Cool Heat Read online

  Dear Reader,

  For a writer, some projects are just a lot more fun than others. This was one of those stories where the characters on both sides were so colorful and engaging for me that I may have to see them again in some future project.

  Richter

  For Aaron, Richard and Jocelyn and those great trips to Lake Tahoe.

  1

  A door? Or did something fall?

  Alone that Sunday afternoon in the closed fish hatchery, Sydney Jesup, holding a tiny cutthroat fingerling trout in one gloved hand, a syringe in the other, paused when she heard a noise that might have been a door in the other building. She ignored the hum of generators, focusing only on the noise.

  Finally, deciding it was her overwrought imagination, Sydney just shook her head and laughed at herself. All the damn stress had built to the point where she found herself hearing boogie men and talking to fish. She wiped sweat off her forehead with her arm. It was a lot cooler in the cavernous hatchery than out in the boiling sun, but she had on rubber boots and jeans, and that didn’t help.

  But then something made her stop again to listen.

  Her weapon, a snub Colt—her backup piece when she was with the sheriff’s department and, later, chief investigator for the DA in South Lake—was in her shoulder bag fifty feet away in the clean room. She suddenly felt naked.

  C’mon, ease down. Damn. It’s probably Dave.

  I’m getting paranoid, she thought. The fish hatchery in Lahonton, managed by her cousin, was the safest place for her anywhere around Lake Tahoe these days, she figured, mostly because it was government property.

  She went back to work, shaking off the lingering feeling of caution. What she needed to do was concentrate on the problem at hand. They were dealing with an outbreak of Ich and Furunculosis that had nearly destroyed the cutthroat trout. They’d been using UV disinfection after having had to euthanize something like a quarter-million production fish that had been targeted for release by the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. Only about two hundred thousand were saved and released into Walker Lake.

  “You think you have it bad…” she said as she inserted a syringe with red dye into the fins of the tiny fingerling. She held the tiny body firmly yet carefully between the fingers of her left gloved hand, while the flow of negative thoughts swirled angrily in her mind about the disastrous investigation and the deaths of her two witnesses.

  She struggled to stay focused on this welcomed temporary job. Her cousin, and about everyone else she knew, had advised her in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of the area, take a long vacation. Move. Let it go. And she knew they were right. She couldn’t win, but she couldn’t let go, either. I’m nuts, she thought. Maybe I’m getting OCD. Or is it obsessive stupidity disorder. She chuckled to herself.

  Lost in bleak thoughts, it took a moment to realize that she was definitely hearing something. The clean-room door opened. She was no longer alone in the “wet” building with the fish tanks.

  “Dave, that you?” she called out, knowing even as she spoke that she shouldn’t have, not without knowing for certain who it was. Christ, I’m getting rusty.

  A man stood in the doorway.

  “The hatchery is closed to the public,” she said. “And this building is in quarantine.”

  He stepped forward from the clean room, a dark cutout beneath the dull ceiling lights of the cavernous interior of the hatchery’s main floor.

  Ah, shit.

  She saw the gun. This was no tourist. The short, heavyset guy moved gingerly and awkwardly down the center aisle, his gun hand shaking a bit, like he was nervous or even a little drunk.

  Thorp sent a drunk to get me on government property?

  He was in enough light now that Sydney could see the weapon he carried was most likely a Glock fitted with a suppressor as long as the weapon’s barrel. Extending from the trigger housing like a goiter was a TLR-l light, an utterly useless bit of additional apparatus.

  He was now about twenty feet away. A real pro would never have come down the center aisle. Or, for that matter, come in from the clean room. The side door would have been the preferred entrance. He was giving her the fish tanks for cover and the side door for an escape attempt.

  Unless he had a partner waiting out there.

  The intruder stopped. “The man says hello,” he said as his other hand came up to steady the one with the weapon, and then he turned, as if mimicking a TV-show detective.

