No, damnit!
Marco spun, his gun hand passing by her face as he tried to get it around, but the guy hit him hard and they locked up, knocking her into a weight bench. The two men crashed against some boxes, and then the three of them got locked in a violent wrestling match, stumbling over boxes, the weight bench, junk. They slammed from wall to wall, falling into junk, headbutting, elbows flying like sledgehammers. They were like a couple of pit bulls in a small cage, jaws locked on each other’s throats.
The men blocking what little light there was in the battle against the door, Sydney scrambled on the dark floor looking for the gun. Instead, she came up with something that felt like an empty dumbbell bar. She grabbed it in both hands, got up against the wall, and looked for a chance to use it.
Their opponent leveraged Marco into Sydney and one of their guns fired again, the shot so close to her ear she could feel the heat of the bullet. The ferocious battle between the men once again knocked Sydney back and into boxes and a bench, but she didn’t lose her grip on the metal bar.
Marco and his opponent were locked up and smashing into one wall, then the junk against the other wall with such fury and speed, it was hard for Sydney to get into the fight. When Marco snapped his arm down, freeing his hand, he then tried to bring his own weapon up but took a vicious elbow in the throat and a knee as they twisted back and fell against skis and a snowboard. Marco tried to regain his footing, spin the guy back into the wall, but took another hard elbow.
Sydney finally had a target and swung the dumbbell bar, but it hit a glancing blow off the man’s shoulder. The two men fell against the steps. As the assailant twisted around toward her, Sydney found another chance. She swung the bar like a baseball bat.
The dumbbell bar hit with a sickening crack of bone. The guy let out some kind of wild-sounding moan and backed to the door, his hands flying to his face, his gun hitting the floor. She tried to get him again but he thrust out both arms and pushed her violently back into Marco, and the two of them went down against the steps.
The man fled out the back door, sunlight bursting into the narrow, junk-filled hallway.
“I lost my gun,” Marco said, frantically scrambling away from her and trying to find it.
She located the gun their attacker had dropped, then went out the door. Marco, having found his weapon, came right behind her. At first they didn’t see any sign of the guy.
“He could be close. Have a backup piece,” Marco said, inching toward the side of the house.
But then Sydney saw the man run behind the garage, his hands cradling his face. She fired three shots. It was a long way for a snub nose to be accurate, but she saw him stumble, and it looked like he fell in the shrubs just inside the tree line.
“Looks like you got him,” Marco said. “He’s not short and fat.”
“That’s definitely not Corbin,” Sydney said.
She figured he wasn’t going to survive the breaking of his skull and the bullets. It hit her that she’d never killed anyone before. Everyone involved in law, or the military, was ready to do the obvious if necessary, but the fact of it would be something she’d think about later. It wasn’t that he didn’t deserve what he got. That was never the issue. It was just that it was something that, when it happened, was significant. Or should be, she thought. But maybe for some, not so much. Or maybe it was all context. She didn’t know. That would all come later.
“Let’s clear the house,” Marco said. “See if fat boy is there. The guy in the woods with the broken head might be able to talk on a cell phone, get help, so we need to get out of here. Bastard could still fight.”
Marco, his mouth bloody as well, spit some to the side and then wiped his mouth and nose with his shirt tail. “You had to have ripped some of those stitches.”
“We’ll deal with that later.”
She had the Colt and handed him the Heckler and Koch compact with silencer. They headed into the house slow and cautious, just in case Corbin lay in wait.
34
A hundred yards up the hill from the house, Leon leaned against a tree, feeling sick, the pain shooting spikes through his skull.
Jesus, Jesus Christ, I’m dead. The bitch broke my fucking skull. It’s her! Jesus!
The pain was like nothing he’d ever known before in his life. Had to have a broken face.
The three shots hadn’t hit him, though one bullet had taken a piece out of his left ear. Fucking bitch was crazy. He stared down toward the house, tears welling in his eyes, blurring his vision, blood dripping from his nose and mouth.
I messed up. I took a job on short notice and messed up.
