The Leah Ryan Thrillers Box Set: Three Chiller Thrillers (Repo Chick Blues #1, Finding Chloe #2, Dirty Business #3) (Leah Ryan Thrillers Box Set, Books 1-3)

by Tracy Sharp

  “Hey, no problem.” Jack glanced at me. “You know my friend Leah, right?”

  Skid gave me a single nod. “We’ve met.”

  Jack kept his face neutral. “We’re both trying to find out what happened to Tyler. She’s good people.”

  Skid lit a cigarette. “It’s cool.”

  The other kid, a wiry red-haired ragamuffin didn’t look at us much, keeping his gaze on the street, but he was listening to every word we said.

  I found myself being an observer. Jack had already gained Skid’s trust, and I was happy just listening.

  “Skid, did you notice any vehicles that maybe didn’t pick anyone up, so they wouldn’t always be recorded on the list, but did a lot of cruising, watching?”

  Skid nodded quickly. “Yeah. There was one.” He scratched around the collar of his T-shirt as he thought about it, and I could see a glimpse of gold beneath the shirt. I wondered if it was a gift from a John. “I mean, there are always the ones who are getting up the nerve, you know? But there was one that stood out. A red Jag. Looked new, but couldn’t tell you the year exactly. It was weird because there was a chick in there with the guy. That hasn’t happened since I’ve been working this street.”

  “Holy shit,” I breathed. The skin of my arms tingled with goose bumps.

  Jack’s gaze fell on me. “What?”

  “Who else have you seen lately that drives a red Jag?”

  I could see it dawn on him. “Shit. The list is in the Jeep. I’ll go get it.”

  “You don’t have to, man.” Skid smiled. “I know that Jag ain’t on the list. They never picked anyone up. Just looked.”

  My heart sank.

  Jack looked away. “Damn.”

  Skid chuckled when he saw the disappointment on my face. “But it’s your lucky day, ‘cuz it wasn’t a plate number you’d forget.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “Big Dick.”

  “You got it, chicky. And the guy looked like one, too.”

  Jack’s green eyes glinted in the sunlight as he looked at me. “Son of a bitch.”

  Suddenly I felt cold. My cell rang, but it sounded far away.

  Skid smiled at me. “You’re ringing.”

  I felt like I was moving in slow motion as I found my cell in my back pocket. I put the phone to my ear but didn’t say anything, still reeling from the new information.

  “Leah.” The voice was high pitched with panic. “They’ve got her.”

  I slammed back into reality. “What? Who is this?”

  “It’s Mitch. They’ve got Lilly.”

  * * *

  Jack boiled water for tea as Mitch told us what had happened. We sat at my kitchen table, and I was glad for the table surface to rest my arms on. My entire body felt rubbery with shock.

  Mitch was in a bad state. He sat, elbows on the table and head in his hands as he spoke, his voice cracking. “Marcy called me this morning, screaming. She’d left Lilly in the car only for a minute while they got the rest of their bags for the trip. When they went back to the car, she was gone.”

  “They were watching, waiting for their moment to pounce.” Jack placed a cup of tea in front of me, then one in front of Mitch. “Filthy bastards.”

  “There was a note on the empty car seat. It said that we’re being watched closely, and that if the cops were called, we’d never see Lilly again.” Fresh tears dripped onto the table and Mitch covered his face.

  Jack placed a hand on his shoulder. “Go easy, buddy. Go easy. We’ll get her back. You have to stay calm.”

  Mitch nodded and took a deep breath. “You’re right. Breaking down and losing it isn’t going to help Lilly.”

  I could understand Mitch breaking down. I was barely containing my own panic and I didn’t know Lilly all that well. I shuddered and wrapped my arms around myself. “Did the note say anything else?”

  “Tell your ex to keep his bitch on a leash, and we’ll give your daughter back to you. That’s what it said.” He gave me a look that told me that he held me responsible for Lilly’s kidnapping.

  That look went right through me. But I couldn’t blame him. He was right. “Mitch, I’m so sorry.”

  “I know.” He left out the other thought, the one that said he didn’t give a damned how sorry I was. “So we can’t call the cops.”