  Sydney ducked and bolted between the tanks for the side door, holding the fish bucket up by her head as a shield. The gunman fired multiple times, the crack crack crack amplified in the metal building like cannon blasts.

  Bullets ricocheted off fish tanks, generators, the walls. She felt a sharp sting on one side and as she crossed the side aisle, another sting on the inside of her leg.

  Sydney dropped the bucket as she slammed out the side door, hoping like hell the shooter was alone, that she wasn’t going to run into his backup as she emerged into the brutally harsh sunlight. More bullets clanged the door behind her as she sprinted between the outside mesh-enclosed fish reservoirs, glancing left and right and looking for a potential ambusher.

  In her visual search, she spotted a black Ford pickup truck parked over by the visitor’s kiosk near the front entrance, where no vehicle was supposed to be. She believed her wounds were superficial, probably just grazes. Otherwise, she figured she wouldn’t be able to sprint all out. She ran in the one-hundred-ten-degree heat under a blazing sun toward the open field.

  The hatchery was isolated between the rise of the Sierras, a quarter-mile west, and a steep hill leading up to the highway on the other side. She headed toward the old farm buildings a hundred fifty yards north of the hatchery.

  Sydney was in great physical condition, but the rubber goulashes were like dead weights on her feet, and she had to get them off. When she glanced back, she saw the shooter getting into the pickup. At the barn, she paused to get her breath and looked back to see the bastard driving across the field. She ran to the street, stopping there just long enough to yank off the goulashes, her socks coming with them.

  Glancing back, she saw the pickup having some trouble getting through a rough patch, slowed now to a crawl for a brief moment before lunging forward. With no time to put the socks on, Sydney took off running again, the sizzling tarmac quickly scorching the bottoms of her feet. She headed for the closest housing development, cursing herself again for not having her weapon on her.

  You really didn’t think they’d come after you there? You idiot! Damn, girl!

  The only thing she did have was her cell phone. But, given that the local sheriff was best friends with her worst enemy, she had no intention of calling law enforcement.

  She heard the truck gunning up the bank by the barn a hundred yards behind her. Her right leg was starting to give out from the stress of the wound and the intense heat, reducing her run to a limp as her left side wound also flared. And, adding insult to injury, the boiling tarmac was burning her bare feet. Ahead, the housing development looked abandoned.

  Where the hell are you people? Church or the goddamn mall?

  That’s when she heard the deep-throated purr of a big engine. She turned and saw a red Mustang convertible swing onto the road coming from the highway, heading her way about two or three times the legal speed.

  The backup?

  She figured, given his speed and her location, she had nowhere to go.

  I’m dead. You had to leave your fucking weapon in the clean room. Get yourself killed. Jesus!

  Caught in the middle of the street, Sydney had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. She turned toward the onrushing car. Definitely a Mustang, but when it barreled closer, she recognized the macho front grill. A Shelby, no less. A beautiful death m
achine.

  That bastard Thorp got me like he said he would.

  She faced the onrushing Mustang. Her only regret at the moment was that she didn’t have any way to fight back.

  The Mustang’s engine backed down into a lower gear, giving off a powerful guttural grumble. The guy in it looked Mexican—black curly hair, music blasting on his radio—for him, a fun day for an easy kill. Would he shoot her or run her over? She decided he’d shoot her to avoid damaging his beautiful machine.

  Sydney Jesup faced death with the same attitude she’d faced a lot of things in her life lately: she gave the finger to the Mexican killer in the bright red Shelby Mustang convertible and prepared for a bad end…

  Fuck you and the horse you’re riding in on.

  2

  What the hell do we have here?

  Marco Cruz pondered the question as New Amsterdam’s “Turn Out the Lights” boomed on his radio. The lady on this hot Sunday afternoon stood in the middle of the street in a bloody, sweaty T-shirt, bloody jeans, no shoes, no socks, bare feet on boiling hot macadam, flipping him the bird as his music blasted. He expected, when he got close enough to see, she’d be some haggy, worn-out drug addict on her last legs.

