Cool Heat (3 page)

“Get her outta here now, Marco. Call me when you don’t have her anywhere near you. She’s poison. Go. I’d as soon nobody knows she’s with you. Call me when you’re rid of her. Move before these guys see her. She might end up with more than two bullets in her. I’ll explain about that crazy bitch later when you’re rid of her. Go!”

Marco, enraged by his uncle’s attitude but seeing the gathering of his friends, knew he had to leave. They looked like they had already recognized her.
Something going on here in paradise that can’t be good,
he thought.
I stumbled into a real mess.

Marco said, “I’m going, but I got a shooter out there looking for her. You have a piece on you?”

“Sorry, can’t help you there,” Cillo said. “You need to get rid of her and get rid of her fast. Go, and don’t be thinking of coming back here until she’s out of your hands. And don’t get into her shit, Marco. You’ve had enough trouble in your life. Time to know when to fold ‘em, as the song says.”

Marco turned and went back to the car. He slid in behind the wheel, turned the key, and backed around, glancing one last time at his uncle, then pulled out.

“You aren’t winning any popularity contests up here,” Marco said. “What’d you do, kill all the babies?”

She had her arms wrapped around her stomach, her face pale, and it seemed to him her side had new blood. Then he saw blood on the steering wheel. “What’s this?”

“I was going to take the car and go. Didn’t work out so well. Couldn’t get over the damn console.”

He shook his head.
I left Mexico and the border to get away from this kind of crap
. He needed to deal with her real quick, and he had no desire to be out on the road, especially in daylight. He was going to have to pull over and deal with the wounds whether she liked it or not.

He was very pissed at his uncle’s attitude, but maybe, once he understood what was going on, he’d have a change of mind. But first he had to deal with this woman, then get her off his hands fast.

“If I’d stopped for that cup of coffee at Starbucks…”

Sydney Jesup grimaced and nodded. “I’d be dead and you’d be seven dollars poorer.”

5

Sydney knew Cillo and the men who’d come down to greet Marco. They ran the loan-sharking business among other things. “I wish you had told me who your uncle was,” she said as they drove down the dirt road through the heavy lodgepole pines.

“I had no reason to think it mattered.”

“I said I was with the DA and sheriff’s department. Nobody there I saw is a normal, law-abiding citizen. Maybe two plus two?”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t been up here in over seven years. And you weren’t interested in bringing in the law, so I figured you were on a different path.”

Realizing the magnitude of the impact this was going to have on both of them, Sydney said, “This isn’t good. You need to drop me off and get out of this.”

“Maybe you need to tell me what the hell is going on.”

“Maybe the best thing for you is not to know anything from me. Sooner you’re free of me, the better.”

“Yeah, well, first things first. You have bullet wounds. You need medical attention, and I’m not free of you until I know you’re not going to die on me. Been through that kind of mess. I don’t need a repeat.”

She didn’t ask what that was about. Her little fantasy relationship in her mind was now over. “The wounds are minor, and I’m not going to be your problem.”

“What the hell did you do you have so many enemies?” Marco asked.

“It’s what they think I can do that’s the problem.”

“Who are they?”

“Everybody who stands to profit from the biggest, most corrupt deal this lake has ever seen.”

The car bounced in a rut and she made a painful grunt. Marco slowed and found a spot where he could pull off the road. He backed in between some pines and stopped.

“What are you doing?” Sydney asked.

“We’ll wait a bit. I don’t want to be running around in this car while there’s still some twilight, not with a shooter out there. We need to get those wounds wrapped. You die on me with your blood and DNA all over my car…won’t look good.”

Sydney had no desire to hang around anywhere near the Cillo crowd. Her sense of good fortune at getting picked up by Marco took a bit of a hit. She trusted none of them. As far as she knew, they could well be the ones who sent the shooter.

“I’m not bleeding that much. Just get me across the lake. There’s a house there that isn’t occupied—”

“I will, just not yet,” he said. “In daylight, this car stands out like a Roman candle.” He glanced at the seat and the floor mat.

“Sorry I’m messing up your car. And your homecoming.”

“Yeah, well, it is what it is,” he said. “Let me get something to wrap those wounds.”