  “Well, you could call them, but Kicks and I have our own way of doing things.” Jack winked.

  “Yeah, and it’s worked so well up until now,” I muttered.

  Jack let out a long breath. “Okay. This is the deal. They are watching, so I wouldn’t chance it. These people are serious.”

  “So what do we do?” Mitch’s voice was hoarse, his eyes red-rimmed.

  “We take matters into our own hands. We get smart. We get serious.” Jack sat down across from Mitch and looked him in the eye. “We make them wish they never messed with us.”

  I thought of Lilly laughing, of her singsong voice, of her wide, warm eyes, and I got angry. A white-hot fury, burning like a fireball in my belly.

  I nodded, looking at the table. “We take Lilly back. Then we give them what they’ve earned.”

  I had a hunch about who had taken Lilly, where the threat was coming from. I’d been threatened all along, throughout my search for Chloe. The first warning had come in the form of a man in a pinstriped suit after I’d begun questioning people at Chloe’s former places of work. After questioning Velvet at Shanahan’s Gentleman’s Club, I find her head in a box at my door, her hands stuffed into her mouth. A clear message that she’d been killed for talking to me. When I hadn’t given up, the mystery man in the pick-up started menacing me. Soon after that, he tried to kill me.

  Then Chloe’s ripped and bloodied clothes were found outside of Shanahan’s club. I didn’t know if it had been just a stupid oversight on the part of Shanahan, if he had in fact had Chloe killed, or had killed her himself, or if somebody was trying to frame him for her murder. But whatever the truth was, it was obvious that Shanahan was linked to what was going on. Somebody didn’t want me finding out what had happened to Chloe. Shanahan had dated her. Where there’s smoke, there usually is fire.

  Whoever was watching would most likely assume that Mitch had come over to my place to tell me to back off. We sent him to work and told him to go about his daily business as he usually did to make it look like he was complying with the kidnapper’s wishes. Mitch didn’t say much, but left in a kind of slightly disoriented haze. It was the best that he could do. He wouldn’t be okay again until after his daughter was home.

  Next, I called Callahan. I needed a vehicle the kidnappers didn’t know. He wasn’t thrilled with me dragging him back into my shit, but he didn’t turn me down. I think deep down inside, he was happy to be helping, but would never admit that.

  “Where and when do we make the switch?” Cal’s voice sounded tinny. I was using a payphone to be safe.

  “Ah, this is the really good part, an idea hatched by the brilliant Jack.”

  Jack stood beside me and took a bow.

  “Enlighten me,” Callahan said.

  “This week is Americade, the motorcycle show in Lake George. That’s where we’ll make the switch. It’ll be jam-packed with bikers, many with whom Jack is acquainted.”

  Cal agreed that the plan was a pretty good one. He said he’d just repossessed a black Freelander. Thanks to somebody who had spent above their means and couldn’t or wouldn’t make the payments, it was at our disposal. He’d tie a blue ribbon around the antenna. I made him promise to lay low and disappear as soon as he saw us there.

  When I hung up, Jack was grinning.

  “What are you grinning at?”

  “I was just thinking that it’s a good thing Cal dumped you, because these assholes don’t know him.”

  I snickered. “You jerk.” But then it hit me. “Shit. He did come to the house once, and to the hospital.”

  “Yeah but he hasn’t been around since. I doubt they’d waste time watching him when you haven’t eve
n spoken to him on the phone.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right.”

  * * *

  We drove to Jack’s and traded the Jeep for a sleek, electric blue chopper. Jesse’s design. My brother has serious talent in designing bikes. I climbed on the back of it and we headed out to Lake George. It was hard to see if anyone was tailing us to Americade. There were so many cars and motorcycles going that way, it would’ve been next to impossible to spot a tail. We just had to assume the tail was there.

  Being the owner of a bike shop, Jack had made several friends with people in various sectors of the motorcycle culture. Some were good to have as friends, others were dangerous to know, but it was his business, and it was sure coming in handy on this day. We needed some back up in place in case things got ugly.