  He turned off the radio.

  This is my welcome-home committee? I didn’t do it, whatever it is.

  He eased down the Shelby’s big 660 engine into first gear. The smart voice in his head, the one that’s supposed to protect a person, told him to wave hey, have a nice day, and get the hell out of there. But that was a voice he never did listen to. Coming to the rescue of some distressed female was such a quaint, old-fashioned notion, but instincts are what they are.

  It had been, until now, such a great ride coming back to Tahoe after what he’d been through. He had been just one more former border-patrol agent who’d spent two miserable years in a Mexican prison and was now, after services rendered to Uncle Sam, “free and sanitized,” as the Homeland agent told him on their last meeting.

  “Free, free at last,” he’d yelled more than once as he hit speeds equal to the one-hundred-ten-degree temperature across the desert up 395, laughing and singing, his curly black hair popping and dancing in the wind, his life back on track and big things ahead. He’d done his time in hell, now he wanted a little taste of heaven and, to him, Tahoe was heaven.

  Don’t stop, you fool.

  He downshifted the magnificent beast to a crawl and drifted up to the woman.

  He leaned toward her and said, “You okay?” About as pathetic a question as he could muster.

  She looked shocked, as if he wasn’t what she’d expected. Her offending hand dropped to her side, the angry finger holstered.

  He saw her turn, as if whatever was chasing her might be catching up. He turned and, indeed, there was a pickup heading toward them a quarter-mile back. Without an invite, the lady opened the passenger door, slid in all bloody, sweaty, and—now up close, he realized—she reeked of a rank, fishy smell.

  “Get the hell out of here fast!” she commanded. “That moron is aiming to kill me and he’ll kill you as well.”

  As if to amplify the truth, the guy in the pickup was now leaning out the window and started pumping lead in their direction, the Shelby taking at least two pings.

  Marco jumped on the gas and the rocket of an engine threw them back in their seats as it shot forward. He weaved violently to throw off the shooter and put some fast distance between them, then made a hard turn at the intersection and headed south.

  “You coming from church?” he asked her.

  In spite of her situation and condition, she actually emitted a dry chuckle. “No. Actually, I was injecting cutthroat trout.”

  “The hatchery?”

  “Yeah.”

  In an instant, he liked this woman’s hardcore attitude. “I take it the blood is from gunshot wounds?”

  “Yes.”

  “You take any deep penetration?”

  “Not lately. These are superficial.”

  Didn’t look all that superficial to him. He figured she was no regular civilian.

  He shot down the road shifting gears and hitting sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety.

  Glancing at her, he saw her looking back at their pursuer but saw no panic, no terrible fear on her face. Good-looking woman with a street-hard disposition. Her reddish hair snapped like flames in the hot wind.

  “You want the nearest hospital, once we lose this guy?”

  “No.”

  “Sheriff’s station?”

  A more definitive, “No!”

  He swore softly to himself, then shook his head. He had a real live one here. He turned up the 207 toward Daggett Pass and headed for his uncle’s place high above Lake Tahoe.

  “That an ex who shot up you and my car?”

  “No. I don’t date short, fat guys,” she said. “He can’t shoot worth a shit. I think he’s high or drunk. Maybe he’ll drive off the road and kill himself.”

  On the border, the men he’d worked with before all his troubles called good-looking, kick-ass female agents cool heat. He figured he had one sitting next to him and, at this stage of his life, getting caught up in some chick’s mess was the last thing he needed.

  Why couldn’t she at least be ugly, toothless, and fat?

  He wondered if, in some past life, he’d really pissed off the gods.

  3

  Sydney Jesup struggled to regroup. Moments ago, she’d been facing death and now found herself sitting in a very fast Shelby convertible driven by a wild-haired guy blowing through the Sierras.

  “Thanks for picking me up,” she said.

