Dark Trojan (The Adam Drake series Book 3)

by Scott Matthews

  “Tell them he’s not breathing.” Drake paused and dropped down for two more rescue breaths. “But there’s a pulse. I think he’s conscious, but non-responsive. Male, thirty-seven, no known medical problems.”

  While the information was being relayed to the 911 operator, two women came out of their rooms and asked if they could help.

  “Call the front desk,” Drake responded. “Say there’s a medical emergency on the twenty-fifth floor and keep an elevator available for the EMT’s.”

  He maintained the CPR rhythm, but his broken left arm was starting to ache, and sweat was dripping from his chin onto his friend’s blue shirt.

  Jeans and T-shirt stepped back into his room and came back with a hand towel and wiped Drake’s forehead. “Want me to take over?” he asked.

  “I’m good for now, thanks,” Drake said. “They say how soon the EMT’s would get here?”

  “Should be about now. Would one of you two women go stand by the elevator? Direct them down here when they arrive.”

  Drake continued checking for any sign of consciousness and for a carotid pulse each time he leaned down for the rescue breaths. He also kept praying that help would arrive soon. Very soon.

  “They’re here,” the man across the hall shouted, as they heard the EMT’s running down the hallway.

  The lead EMT, whose name tag identified him as Harris, knelt down beside Casey and did a quick assessment while Drake continued CPR.

  “Let’s bag him,” EMT Harris said as he got out of the way to allow two of his men to begin nonresponsive resuscitation.

  Drake scooted back and watched as one man put a mask over Casey’s face and held it there with both hands while a second man began squeezing the ventilation mask’s bag. They were all watching to see that Casey’s chest started rising with each inhalation. Satisfied, Drake nodded at Harris.

  Harris nodded back. “Do you know this man?” he asked.

  “Yes, he’s my friend. His name is Mike Casey. Lives in Seattle.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “He was coming to my room to take me out for an Irish coffee. I heard a crash against my door and found him here on the floor. I have no idea what happened.” As Drake continued answering questions until the EMTs’ yellow gurney was pushed down the hallway. “Where are you taking him?”

  “San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center,” Harris said. “It’s three miles away. If you’re coming, take a cab, the parking’s lousy.”

  Drake stepped back into his room, grabbed his blazer and cell phone, and watched as they prepared to lift Casey onto the gurney. When they lifted him up, a small black object fell to the floor. Drake reached down to pick the thing up and follow the gurney. He froze.

  “Harris,” he called out, “you need to see this.”

  The dart was half an inch long with black feathering on the tail end.

  “Don’t touch it,” he told the EMT, who squatted down for a closer look. “That’s what happened to Mike. He’s been poisoned.”

  Chapter 28

  When Drake arrived at the hospital, he quickly found Casey in the emergency room. EMT Harris was standing outside the curtain of his cubicle, talking to one of San Francisco’s finest. Harris raised a finger, mouthed “one minute,” and spoke to the officer for another minute before he joined Drake.

  “They’re testing the dart to see what kind of poison it is,” he said, “but they think it’s probably curare. If that’s what it is, your friend’s a lucky man. Your CPR kept him from suffocating. Unless there’s some brain damage, he should make a full recovery.”

  “How soon will they know?” Drake asked.

  “It shouldn’t take too long if it is curare. They use an artificial curare, succinylcholine, in some surgical procedures, so they’re familiar with it. You have any idea why someone would want to poison him?”

  As the CEO of a security firm, Drake knew, Casey had probably made a few enemies, but he didn’t know that Casey was worried about anyone. And none of them could have known that he was going to make a last-minute detour to San Francisco for dinner with a friend.

  “No idea,” he said. “I need to call his wife. Is the doctor with him?”

  “She just left to check on the lab tests. Her name is Dr. Jessica Martin. I’ve got to finish my report. Good luck with your friend,” Harris said as he offered his hand.

  “Thanks.” They shook hands. “And thanks for getting there so fast. I was starting to tire a little.”

  He pulled the curtain aside and saw that Casey was being attended to by two nurses in blue scrubs. He was breathing with the help of a ventilator now. “How’s he doing?” he asked the nurse on the right side of the bed who was monitoring the ventilator.

  “And who might you be?” she said without looking up.

  “Adam Drake, his friend. I gave him CPR until the paramedics arrived.”

  She turned and nodded to him and smiled. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Drake. I’m Lucy Johnson. I’ll send Dr. Martin to find you in the waiting room when she gets back. You’ll have to ask Dr. Martin about his condition.”

  He didn’t remember the last time he’d been dismissed so smoothly.

  Without knowing Casey’s condition, he decided to wait to call Megan. Instead, he called Larry Green, the man who managed the L.A. office of Puget Sound Security. Green was a retired police officer with a master’s degree in criminology with whom Drake had worked before. He was also one of the best street cops he’d ever met. Until they learned who had poisoned Casey, and why, Green could arrange to have someone guarding him around the clock.

  “I called the number on the back of the card you gave me,” he said after Green had answered his phone. “I was hoping I’d reach you at home before you went to bed, but I didn’t realize how late is was. Have a minute?”

  “All night if you need it,” Green replied. “What’s up?”

  “Mike Casey’s just been poisoned. I’m with him here in San Francisco. I think he needs protection until we know what happened. Can you get someone up here?”

  “How do you mean poisoned?” Green asked.

