by G. K. Parks
Forty
The elevator doors slid open, and I peered out. The thirty-first floor was empty. Overnight, it usually ran on a skeleton crew. One medic, one computer tech, and one forensic expert. But I didn’t see anyone, not even Cross.
I stepped off the elevator, moving down the corridor and checking the different labs and rooms as I went. The tech on the phone told Cross there was an emergency, so where were they?
The large computer lab was vacant, so I shut the door and moved on to the rooms used to recreate crime scenes. Empty. I continued toward the medical area in the back. I’d just passed the restroom when the door behind me creaked.
Before I could turn around, the barrel of a tactical shotgun pressed into the back of my head. “Hands up. Face forward. Don’t turn around.” He reached around and took my gun from my hand and tossed it down the corridor. It slid to a stop behind the front desk.
Exhaling, I slowly brought my hands up to shoulder height. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on? Ballistics is the third door on your left.”
“You’re still funny.”
“One of us ought to be amused, and it sure as hell isn’t me. What are you doing, Andre? What’s going on?”
“Move.” He pressed the gun more forcefully into the back of my head to encourage me to walk forward.
“No problem.” I bit my lip, contemplating the best way to disarm him. He was close enough that I should be able to wrestle the gun from him. But if he pulled the trigger, at this range, my brains and blood would make a mess all over the floor. The janitors would be picking bits of me off the tile for weeks.
He forced me down the hall and grabbed my shoulder, stopping me in the doorway to one of the rooms. The three techs cowered in the corner. One of them had been injured, and the medic hovered over her. I couldn’t tell the extent of her injuries, but it was enough to convince the rest of the lab rats to play nice. Cross remained near the door. He caught my eye, anger and concern boiling up to the surface.
“Lucien, you told me no one else was working this early,” Andre said. “Didn’t I warn you what would happen if you lied to me again?”
“He didn’t lie.” I stared into Cross’s eyes, hoping to communicate a plan. Andre was outnumbered five to one. We could take him. It shouldn’t be that hard. “I just got here. I wanted to do some research and figure out what happened outside Spark.”
I shifted my weight to my left leg, my stronger leg, and turned my right foot out.
Cross shook his head ever so slightly. “Alex is the most insubordinate employee I have. I never know where she is or what she’s doing.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Andre prodded me to move deeper into the room, but this was the ideal spot. Any farther and I’d risk a wild shot hitting the techs.
“It’s the truth. She never listens.” Cross stared at me. “For once in your life, do as you’re told.”
But I couldn’t let anyone else get hurt. I spun, knocking the barrel of the shotgun away from me with my right forearm. It knocked against the doorjamb, and I rushed forward with my left shoulder. With the way Andre North was built, I would have had better luck running straight into a brick wall. I hit solid muscle.
Andre cracked me across the face with the butt of the shotgun, and I went down. He put his foot on my back and the barrel against my cheek. Blood dripped down from the laceration and ran into my mouth.
“Stop.” Cross stepped forward. “You want my files. You want everything I have on you. But you won’t get them without my cooperation, and if you kill her, I won’t give you a damn thing.”
I huffed against the tile, tasting salty, metallic blood. I wasn’t sure exactly what was happening or why Andre North wanted Cross’s files or me dead, but it was safe to assume it had to do with the string of murders.
Andre held me in place with his foot. “You better hurry before any more of your employees show up. You wouldn’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
Cross nodded and went to the nearest computer terminal. “How did you subvert the surveillance cameras at the hotels? No one saw you enter or leave. That was brilliant. I’ve been in this business a long time and have never seen anyone move so stealthily, especially a man of your size.”
Andre chuckled, sounding like the pleasant man I’d met a few weeks ago. “Years of doing home renovations has taught me a few things. After Eve would return from having her naughty little adventures, I’d use my rope ladder and drop down from the floor above, take care of business, and climb back up. No one was ever the wiser.”
“You knew she was cheating on you?” I asked.
Andre looked down, releasing some of the pressure from the gun barrel. “Not at first, but I suspected. She’d host events and invite me. And I’d watch her, the way she flirted, the way they flirted back. I told myself it was harmless. Until she started sneaking out. She’d say she had to go out of town to set something up for a client, but she’d sneak away. Once, she even told me she was staying at her cousin’s, but I had the app too. I knew about the sex parties, the locations, everything. She’d rent rooms under her clients’ names and accounts, so I wouldn’t find out. But I did.”
“So you followed her?”
Andre shook his head. “No, I knew ahead of time where they’d be, so I checked in under my company or one of my partner’s corporations. I was so sure that I was wrong. Except I stayed out on the balcony, the one diagonally above the room, and watched the love of my life climb over the railing and knock on the door. I could barely recognize her, dressed up and disguised, but it was always Eve. The way she moves, laughs, and fixes her hair, I know my Eve. She was so afraid of getting caught or so embarrassed by what she was doing, she literally snuck in the back.”
“So you poisoned them?” I asked.