Enraged, he pulled out his cell phone and found he couldn’t talk. He put it away and reached for his ankle holster. But the effort spiked the pain and any thought he had of going back into the fight vanished.
He found himself trapped between his desire to get down there and kill these people, put an end to this, and the excruciating, immobilizing pain that became so intense he wanted to scream.
He’d gotten a glimpse of her and seen enough pictures to know that was Jesup and Cillo’s nephew. Jesus, tough sonsabitches.
He couldn’t believe it. They weren’t running and hiding—they were on the hunt!
Everything now flipped over on its back. Tahoe had suddenly become a very dangerous place.
He sat on a fallen branch on the hillside in the pines trying to get his mind settled, get himself calm, his skull on fire. Pain spiked and shot in waves through his head. What had she hit him with? That bitch had tried to take his fucking head off!
Everything they said about her was true. She was crazy. The woman had gunshot wounds and was still on the hunt and in the fight. What kind of crazy-ass woman was he dealing with? No wonder everybody wanted her dead.
You got to get them now, he told himself.
But he couldn’t move, couldn’t think of anything beyond his misery.
Off in the distance where the road appeared over a rise before dipping back down into the ravine half a mile or so away, he saw a car coming. He wondered if it was the hooker, Kora North. Everything in Leon’s world was going to hell.
When the car slid down around the curve, reappeared, and slowed, he knew it was her.
***
Sydney and Marco found Corbin slumped, listless, in a chair, eyes open, blood on his forehead, a startled look on his face.
“Rigor from a bullet isn’t exactly cosmetic surgery,” Sydney said. “Doesn’t improve the look. But he’s not been dead long. Maybe an hour or two.”
Marco, his senses on high alert, trigger finger flexing like a coiled snake, readied himself for any hostile target.
They quickly cleared the other rooms. The occupant had bad habits. Filthy toilet, mold, dirty clothes. Cracked paint. Smudges soiling the carpets. Smells. The small house clear, they came back into the living room.
The hole in the man’s head had a filigree of red around it. “Flor roja la Muerte,” Marco said.
“Meaning?”
“Death’s red flower. Something that happens very frequently in Mexico. Whole bouquets. We need to get moving. You want to use the bathroom, go ahead.”
Sydney let out a dark chuckle. “Funny. I’d piss in the woods before I’d sit my ass on anything in this shithole.” Then she said, “Son of a bitch,” as she pulled out files and a notebook computer from the open tennis bag. “My bag, my stuff. Our boy has been busy.”
Marco came over and looked. “Well, he didn’t get far with your stuff. Or Corbin’s. Which means he’ll be back if he’s capable. Or he’ll send somebody. You have blood on your nose. Looks funny.”
She went into the kitchen to find paper towels to wipe blood from her nose and mouth while he picked up some photos.
“Tapes and a folder with pictures of various sexcapades,” he said.
Sydney looked at the photos when she’d come back into the living room. “I know this girl.”
Marco heard a car and went to the window. “
You want a little surprise? It’s her. Just pulled up in her BMW.”
Sydney came over and looked out the window. “No way. It is. One and the same. Kora North, one of the highest priced girls in Tahoe, who now works exclusive with the Thorp Incline crowd. What the hell’s going on? And she looks pissed off and in a big hurry.”
The tall, striking female left her shiny black Beamer and came up the walk past the pickup truck. Long legs, gold hair, and substantial breasts in a halter top, the calendar-girl body swung toward the steps with aggressiveness. She clutched her shoulder bag like she was afraid it would swing off her shoulder and run away.
Marco went to the door to invite the high-priced bombshell in.
Sydney said quietly, “This should be interesting.”
Everything had changed now. He knew that, and so did Sydney. There was no way out of this. Whatever Sydney had in mind, it now included him. He felt a lot like he was back in Mexico.
35
Through a slit opening in the side window curtain, Sydney watched Kora North walk up to the door, where Marco was ready to welcome her.
Kora looked stressed and angry. She started to knock, but Marco opened the door, grabbed her arm, and yanked her inside so fast she didn’t have time to resist. When she struggled to get something from her bag, Sydney ripped the bag out of her hands.
