway in the woods, on a feeder road, and parked out of sight of the main road and the restaurant. “We arrived a few minutes earlier, it would have gotten uncomfortable,” he said.

  “Timing in love and war is everything,” Sydney said.

  Marco secured his piece und
er his shirt, and then they hiked down through the trees, where they had a view of the restaurant and parking lot but were well hidden. They waited about thirty minutes. Two girls were outside by one of the bikes. They were joined by the rest of the crew: four males, two more females. They stood talking for a moment, then mounted up, kickstands retracted, engines turned on and cranked up.

  “Dogs on hogs probably making a delivery, or a pickup,” Sydney said. “The Hell’s Angels used to run the trade until the Mexicans took over. They work for them. Next they’ll all be working for the Chinese. A new world.”

  Marco smiled. “You’re cynical.”

  “Usually depends on the time of day.”

  With the biker bitches clinging onto their road warriors like fierce female bats, they roared off down the winding mountain road toward Markleeville, their shiny black helmets gleaming in the early morning light.

  Sydney and Marco walked across the parking lot and went on inside, greeted by a fragrant waft of chilies and old grease. A sign on the wall next to the empty hostess stand explained that you could catch your own fish down in the creek, bring them up to be cleaned, then cook them yourself, or have the cook do it.

  Fishing poles and bait on the porch, the sign read in big red letters across the bottom, with an arrow pointing to the porch.

  The man they were looking for wasn’t in the dining room or in the kitchen. A plump, attractive Spanish woman emerged and cast anxious glances at them.

  “I guess we don’t look like customers,” Marco said. He nodded to the woman and said, “Cómo es usted que hace hoy a señora.”

  She looked worried. Marco assured her they weren’t ICE. “No somos gobierno.”

  “I speak English,” she shot back, eyes fiery like he’d insulted her. “Probably better than you do.”

  Marco smiled appreciatively at her feistiness. “We’re looking for Mr. Gatts. He around?”

  A flicker of anxiety shadowed her eyes. “No.”