  “My pleasure. You don’t like hospitals or cops, and somebody wants you dead. I can’t wait to hear what’s going on.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  Sydney Jesup figured her good fortune was not merely being picked up by this guy, rather than being run over or shot by him. It was a certainly a bonus that he had a very fast car and knew how to drive—all nice qualities, for sure—but she suspected he was more than just a guy on a nice Sunday drive. She watched him as he kept tracking their pursuer in the car’s mirrors without missing a beat on the squirrely road, yet could carry on conversation. He’s used to bad situations, she thought. It didn’t hurt he was nice looking in a rugged, unfinished sort of way.

  How lucky can a should-be-dead girl get?

  “You don’t date short, fat guys?”

  “No.”

  He grinned with a head shake. “Maybe that’s why he wants to kill you.”

  “Maybe. Fortunately, he was a lousy shot.”

  “Good enough to get my car. And you look like he wasn’t totally off the mark with you.”

  “You shoot a whole clip at thirty feet and you don’t get a kill, you’re in the wrong profession.”

  “You have any idea who he is?”

  “No. I have plenty of enemies. I’d have to check my Rolodex.”

  Sydney tried to look behind them, holding her side, but it hurt too much and she turned back to using the side mirror…no sign of their pursuer.

  “You don’t by any chance have a gun?” she asked.

  “No.” He gave her a raised-eyebrow glance. “Not at the moment. Don’t worry—he won’t catch up. Who are you that somebody is trying so hard to take you out? I kinda need to know that while were together, even if it’s a short time. He knows my car. Red Shelby convertibles aren’t all that common.”

  “Slow down a little,” she said. “Getting stopped by a sheriff or CHP won’t be a good scenario, and this area is something of a speed trap.”

  “You have a background in law, the military, or crime?” he asked as he backed off the accelerator.

  “Sheriff and DA’s office in South Lake,” she said. “Past tense. You from around the Tahoe area?”

  “Reno. I have relatives up here. I haven’t been back in about seven years or so.”

  “Military?”

  “That and border, but now I’m a free multimillionaire in the
making.”

  “Unemployed.”

  “Temporarily,” he said. “Actually, I was on my way”—he took a sharp turn with race-car finesse—”to a job interview. You’re an unexpected diversion.”

  “Sorry ‘bout that. It’s a risk when you pick up random chicks on the road.”

  “I’ll try and remember that.”

  They sailed up through the curves that led to the top of the mountain.

  “I’m Marco Cruz,” he said, breaking the silence.

  “Sydney Jesup. Thanks again. Listen, I know a place on the other side of the lake where you can drop me.”

  “I’ll make a stop first,” he said. “I have a safe place where you can get your wounds cleaned and secured.”

  “I really need to get across the lake. I have a doc friend who’ll deal with them.”

  “Sorry,” he continued, “but I’m not running around the lake in daylight in this car with a shooter tracking me. Maybe he’s in contact with friends who are waiting on the lake side.”

  She thought of arguing, but he was right to worry about that. If the source of the botched hit was coming from Incline Village, there could be five guys out there looking for them. This guy had all the qualities of the macho alpha-male types she usually bumped heads with, but in this case it was exactly what she needed.

  Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, as her father liked to say. She put her head back. She knew Thorp wanted her dead, but he was too smart to pull a dumb stunt like this. She had the feeling she knew who the shooter was but just couldn’t place him.

  “You have water? I’m really thirsty.”

  “No. I finished the bottle I had. I’ll get more in a minute. When I get to my uncle’s, we’ll get you rehydrated. Runnin’ around in that dry heat will take down anything short of a two-hump camel.”

  Just over Daggett Pass, he turned off on a side road, then again on another feeder dirt road back along the mountain. He slowed to a crawl and put the top up.

  “Where is this place?” she asked, not feeling very comfortable getting bumped around on a dirt road, Mustangs not being off-road vehicles.