He popped the trunk, then got out. She saw him check the bullet holes on his way to the back. When he returned, he had a T-shirt and neat little stack of boxer shorts. At least they looked clean. In fact, new.

He opened her door and she reached out for them. “I can stick these to the wounds. That should contain any further bleed-out. I have this doctor friend in Tahoe City. It’ll be dark soon. And I’ll pay for cleaning and repairing your car.”

“Let me take a look at the wounds. See how bad they are. I can wrap a T-shirt around and use the shorts to put enough pressure—”

“Not necessary. I can just stuff them against the wounds. I don’t think they’re all that bad.”

His eyebrows arched. “Relax. I’m not operating. Just trying to see how bad you’re hit. I’ve had plenty of field first aid, and I’ve seen about every kind of wound there is.”

“My doctor friend—”

“Right now, I’m your field medic, so stop arguing. Scoot your legs out so I can reach you better.”

After she’d complied, he gently pulled her shirt up to look at the side wound. She peeked, and it looked nasty. At least a three-inch cut.

He said, “It may have nicked a rib. You’re lucky. You turned just a little and something vital would have taken the bullet.”

He put a folded pair of his shorts on the wound and told her to hold it against it. Then he pulled out a pocketknife and made a cut in the T-shirt so he could rip it to make a long strip. He wrapped it around her torso and reached around to tie it, their faces close, making her look off at the trees.

She mocked herself for reacting to this guy like she was some teenybopper, feeling her cheeks get hot and her pulse quicken, wondering if her breath was as foul as it tasted.

“No major terrible with that one,” he said, pulling back and checking his handiwork. “You’ll probably need stitches. Or some QuikClot would work. Let’s see the leg.”

No way.
“I don’t think that’s anything. I’ll just put something there and we can get out of here,” she said, feeling a lot more defensive about the location of that wound and the guy all over her, with her smelling from the sweat and working all morning with fish. The thing about him was his easy cockiness.

He paused and leveled dark-chocolate eyes at her. Not hostile so much as irritated. “Look, when somebody jumps into whatever swamp you’re in, pulls you out, and wants to make sure you don’t continue to bleed all over his new Shelby, maybe just let him tie up your wounds, all right? That too much to ask?”

“No, I guess not.”

“And get over being sensitive or whatever. Believe me, I’m only interested in saving my car, not in seeing if you’re put together different from every other female on this suffering planet. Okay?”

Fuck you,
she thought. “Yes, okay.”

“Unzip and I’ll help you pull the jeans down.”

For want of something better to come at him with, she said, “I figured you for Jockey briefs.”

“I don’t like confinement. Of any kind.”

She hated that he could get a smile out of her so easily. She blamed her ridiculous reaction and lack of willpower on being dehydrated and the loss of blood. He did have a good sense of humor and, no doubt, had a long, sad trail of broken hearts behind him.

Then he said, as if to mollify her, “Believe me, if getting close to your crotch excites me, I’ll have no choice but to shoot myself.”

She let out a sardonic chuckle.
You win,
she thought, then said, trying to be as nonchalant about it as he was, “Fine. I guess there’ll be no foreplay.”

“You’re in a Shelby. What more foreplay do you need?”

She smiled and shook her head.
I hate this guy,
she thought.
He’s way too smooth.
She focused a moment on the woods. The rustle of squirrels chasing each other. Tahoe, sub-alpine, had not escaped the heat wave scorching the West or her own personal heat wave from this guy examining her up close and personal.

She surrendered, pulled down the zipper, and tried to help with the pants, lifting her behind up off the seat as he tugged. Once her jeans were down around her ankles, he gently pulled her knees apart to see the wound on her inner thigh. It wasn’t as big as the one on her left side, but it still stung.

Even more than she hated that she smelled, was being all sweaty and bloody. At least she had on nice underwear. The thought made her eyes roll, and she shook her head at how ridiculous this was.

“What’s short, fat boy shooting?” he asked, showing no interest in her discomforts, not sensing her embarrassment.

“A Glock fitted with a suppressor. And a TLR light.”

