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

by Perkins, Cathy

  “What was the controversy?”

  “Somewhere between Devil’s Thumb and Murderer’s Bar, just as they were heading down toward the final victory lap at the Placer County Fairgrounds, they got into it again. The controversy was over whether some foul play was involved. The guy he beat out never finished the race, but he never talked about how he got a broken arm and cracked ribs. Never lodged a complaint.”

  “Maybe he got a little drunk and slipped,” she said.

  “Maybe. He definitely gave me some good moments in my life. But he had a real dark side, for sure. I can’t help wondering if maybe because he didn’t bring me in, he had to be punished.” After a long pause, he added, “I’ll think about him and that part of my life later. Right now, we have work to do.”

  Marco took out his cell and called Kora North. No answer. Called her again. “C’mon, Kora, answer the goddamn phone.”

  “She’s probably drunk and asleep. Or she decided to run,” Sydney said.

  “We have too much on her. And she wants that money. I’ll go with sleeping. But when their Sicario doesn’t return, there’ll be more guys out there looking for him. And us. We travel by boat at night from now on.”

  They stayed up until morning. Marco tried Kora twice more and got nothing. Sydney sent her a text. If they were going over there, it meant waiting until dark. They needed some confirmation from her.

  ***

  Kora stared at her phone, then at the comatose killer. He’d been out a hell of a long time. It was already daylight. She knew she couldn’t continue to ignore the texts she was getting from Jesup and the calls from her boyfriend. She tried to decide what the hell to do. Maybe she should just tell this Marco guy that the killer was lying there on her couch unconscious. Let him handle it.

  The humming of her phone, mingled with the killer’s snoring, had her getting crazy. Leon was in a sleep so deep that when she nudged him, he didn’t show any signs of waking up. Maybe he was dying. She realized if he died, that was a problem. If he lived, maybe a worse one. If she killed him, Thorp would get her one way or another for it.

  She now had Leon’s gun and her own. She had all the power. Just didn’t know what to do with it.

  Make a goddamn decision, she admonished herself.

  She fought off a sense of panic. If she shot him, she had to do it in a way that wouldn’t mess up her expensive couch. She loved the couch. She had expensive tastes.

  She wondered if he was brain-dead or something. Then it occurred to her that if she didn’t answer the texts or phone calls, Marco and Jesup might just show up.

  I can’t kill a man while he’s sleeping, she thought. That’s not fair. He’s got to see me, look into my eyes and know he’s about to die.

  Then she wondered why she thought that. What the hell did it matter? I’m nuts, she thought. Can’t make up my goddamn mind about anything.

  She stared at her fish tank. The fish swimming lazily. All damn day, every day. Trapped. No exit.

  That’s when she looked at the buzzing phone and knew she had to answer this time or the guy might just come over to find out what was wrong. She picked up the phone.

  It was the boyfriend, Marco. He said, “If you’re not okay, say you have the wrong number and hang up.”

  “I’m okay. I was sleeping.”

  “Okay. Look, I need the drawings so we can begin…construction.”

  “I’m working on them.”

  “Do the best you can,” he told her. “Inside and outside, down to the water. The inside is the most important. Where the office will be located. On the outside, where the fishpond, gazebo, boat dock, and that kind of thing should be.”

  “When do you want them?” She spoke to this stud, wondering where he was. Maybe right outside close. She stared at the killer. He was now snoring fitfully.

  “Tonight. Make them detailed as you can. Contractors will be coming in a couple days.”

  She wondered if he really needed them, or if he was just testing her. All this code language like the fucking FBI was listening in or something. And again she wondered if she should just tell this Marco guy and have him come over and kill the guy. Go ahead, tell him, she pleaded with herself. But she didn’t.

  Be real easy to kill the killer and then let Marco get rid of the body, wouldn’t it?

  She couldn’t think clearly about what it would mean. She was in a state, caught between the killer, the guy on the phone, and Thorp. It always amazed her how she got into this kind of shit.

  Meanwhile, Marco was telling her he’d let her know when he was there. Asked her again if everything was good.

  Good? No, she thought, not exactly.

  “Yes. Everything’s good. At least as good at it can be under the circumstances,” she said, walking to the window, back to the couch, then to the bar as she talked.

  “Sorry ‘bout that. It’s how things go. Contractors are undependable. Let me deal with them.”

  Yeah, right, she thought sarcastically, looking at this killer of men, and maybe of women. She was so tempted to tell Marco she had the killer right there in front of her. But what would that accomplish? How many more were out there?

  Don’t tell him. No way, Kora thought. Not yet.

  “Okay, I’ll be in touch.”

  She closed the phone. Men and their bullshit.

  She again looked at the fish tank. She saw herself in there as a tiny fish swimming against glass walls in a permanent trap.

  To hell with that.

  She picked up the guns and tried to decide which one would be best to finish this with.

  Shoot the bastard in the head and be done with it.