“With whatever flowers she’d bring home from the events or whatever was growing around my properties.” He rubbed a hand over his face and backed off so I could get off the ground. He jerked the gun toward the end of the desk, so I crawled over to it and took a seat. Keeping my hands where he could see them. The longer we kept him talking, the better off we’d be. I glanced back at the injured tech, but her injuries didn’t appear to be life-threatening. “I always knew when she met someone. She’d keep tabs on them. She’d say it was for business, but she’d check their social media pages and follow their businesses. It drove me crazy.” He narrowed his eyes. “She used to do that with me. When we first met. I don’t know what happened. Did she get bored? Is that it?”
“No,” I said, “she loves you. She just wants to have more experiences before she commits to you for the rest of her life.”
“Really?” Andre asked, seeming more unstable by the second.
“Yes,” Cross said.
Andre shook his head. “I don’t know. How did you find any of this out? Didn’t you see what she was like? What she was doing?”
“She was careful,” I said. “We didn’t see anything.”
Suddenly, his mood shifted. “Oh really? I’m having a hard time believing that. I need to know what you have on me.” He kept the gun aimed in my direction but turned his focus to Cross. “Victor Landau was another of Eve’s playthings. She threw that party for his firm, and she met him for coffee once or twice afterward. I warned him to back off, and the next day, he came running straight to you. What did he tell you? What did you tell the cops?” He jerked his chin toward me. “This bitch is working for them.”
“Consulting, not working,” I said, hoping to confuse or distract him long enough for Cross to do something.
“It’s the same fucking thing.” Andre kept his attention on my boss.
“Victor Landau didn’t tell me anything. He took a call in the middle of the meeting and left,” Cross said. “I didn’t open a file on you until you came to me.”
“Sure, that’s why he still had your card in his wallet the day he fucked my fiancée.” Andre took a step toward Cross. “I asked the sniveling architect about it. I even forced
some truth serum down his throat, but he wouldn’t fess up.”
That explained the scopolamine. “He wasn’t lying,” I said. “Eve didn’t have sex with him.”
Andre turned on me. For a moment, I thought he might squeeze the trigger out of anger. “How would you know?”
“Eve told me.”
He scoffed. “You expect me to believe that?” He turned back to Cross. “You said you had evidence and files. Now you say you don’t. Which is it? Because if you don’t have anything, I don’t need any of you.”
“We have intel on you now,” I said. “We were piecing it together. We couldn’t figure out how you got into the rooms, but we knew you did. We knew about the poison, about Eve’s involvement.”
“She didn’t kill them,” Andre said. “She didn’t even know they were dead. I kept that away from her. I told her Colton was dead, but she doesn’t know I killed him. She fucked him. God, I listened to her moans, hating every moment. As soon as she walked away, I…” Andre shook his head. “Colton Raine is lucky I didn’t rip his head off and spit down the hole in his throat. But he’s gone now. They’re all gone now. Eve’s mine. I won. We’re getting married. We’ll be together. Everything will be okay from now on, just as soon as you give me what you have, so I can destroy your files.” He took a step closer to me, holding the gun level at my head. “I don’t know what you and Lucien have going on, but it’s obviously something special. So you better hurry it up, Lucien.”
The elevator chime sounded, and Andre turned to look into the hallway. Without wasting a moment, Cross ran at Andre, leapt into the air, and tackled him to the ground. Scrambling to my feet, I ran to the cabinet in the back of the office, threw it open, and entered the code to unlock the gun safe. One of the techs had the same idea, picked up the metal IV pole, and crashed it down on top of Andre, who now had Cross pinned to the floor and was pressing the barrel of the shotgun horizontally across my boss’s neck.
“Freeze,” I yelled at the same time as O’Connell, who’d just burst through the doorway.
Andre pushed down harder, choking Cross, who was now turning purple.
“Police. Drop the gun.” O’Connell aimed.
But I pulled the trigger. I didn’t shoot to kill despite the fact every cell in my body told me to eliminate the threat for good. Andre was crazy. And having a crazed killer who’d already demonstrated he was hell-bent on revenge turn his sights on me wasn’t on my to-do list when I woke up this morning. But neither was taking a life.
The bullet went into Andre’s right shoulder blade and got lodged somewhere inside. That gave Cross enough leverage to shove Andre off of him. With the killer sprawled on his back, O’Connell kicked the gun away.
“Andre North, you’re under arrest for the murder of Colton Raine.” O’Connell flipped him over, handcuffed him, and called for backup units and ambulances. Then he read him the rest of his rights.
“Are you okay, Lucien?” I asked as my boss coughed a few times and rubbed his neck.
He nodded. “I thought you were a better shot.”
“She is,” O’Connell said. “That’s why you’re not dead. If she’d shot him in the head, it probably would have gone through you too.”
“He killed all of them.” I stared at Andre who looked just as intimidating even as he bled through his shirt and remained handcuffed on his stomach with three guns pointed at him.