  But no matter how ugly it got, Jack and I were going to find Lilly and bring her home safely. Nothing was going to get in the way. Nothing except maybe death. But we hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  As expected, the place was packed. We rode through at a leisurely pace, waving and stopping to talk to people. Jack saw a few of his friends right away. The set-up worked beautifully. Leather-clad bodies formed a sort of buzzing jumble of confusion around us. A fight began, shouting and punches being thrown, and soon it became small riot.

  Jack and I took advantage of the beautiful organized chaos that had been created for us. We bent low and moved like the wind through the frenzied tangle of people who made a narrow, barely noticeable path through the growing cluster. It was amazing. I knew there were a lot of people in on it, because there wouldn’t be problem trying to keep an enemy away from a friend with this group. But I wondered how many people who were engaged in the orchestrated riot hadn’t known about it beforehand, and had just jumped in for the fun of it.

  “Jesus.” I was breathless as we made our way to the parking lot. Though the Freelander was hidden nicely amidst other cars, we picked it out easily by the light blue ribbon tied to the antenna, its long ends whipping around in the breeze.

  Cal was stationed somewhere in the crowd, away from eyes that might peg him as someone who’d helped us and who needed to be gotten rid of. He’d take the bike back to the repot depot and we’d pick it up when it was all over.

  I scanned the area, making sure nobody was paying much attention to us. “I hope no one gets arrested back there because of us.”

  Jack chuckled as we climbed into the S.U.V. “Don’t worry about that, Kicks. Contrary to popular belief, lots of these guys have allies in the police department.” He found the key under the seat and started the truck. “If anyone gets hauled off to jail, it’ll be the assholes who didn’t know it was a set-up and are throwing punches just so they aren’t left out of the fun. They deserve to go to the clink.”

  We got onto the highway and merged into the midday flow of traffic, both of us glancing into all the mirrors to make sure we weren’t being followed. But it was hard to tell with so many cars going in the same direction.

  After pulling my hair into a ponytail I put on a denim baseball cap, pulling the ponytail through the hole at the back of the cap. Jack pulled on a cap, too. We were both wearing sunglasses.

  I pulled the visor down and flipped the cover off the built-in mirror. “Cripes. We’re not too conspicuous.”

  “We do the best we can with what we’ve got. You wanna cut and dye your hair?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then?”

  I took a deep breath. My nerves were jangling. “Jesus, Jack, I wish I smoked or something. I need something to do with my hands.”

  “Aw, and you didn’t bring your knitting with you.”

  “Cute.”

  We got to Shanahan’s in about twenty-five minutes, having shaved off at least fifteen thanks to Jack’s driving. We parked across the street in the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant. The place did an all-you-can-eat buffet for lunch and dinner, and we were approaching the dinner hour, so the place was busy. We sat back and watched, hoping we were well enough hidden in the bunch of cars around us. It was the second time in an hour we’d employed the “hide in plain sight” philosophy. It seemed to work well for us.

  We didn’t know what we were looking for, but we were fairly certain Shanahan had a hand in Lilly’s kidnapping. He’d dated Chloe, and now she’d vanished and was presumed dead. It seemed he had something to hide. We thought the mystery man in the pick-up was probably employed by Shanahan.

  And within a half-hour we found out we were right.

  Shanahan’s Mercedes pulled up in front of his club. His driver stepped out and opened Shanahan’s door.

  “Well, would you look at that.” Jack leaned forward, arms resting on the steering wheel.

  I was looking. A smile spread over my face.

  The driver was wearing a patch over his eye.

  “Hello, One-Eye,” I said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Shanahan and One-Eye made a quick stop, going into the club for just a moment. When they came back out, One-Eye opened the back door of the Mercedes for Shanahan, who climbed in and leaned against the seat. One-eye opened the trunk of the Mercedes and pulled out a small suitcase. The kind that somebody would use for a short trip, perhaps just for a few days. He placed the bag in Shanahan’s lap. Shanahan opened the bag and spent a few moments rummaging around until he found what he was looking for. A hard cover book. I was impressed. He then closed the bag and zipped it up, handing it back to One-Eye, who waited with baited breath for the opportunity to put the bag into the trunk for him.