He pressed against the wound with his boxer shorts. “You need to get these wounds cleaned up and professionally wrapped, but for now, this’ll have to—” He stopped as a car came down the road from his uncle’s place. It came fast. A Lexus. They watched it shoot past. The driver never looked in their direction. From what she could see, it wasn’t his uncle.

She sat there, legs apart, smelling terrible, looking like shit, blood everywhere, this guy hovering over her, both of them staring out at the road. She hated feeling helpless, and now she was starting to think that at any moment, she could fall unconscious from lack of fluids and blood.

“I’m uncomfortable,” she said. “Really uncomfortable.”

“Let’s get you wrapped and out of here.”

He folded the blue boxers up against the cut, then wrapped another T-shirt strip around her leg and tied it snug. “That’ll hold you.”

He helped get her pants back up and zipped, then moved back and said, “This doc in Tahoe City somebody you can trust?”

“Yes. First I want to go to this house on the lake. It’s really secluded, and I know the people who own it. I check on the place from time to time when they’re gone. Get me there. It’s a mile south of Tahoe City, where he lives. We can switch out vehicles there if you want.”

He nodded. His expression of dark humor gave way to edginess now as he looked carefully down the road both ways before he closed her door, walked around to the driver’s side, and got in. He started the engine, and that deep, powerful rumble was unlike anything she’d been riding lately.

“Is there a sweeter sound than that?” he said.

“It’s nice.”

You were really going to steal my car?”

“Just borrow it.”

“You’re looking a little pale. Sit back and relax.”

“Don’t go toward Incline,” she said. “You’ve been away a long time. There’s a new parkway around the main drag.”

“Wouldn’t Incline be faster?”

“It might be better if you go around South Lake and up the 89. Most of my problems emanate from Incline Village.”

She thought, I’m a wreck, somebody’s trying to kill me, and this guy’s uncle is embedded with Tahoe’s underworld. Could it get any better?

If she wasn’t in so much pain at the moment, she would have laughed at the insanity of it all.

***

Marco Cruz had to get rid of this woman and her problems, but he was stuck with her right now. He couldn’t just leave her out there knowing somebody wanted her dead. And him. And now he was getting interested in whatever the real issue was, given how his uncle had reacted.

“Answer me one question,” he said as he curled down to the main road at Zephyr Cove and headed toward the State Line casinos. He was surprised at the amount of traffic. “Is whatever you’re involved in something that’s more than a personal vendetta or a revenge situation?”

“It’s all of the above. Just drop me off and your uncle will explain the situation. I don’t have the energy right now.”

“You can’t leave me in the dark,” he said. “You’re going to have to talk to me at some point.”

“Not right now. I don’t have the energy.”

He nodded. The dehydration and loss of blood were taking her down. He had to get over to that house she wanted to go to and get some fluids in her. Then he had to find out what this was all about.

But he also had an urge to get her situated and just get on out of here. Head for San Diego or Phoenix. Tahoe wasn’t looking so good any more.

6

When they were halfway between Zephyr Cove and the State Line casinos, Marco’s cell rang. He looked at it, but didn’t answer.

“Your uncle?” Sydney asked.

Marco nodded. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not thinking you should hang around Tahoe. After this doc friend of yours fixes you up, and you still don’t want police involvement, is there a safe place for you to hide out until you fully recover? You have friends or relatives somewhere away from Tahoe where you can recuperate?”

“I’ll figure it out. Once you drop me off, you’re home free. Not your problem.” She figured he was worried about what it might mean for him. “As long as you don’t know where I went, or who I contacted, you can get away from this. Just get me across the lake.”

“No problem. Unless, that is, somebody spots the car. I tried to get a piece from my uncle, but he wouldn’t give me one. That makes me unhappy.”

She wondered what his real reason for coming to Tahoe was and what he’d actually done in Mexico. There was a lot about Marco Cruz she was curious about.

Feeling like shit, thinking being hit by a couple of bullets—even only ricochets—wasn’t a good thing, she looked over at this guy who’d saved her and said, with both sincerity and a bit of sarcasm, “Well, whatever else happens…on this day, you’re my hero.”

He glanced askance at her, eyes tight, and said, “Everybody’s a hero on a good day, but nobody’s a hero every day. Don’t get used to it.”