“I have some files for you, Detective O’Connell,” Cross offered, “but first, I have to take care of my people.” He went to the back of the room and knelt down beside the injured tech. She’d taken a hit to the ribs from Andre’s shotgun. The medic had been afraid her lung might collapse. But once backup and the ambulances arrived, everyone was squared away.
“I thought you said Eve was here,” O’Connell said to me as we watched four uniformed officers escort Andre out of the building and to a waiting cop car.
“She is. I chained her to the filing cabinet in Cross’s office.”
“Eve’s here?” Andre turned to look at us while one of the cops opened the back door on the patrol car. “Can I see her? I want her to know this is over. That I forgive her. That we can be together now.”
“Take him away,” O’Connell said. Once the door closed, he turned to me, just as the EMT taped the bandage to my face. “I’m going to need you to explain all of this to me, starting with why Cross is suddenly being so cooperative.”
“I’ll do my best. But you might not believe it. I’m not sure I believe it.”
* * *
By the time I finished at the precinct and Eve explained her side of things which mirrored what she’d already said and what Andre had told us, O’Connell had a strong case against Andre. Eve, despite her flip-out and adulterous behavior, wasn’t a killer. If anything, her freaking out over their wedding had been much less of a freak out than the possessive behavior Andre had exhibited.
“She’s better off without him.” I signed the last of the paperwork and glanced into the conference room where Cross was filling out an official statement.
“He would have killed her,” O’Connell said. “Eventually, she would have done something to set him off and he would have turned that rage on her.”
“She loved him but had no idea how dangerous and unstable he was. I’m guessing that’s why she freaked out at the idea of marriage and committing herself to him and that’s actually why she acted out. Subconsciously, she might have been looking for an out.”
“I think you’re right.” O’Connell rocked back in his chair. “Do you think you might have picked up on something subconsciously too and that’s why you hallucinated him killing her?”
I’d told O’Connell about my PTSD episode after Andre had been booked. “You give me a lot more credit than I deserve.”
“It’s called the benefit of the doubt.”
“Too bad Andre hadn’t done the same with Eve. It’s also a shame she hadn’t acted out in a healthier and safer manner.”
“How? By talking to him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“He would have killed her. This way, he was able to blame other people for their relationship problems and take it out on them. It’s probably the only thing that kept her safe.”
“You’re probably right. This could have gone bad a thousand different ways. The body count could have been much greater, but no matter what I tell myself, five people are still dead. One of them I should have saved. Instead, I let the psycho live.”
“A life is still a life.”
“What if he gets out and comes for one of us? Then what?”
“He won’t,” O’Connell promised. “The case is airtight. Even your boss made sure of that. Andre won’t get off. He killed them. It’s up to a judge and jury to decide what happens next.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Andre won’t hurt anyone else, Alex. I promise you that.” He jerked his chin toward the exit. “Go home. I’m sure Martin’s waiting for you.”
“Great, now I have to explain this to him.” I gestured at the bandage on my face. “Any ideas?”
“I’ll take care of the big stuff. You can handle that on your own.”
“Fine.” I got out of the chair and put on my jacket. “Damn, on top of everything, I owe Jablonsky twenty bucks since he was right.”
“So do I.” O’Connell pulled the money out of his wallet and handed it to me. “Give this to him the next time you see him.”
“Sure thing, Nick. And from now on, keep your cases away from mine.”
“I’ll try, but I can’t make any promises.”
Note from the Author:
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this book. I hope you enjoyed Alex’s latest case as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you have a few extra minutes, please consider leaving a review. They are always appreciated.
The events laid out in this book will open a can of worms for Lucien Cross. The CEO has a dark history. More can be discovered about his past in the upc
oming second novel in the Cross Security Investigations series, Calculated Risk, which leads directly into the next Alexis Parker novel, Past Crimes. For your reading pleasure, I strongly recommend checking them both out.
* * *
Don’t miss the next Alexis Parker novel, Past Crimes.
Eight years ago, Lucien Cross covered up a murder. Now Alexis Parker has to prove he didn't do it. Except, she's not convinced he isn't guilty.
Ever since Alex went to work for Lucien Cross, nothing's been the same. She's always been wary of him. Now, she finally knows why.
The police discovered a body and enough evidence to put Cross in a cell for the rest of his life. He won't offer an explanation. He hasn't even said he's innocent. The only thing he wants is Alex to work the case and clear his name. But how can she do that when every bit of evidence points to the contrary?
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* * *
Don’t miss the next Lucien Cross novel, Calculated Risk.
A client’s secret puts Lucien Cross on a collision course with ruthless gangsters…
Being a private eye isn’t easy. That’s one thing Lucien Cross is about to find out the hard way. Ever since he opened Cross Security and Investigations, it’s been one blunder after another. And his latest mistake might mean his death.
As a businessman, Cross is all about the bottom line. He’ll take as many cases as he can. The more affluent the client, the better. But Lucien has no idea the danger he faces now that he’s agreed to help recover a client’s stolen property. It should be a simple retrieval, but since his newest client has failed to disclose a few “minor” details, Lucien will find himself in a war with cold-blooded killers.
