Read Online Cool Heat by Richter Watkins - Free Book Online

struggling, in a dilemma. “Look, you can walk, but I need to know where I am in all this. Did Cillo really have no idea who the shooter was?”
    “It seems to me you have something in mind or you wouldn’t be here. We need to be straight with each other.”
    “Two-way street.”
    Marco nodded and said, “Tell me again why you’re still hanging around in harm’s way?”
    “I already told you.”
    “Not really,” Marco said. “You have some kind of plan. You aren’t that naive, idealistic girl in Mexico. You’re a hard-nosed investigator. You’re shot up and still you’re in a boat on the lake with somebody out there looking to finish the job. What’s going on? What aren’t you telling me?”
    She looked off for a moment, then turned back to Marco. Time to come clean if she expected him to trust her at all. “You’re right. I have something in mind.”
    “It involve me now?”
    “I don’t know yet and, right now, neither do you.”
    “Try me. Because this is going to deteriorate fast. I’m not a happy puppy.”
    Sydney took a deep breath and let it out. “Thorp and his lawyer, Richard Rouse, live next to each other on the waterfront at Incline Village. The lawyer—Tricky Dick is how he’s better known—is rumored to be the power behind the throne. My witness, Karen Orland, the girl who drowned, she was in the party circuit for a time and one of his favorites. She knew a lot. All about the sex and drugs, the videotapes of important people having fun, the garbage. But those Incline estates are over the border on the Nevada side of the lake. I worked for the DA in South Lake, in California, and couldn’t get any cooperation from Nevada where those guys were concerned.”
    “Get to where you are now, what you think you can do about this.”
    “Rouse has this office that’s built to withstand anything short of an atomic bomb. Karen thought the way they manipulated people—got support for what they were doing—was because of the dirt Tricky Dick has on just about everybody who matters. And that he keeps it in that office in a safe. Since we could never get any Nevada authority interested, I wanted to get associates on the California side. Those parties that Thorp has are drug and sex festivals, but nobody’s ever attempted to bust one of them. In fact, the local police and sheriff’s departments on both sides of the lake provide much of the security.”
    “Sounds a little like Mexico. A place I left and am in no hurry to go back to. I see where you’re headed, and I’m not interested.”
    “I know.” She paused a moment, then said, “But while we’re being open, I’m curious about what you did in Mexico that got your records sanitized.”
    “It won’t matter.”
    “Satisfy my curiosity.”
    “I had a partner who got ambushed and killed. I went after the guys who did it. End of story.”
    “I hardly think that’s the end of the story. I didn’t ask about that. I asked about how you managed to get out of prison and then home free with a new lease on life.”
    “It’s the end as far as I’m willing to talk about it. Look, I have a very good idea where you’re headed, and there’s no way in hell I’m getting into your crusade against these guys, justified as it may be. You’re way over your head. Not happening. Here’s where I am with all of this: I picked you up; the guy who shot you came after not just you, but me.”
    “Shot your Shelby,” she added, with a touch of sarcasm.
    “That’s right. So I’m real unhappy about that. I’m not going to be happy until I settle it with him. I’m in this for that and that alone. And it doesn’t sound like it’s connected to your vendetta against Thorp. It sounds like some lone guy you pissed off. You accept where I’m at, we can work together. If not, we need to part ways.”
    “What if he didn’t act on his own? What if he’s part of a bigger thing, whether it’s Thorp or someone else?”
    She steered toward the Shaw house