Cool Heat (21 page)

“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. Doing 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.”

She walked over and he saw that her gun, which she now pointed at him, was a Colt NP Cobra, aluminum frame, two-inch barrel. She handled it like she knew how to handle it.

“Killing me,” she said, “would only prove one thing—that you’re stupid. Too stupid to live.”

He couldn’t believe this.

Then she said. “Let’s put the guns down and get you fixed up. I’ll get some ice to take down the swelling. You need an anti-inflammatory. And maybe a little food. A protein shake. And stay off the booze. We can talk. I got everything you want, including Jesup and her boy toy.”

That’s when he realized the gun was empty.

She said, “Here’s the thing. We need to learn to trust each other…hard as that is for two people who don’t trust anybody.”

She got the clip from the bar and put in on the table next to the couch. All he had to do was grab it. But he figured she’d pull that little popgun and shoot him before he could get locked and loaded.

She chuckled, came over, and planted a light, delicate, warm kiss right on his bruised mouth, like he was a child, or maybe a dying patient.

She said, “I got a feeling we’re gonna make one hell of a team.”

Her smile widened, like a new dawn flooding into the dark world of Leon, the Professional. It was like his fantasy world, the one he needed so desperately in his isolated existence, had suddenly become his real world. Emotions, feelings, foreign and strange, moved through him like an alien invasion. She seemed highly amused by his situation.

“You want to hear me out?” she asked.

He nodded that he did.

This woman had a plan. And she started telling him what her plan was, how all this money was involved, how Jesup and Cruz were going to rob the lawyers. How they had the plans and were working with some security installer guy named Dutch. And how she was the inside girl. Then she went off on his clients like they were the two worst people on planet earth.

“I know it violates your sense of self,” she said.

Kora North spelled it all out like this was her thing. He’d watched movies that featured female killers and badasses and that was fine, but he never really believed they could actually exist. Just something for the imagination. Comic-book chicks. But he was looking at something very different here. If ever the real thing existed, he was looking at it.

“Jesup and Cruz are coming over to pick up the interior drawings of Rouse’s place I drew for them.”

She showed him the drawings she’d done on printer paper.

“You can kill them, but you’ll be killing the greatest payday of your life.”

She’s got it all figured out.

She took a sip of whatever she was drinking and then told him the rest of her plan. At first he resisted the implications of it, but the more she talked—the more she added what the future was going to look like for
them
—he found himself actually paying attention. And it all came from the mouth of the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.

Then, in the midst of this, her phone rang. It was them. “Now he wants me to meet him at the dock near the restaurant,” she said after ending the call. “So you need to decide. You can kill him now, or you can kill him twenty million dollars richer down the road. It’s not just money. It’s all that dirt they have on people. Imagine the power behind that. Think for a second. Instead of a hired gun, a grass cutter, what it would be like to be the big dog for once in your life. That’s what I want. I’m sick of working for other people.”

Henry Craven Lee, presently Leon the Professional, had become mesmerized. Dazzled. A little disoriented.

He felt an overwhelming desire to surrender to this crazy woman and what she was up to. He’d never felt anything like this before. He was in love. It was a very strange, very exciting feeling.

46

Waiting for dark, Marco suggested maybe, with the big party coming up and the hired gun out of the picture, Thorp might have a temporary change of heart.

“Sending out a bunch of goons right now, with the guests coming in, might not be something he wants to do. I’m sure he’ll have major security at Incline, but he might wait until the party is over.”

“That makes some sense,” Sydney agreed. “But where Thorp is concerned, sense doesn’t always rule. I’m not relaxing.”

They waited until the lake began to settle down, after some speedboat races, before heading down the coast. Sydney drove the speedboat fairly close to the western shore past Tahoma and Rubicon Bay before crossing Emerald Bay and turning southeast toward the Keys.

They passed the lake’s two behemoth paddle-sternwheelers, the
Tahoe Queen
and a little later the M.S.
Dixie II,
plodding along on the way back to dock with their dinner guests.

“If she’s not going to work out, what’s plan B?” Marco asked as they slowed.

Sydney said, “I hear Rio is booming.”

She said it with a sense of dark humor, but Marco figured it wasn’t far off the mark if Kora flaked out on them.

Sydney eased the speedboat down the Keys’ east channel into the Keys Village and main boat slips. She found an empty slip near the channel entrance where, if need be, they could make a fast run out into open water.

“I hope you’re right about Kora,” Sydney said as they checked their Bluetooth communications, compliments of Dutch Grimes.

“She’s gonna play,” he said. “We have too much on her and she’s looking at the money.”

There were a lot of people out and about. Most of the crowd gathered near the Ketch Restaurant. Marco glassed the area, the parked cars, people coming and going from the Ketch. There were a lot of boats to hide in, and the parking facility stretched all along the harbor and the cove. But it was the best time to make an appearance. The last of the boats out on the lake were coming in, so there was nothing unusual about them docking.

Marco gave Sydney the night glasses. “Keep me posted if anybody looks like they don’t belong.”

He took his cell and made the call. Kora answered immediately. He told her to come over to the Ketch area and toward the entrance channel. He closed the phone and started to climb out.

Sydney said, “Tell you the truth, I thought she’d be gone.”

“Kora’s looking for that big payday. But I was a little worried.”