  Then call the police and say some madman broke in and tried to rape her. He sure as hell fit the description of a madman.

  She pointed one gun, then the other, at his face. All her life she’d wondered, since the first time she was raped, what it would be like to kill some sonofabitch. Now she was about to find out.

  Bang-bang, motherfucker.

  Still, she hesitated.

  She hadn’t made up her mind, and that really bothered her. I’ve fucking got to decide, she thought. If he doesn’t die, if he wakes up, then what?

  He kills me.

  That’s what.

  What is wrong with you, damnit? Either kill this bastard or…or what?

  44

  Marco said, “Kora’s good to go. She’s looking at the end of the rainbow.”

  Marco went back into the files and tapes Corbin had on her. It was heavy stuff.

  Sydney pulled her chair next to him and said, “These guys she and the other girls are partying with, they’re some of the most important people around the lake.”

  A couple tapes later, they found a senator, two congressmen, and other politicos. “This outfit was busy,” Marco said. “No wonder they got control of things. How far is it to Rouse’s place?”

  Sydney said, “From here, in that speedboat, about half an hour. You know what’s so scary? I’m now my opposite, my dark alter ego. I was this straight-laced law chick, but now I’m a full-fledged criminal. It was so easy and doesn’t really seem to bother me. That’s scary. You went through some of those radical changes, didn’t you?”

  “Here’s the thing. The way I look at it, there are two kinds of law breakers—those who have no moral justification and those who do. It’s all a matter of context. If the law can’t bring justice, well, maybe somebody has to do whatever it requires.”

  “The end justifies the means?”

  Marco said, “Sometimes the means force the issue, determine the end.”

  They went over all the negative scenarios. They worried Kora had gone to Thorp and there would be people waiting for them. But given they had so much on her, so much of what she wanted, in the end, they agreed that was unlikely…but they still needed to plan for the worst.

  ***

  Sydney dug out Bernie Shaw’s many maps, and they looked at the keys. The condos and house were on fingers of land that had b
een created out of the wetlands. It looked on the map like a cluster of germs.

  “I nearly bought a condo here when prices dropped,” Sydney said.

  “It looks like a nice place. What stopped you?”

  She told him how unaware she’d been of some of the history of the place. That it was carved out of Truckee wetlands, much of the building material supplied by none other than Thorp’s grandfather and father. It triggered one of the great battles over the destruction of the environment in the fifties and sixties.

  “You and the Thorps go way back.”

  “I guess so. They stuck thousands of condos and houses right on top of one of nature’s necessary places. This is where she lives, on Capri Drive.”

  “It seems like a big place,” he said, looking more closely at the map.

  “They dredged the wetlands so they had all these fingers of land, so everybody gets a little waterway out front. Seven miles of interlocking waterways.

  “It is big.”

  “Would have been even biggerhad they not been stopped. They altered the natural channels that filtered the water before it reached the lake. The paving and building on the Keys eliminated that filtering process, and that had a lot to do with the lake turning gray-green. From high in the air, the place looks like a big pond with amoeba-like creatures frozen in place. If Thorp and his investors get their way on the North Shore, who knows if they won’t come back and finish this? It was Thorp’s father and grandfather who supplied much of the building material for some of the first homes. And across the lake, if they find a way to open up any part of the Whittell legacy, Tahoe will just be a really bad copy of Vegas.”

  “Funny how my uncle changed,” Marco said. “He was a big fan of keeping the lake in its natural state. You would have connected with him back then.”

  “It’s difficult to protect a place as beautiful as this,” Sydney said. “Those who own property don’t want anybody else coming in. They want an exclusive. Others want to turn it into Vegas North. But I see it as a big park where everyone has a right to come and enjoy it, but no one has the right to destroy. How you do that is the issue. But one thing I do know is that Thorp has no interest in the lake. Just himself. He’s the opposite of George Whittell, the man he supposedly worships. And he’s willing to do anything to get what he wants. And has.”

  They put everything that was spread out on the table away, then decided to get some rest before heading over to see Kora at twilight.

  Between the fight at Corbin’s and his uncle dead, Marco was now totally committed to the mission. It was very simple—they would find a way to get Thorp, or he would get them. And like it was in much of Mexico, the police didn’t much matter.

  45

  The killer moved, shifted, let out a heavy breath, almost like a sigh, and Kora backed up.

  Shit! He’s not dead or dying.

  He was alive and going to wake up. She pointed the gun, pointed it at the killer’s temple, ready to do it, willing to do it.

  Something was happening in her mind. An idea—one she knew was completely nuts yet excitingly powerful—began forming. And that slowed her down, made her stop, think.

  She felt the heft and the power of the gun. It had a weird trigger. She’d shot guns before. At the range, and when she went camping once with this nutty cop from Reno who wanted to marry her so bad he was willing to give up his wife and four kids. Mercifully for her, and them, he died in a bad accident while chasing a drunk.

  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. Doi
ng 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.”