  There wasn’t any conversation between the two. It was strange, like they didn’t need to talk. There was a relaxed and easy way about their relationship. It was clear that One-Eye had been in Shanahan’s employ for a long time. He knew the routine.

  Jack read my mind. “You think he shakes Shanahan’s pecker for him after he pees, too?”

  “Without a doubt. Murder, kidnapping, there’s just no end to the lengths that man would go to please his boss.”

  “Now that’s a good employee.”

  “Yeah, and they say it’s hard to find good help these days.”

  “Maybe Shanahan got the last good one. The bastard.”

  We were back into our familiar, tension breaking banter. A routine we’d gotten into many years ago. When we knew we were going headfirst into some real shit, we got funny.

  We followed the Mercedes down the road and onto the entrance heading north to Montreal.

  “Shit. This could be a long trip,” Jack said. “You got your birth certificate with you?”

  “Uh huh. You?”

  “Never leave home without it. You never know when you’ll be following an Irish gangster over the border into Canada.”

  “Assuming that’s where they’re headed.”

  “We’ll find out.”

  “Doesn’t Canada require a passport?”

  “We’ll find that out, too.”

  It turned out Canada didn’t require a passport. We’d stayed several cars behind the Mercedes, stopping once for gas and food when the Mercedes stopped at a rest stop off the highway. There were several fast food joints to choose from, and we went through a drive-thru far enough away from the fast food place that Shanahan and One-Eye had gone into. Unlike most rest stops, this wasn’t an all in one place where all the food joints were under one roof. We’d lucked out that way. I got out for a pee break, and then we settled in and ate our food in the S.U.V, watching for Shanahan and One-Eye to return.

  Surveillance is never an exciting pastime. We were happy to get back on the road after waiting for twenty minutes for Shanahan and One-Eye to get back into the Mercedes and onto the highway. We waited five minutes before following them back out. So far tailing them had been hitch-free. They seemed oblivious to our presence, and we crossed over the border easily with few questions asked. We showed the customs officer our birth certificates, told her we were entering Canada on a pleasure weekend, and over the border we went.

  We fo
llowed the Mercedes for another hour, thankful for the darkness and the still heavy traffic. Montreal is a happening place. There’s an electric kind of night life there, with clubs every where, so we had no trouble hiding amongst all the other cars.

  But the further we drove, the more the traffic thinned, until there were only a few cars ahead of us. With every car that turned off onto another road, we fell further back, until there was only one car between the Mercedes and us. I chewed the nail of my little finger, hoping to hell they didn’t spot us. By now we were so far behind them it would be possible for us to lose them.

  We were on a long, straight country road. Cornfields were barely noticeable against the indigo sky. I hoped that Shanahan and his driver were used to cars being behind them on this road, and that they were too tired to really notice. There was nobody around to see them if they stopped the Mercedes, stepped out, and shot us through the windshield. Of course Shanahan would probably stay in the car while his driver blew our heads off.

  We came to a small intersection, marking the entrance into a tiny town.

  Jack frowned. “I didn’t see a sign for this town coming up, did you?”

  “No. Weird.”

  “We’re in the outskirts of Montreal, somewhere. I guess Shanahan must have a nice country house here where nobody ever bothers him.”

  “How nice for him.”

  We passed a bed and breakfast, a liquor store, a gas station, a convenience store and a motel that boasted “color TV”. There were various fast food joints and a chain hotel. The Mercedes continued on into what looked like a quaint, sleepy little street on which a row of country houses sat. Under the streetlights I could see hints of pastel colors, light mint green, pink and robin’s egg blue. We stopped at the gas station, knowing it wouldn’t be hard for us to find the Mercedes parked in this small town. We kept our distance, but watched as the Mercedes turned onto a side street and into the driveway of a large, white Greek revival house.

  “Bingo.” Jack pulled over on the side of the road and watched as One-Eye stepped out of the Mercedes, opened the door for Shanahan, and hoisted his bags out of the trunk. Before they got to the door a woman stepped out of the house and met Shanahan with a kiss. It was hard to tell from a distance, but she looked fairly young, with short dark hair cut into a sharp bob.