Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (108 page)

“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.