He kicked the door shut.
“Easy girl,” Marco said as Kora fought him with cat-claw ferocity, wild eyes, and screaming curses.
After taking a couple of hard blows to the face and shoulder, he subdued her by grabbing under her armpits, pinching off the nerves, and angling his hips so she couldn’t get a knee to his groin.
“Easy! Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“You are hurting me, asshole!” she yelled.
Kora North had a Hollywood body and a viper’s disposition. Marco grabbed her wrists and pinned them in front of her. Sydney caught a whiff of perfume that smelled like fresh-baked apples and cinnamon. A little surprising.
“Don’t panic, and don’t try and head-butt me or I’ll really get pissed and mess you up,” Marco said in a calm but stern voice.
Kora’s eyes widened. She stiffened when she saw Sydney, then Shaun Corbin’s body. She tried again to break away, but Marco swung her around and slammed her back against the wall.
“Calm down. We’re not the killers, and we’re not going to hurt you.”
The wildcat Barbie hunched her shoulders and arched back, rigid and defensive, ready to go off on him again.
Sydney said, “He’s telling you the truth, Kora. Relax. The guy who killed Shaun, I put some bullets in him. He’s lying somewhere up in the woods.”
Kora, realizing the situation was out of her control, smartly ceased her futile struggle.
“You,” she said, now recognizing Sydney.
“Right,” Sydney said. “Me.”
She put the shoulder bag Kora had been carrying on an end table and opened it. “Well, looks like we have money. Lots of it. And we have a gun.”
“Girl came prepared,” Marco said.
Sydney held up the gun. “Nice.” It had hardwood grip plates with a ruby embedded on either side. “What is it you came prepared for, Kora?”
“I don’t want anything to do with this,” Kora said. “Give me my bag, my money, and my gun and let me get out of here. I didn’t see anything. I couldn’t be happier that bastard is dead. I have some things here I want back, then I’m out of here.”
“If only things were that easy,” Sydney said. “Like he already said, we didn’t kill Corbin. When we got here, the man who did kill him was apparently waiting for somebody, and that somebody looks to be you. He had your nude shots out on the table. We got in a fight with him. He got the worst of it. Took off.”
“Why would he be waiting for me?”
“Maybe to have some fun,” Sydney said. “Maybe to kill you. We don’t have time to argue. What’s the money for?”
Kora said, “I was being threatened by Corbin. He had stuff on me. Bad stuff that would put me in trouble with Oggie Thorp and the law. I was buying it back. He did something bad, wanted to run, and needed running money. If you just give me what I came for, I won’t say anything to anyone.”
Sydney packed the big tennis bag with everything on the coffee table, then put Kora’s gun back in her shoulder bag. “Just be thankful we’re here and not the guy who killed Corbin. And the stuff that Corbin had on you, we own that now. So maybe we need to have a little talk. Just not here.”
Kora glanced at the body. No shock in her face seeing the guy dead. More like she was looking at some road kill.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Kora shot back.
Marco said, “You want that back—your money, car keys, and the tapes you came for—you’ll talk to us. You’ll cooperate with Sydney. Otherwise, you’ll be walking”—he held up her keys—”and your car will be parked in front of a dead man’s house. You’d be lucky if the cops got to you before somebody else did. So let’s go have a nice little chat.”
Kora stared at Marco.
Sydney said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Outside, heading for Kora’s BMW, “Sydney said, “Why was Corbin killed? What did he do, he was so scared he wanted to run?”
“I don’t know.”
Sydney stopped at the back passenger door as Marco got in behind the wheel. She grabbed Kora, turned her, and then showed her the bandages under her shirt. “Shaun Corbin tried to kill me. You know nothing about that?”
“No. All I know is he did something he was running from.”
Sydney studied her for a moment, then said, “Get in the front.”
Sydney got in back with the tennis bag and Kora’s shoulder bag. Marco keyed the engine and they left.
Sydney, leaning forward on the seat, said, “Kora, the guy who killed Corbin robbed my place and was apparently waiting for you for whatever reason, which means you’d be dead if we hadn’t shown up. Then he’d have come after me. So, the way I see it, we have something in common.”
“Where are you taking me?” Kora demanded, looking at Marco.
Marco said, “Just a ways up the road, where we can talk and see what’s going on down here in the valley.”
***
Standing in the trees two hundred yards up the hill from the house, Leon, still in brain-freeze, pain, and shock, watched as the threesome left in Kora North’s BMW, Cruz driving, Kora North beside him in the passenger bucket, Jesup in the back. They had the tennis bag. He couldn’t believe it. He’d lost his Glock and the bag with all the files, laptops, and videos. And his face was broken.
Everything in the neat, ordered world of Leon, in the way he usually planned, prepped, did careful surveillance, following a precise methodology in order to get a clean kill—all of it out the window. Trashed from the minute he’d set foot in Tahoe. And now this. He stared in shock as the BMW headed around the bend in the hill and disappeared.
What the hell’s going on? He ignored his misery for a moment. Is she with them or did they just take her?
He walked across the nape of the hill and down to his car, each step sending spikes of pain through his skull. He waded through dry pine needles and pine cones, then stopped, leaned against a tree, and felt sick.
I can’t die here. I won’t die here, goddamnit!
To ease and calm his mind, he entertained violent visions of revenge, getting the Jesup woman and giving her live to Thorp on the condition he got to watch the fucking lion rip her to pieces. Only violent fantasies tended to relax him. It had always been that way for Henry Craven Lee, aka Leon.
The pain exploded across the tangled wire of synapses in his brain like an electrical storm. He suppressed a scream. He couldn’t move his jaw. With tears fogging his vision, Leon cried inside, cradled his face, and tried to will the pain away.
He hadn’t taken a beating like this since he was a kid and one of his mother’s many boyfriends beat him on a pretty regular basis. Th
e worst was the one who made him do things. The bastard who made him try and fuck the neighbor girl, the bastard jacking off as he watched two nine-year-olds. Then later, he beat the crap out of Leon to convince him never to say anything about it. He threatened the girl with death to her whole family.
At least Leon had gotten even afterward, when he’d thrown him out a sixth-story window. He still relished his first suicide kill, still the one he remembered with the most pleasure.
Breathing hard through his nose, Leon finally made his way to his car, every step pure agony.
They came for the PI to do what? Kill him?
Thorp was right about Jesup. She was a nut case. And what was this with Kora North? She come to pick them up? Had she dropped them off? Was she working with them?
He considered calling in some of Thorp’s goons, but that wouldn’t solve the problem if it was big and included other people. He had to understand it first. No, this was his problem now. His alone.
He had to get back to the cabin. Get the lawyer to bring some pain pills. Right now, he couldn’t move his jaw without sending white-hot lightning bolts that fired splintering pain up through his face and head.
36
“What do you want from me?” Kora asked when they parked up in the trees above the ravine near their car, just far enough away so Kora couldn’t see what they were driving.
“Like he said, we’re going to talk to you about something,” Sydney said to this beautiful stick of dynamite.
“Talk about what?”
Sydney said, “The big party next weekend. You’re part of that, I assume. Miss Daisy?”
“Yes,” Kora said. “Look, I just want my stuff, and I want to get out of here. I don’t care if you killed Corbin or some mystery guy you’re talking about. Just give me what I came for and let me go. This is kidnapping. You can’t do this shit.”
Sydney let a moment’s silence hang over the conversation. Then she said, “We have you by your short hairs, Kora. Don’t tell me what we can or can’t do. People are trying to kill me. I’m in no fucking mood to put up with any shit from you. I hand this stuff over to the right authorities, you’ll do serious time. Except you won’t get the chance to do time. You’ll be dead. You know too much. You’ll be as dead as Shaun…and Karen Orland. And she’s very fucking dead, girl. You remember Karen, don’t you?”
The Ultimate Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Bestsellers) Page 87