  “Shot with a poisoned dart. Just like in the movies. The paramedics think it’s probably curare, but the hospital hasn’t confirmed that yet.”

  “So what the hell happened? Do they know who shot him? Where was he when he was shot? Is he okay?”

  “Slow down, Larry,” Drake said, “I can only answer one of those questions right now. He collapsed outside the door of my hotel room tonight about ten-thirty. He wanted to go out and get an Irish coffee and was coming to get me. That’s all I know.”

  “Wow. Okay, I’ll round up a couple of my men and head your way. Can you stay with him until I get there?”

  Drake saw a petite young woman enter the waiting room and walk toward him. “I need to go,” he said. “I think the doctor’s here. And, yes, I won’t leave him until you get here.”

  Dr. Martin extended her hand as he stood up to greet her. “Mr. Drake,” she said as she pushed her wire-frame glasses up to sit above her short blond bangs, “let’s go to my office so we can talk about your friend.”

  She led Drake through the emergency room to her office, which was down a short hallway lined with dictating stations for doctors and alcoves where monitors allowed staff to view medical records and test results.

  A framed diploma from the Leland Stanford Junior University School of Medicine was hung above a physician’s license issued by the Medical Board of California on the wall behind her desk. Next to them was a beautiful abstract watercolor painting of red, pink, and purple flowers.

  Dr. Martin sat down and leaned forward, with her elbows on the desk, her fingers steepled. “How well do you know Mr. Casey?” she began.

  “We served together in the army,” Drake said, “and he’s my best friend. I guess I know him as well as anyon
e besides his wife. Why?”

  “He appears to be in good shape. Does he have any major medical problems that you know of?”

  Drake didn’t like the direction her line of questioning was taking. “None that I know of. What’s this about, Doctor?”

  “Mr. Casey has been poisoned with curare,” she said. “He should be breathing on his own by now, but he’s either reacting in a strange way because of something peculiar to him or something peculiar about the curare. I’m trying to discover which it is.”

  “I thought there was an antidote for curare.”

  “There is. We administered an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, which should have restored muscle function despite the presence of curare. It hasn’t worked.” She lowered her glasses and opened the file in front of her. “I see that he lives in Seattle. Is his wife here in San Francisco?”

  “She’s in Seattle. Mike was in Las Vegas for a conference and detoured here to have dinner with me tonight. I wanted to know how he was doing before I called her.”

  Dr. Martin stood up and took a business card from the middle drawer of her desk. “Why don’t you call her and let her know he’s here. Tell her I’d like to talk with her. I want to make sure he doesn’t have a condition you’re not aware of before I send a sample of this curare out for a more complete analysis than we can do here. Tell her he’s in no immediate danger, but she should plan on coming down to be with him…just in case.”

  Drake left the doctor’s office with a growing sense of concern. What the hell is going on here?

  Chapter 29

  It was late the next morning, and Drake was trying to sleep sitting up in a chair that wasn’t designed with his comfort in mind when Larry Green found him in the room Casey had been moved to earlier.

  Green stood for a moment at the foot of the bed and watched his boss breathing with the help of the ventilator. “What’s the doctor saying?” he asked.

  Drake stood up and stretched. “She’s having the poison analyzed. There’s no reason he shouldn’t be breathing on his own by now, if it’s really curare. Otherwise, she says he’s fine. Just paralyzed.”

  “Just paralyzed, that’s all?” Green grimaced. “Is his wife flying down?”

  “She gets in at twelve-thirty. Mike’s brother is coming down with her.”

  “You don’t look so good yourself,” Green said. “Why don’t you go get some coffee. I’ll stay with him for a while.”

  Drake accepted Green’s offer and walked down the hall to the waiting room, where he discovered that coffee had yet to be made by the day shift just now reporting for work. When he retraced his steps and found the elevator so he could search for the cafeteria, he was met by Detective Cabrillo as the doors opened.

  “I hoped I’d find you here,” Cabrillo said. “We need to talk.”

  “I’m headed to the cafeteria,” Drake said. “We can talk there.” He joined Cabrillo in the elevator. “How did you know to look for me here?”

  “Your hotel told me when I asked to be put through to your room. I can be very persuasive. The manager’s also my cousin,” Cabrillo added with a smile. “I got the call about your friend being poisoned because I was on the Kawasaki case. What happened last night?”

  Drake had given him the short version of events by the time they reached the cafeteria.

  “Trouble seems to follow you in my city,” the detective said as he loaded his tray with a bagel and some cream cheese to go with his coffee. “You have any idea why?”

  “No. Do you?”

  Cabrillo waved off Drake’s offer to pay for his bagel and coffee and flirted with the young cashier before taking a seat at a small table near a window. “I think it has something to do with Energy Integrated Solutions,” he said.

  Drake watched the detective take a bite of his bagel and waited for him to continue.

  “Nick Kawasaki was executed,” Cabrillo said. “He was tasered and then lethally injected with potassium chloride, the drug we use to execute criminals. The medical examiner thought the taser might have caused a heart attack, and with the taser burns on his chest, that was the easy conclusion. After you were involved with the drive-by shooting, though, I asked them to take a closer look. They found the potassium chloride, but they didn’t find any trace of the two other drugs that are used in legal state executions. Without those other two drugs, Kawasaki died a horrible death.”

  “That doesn’t mean that Mike’s poisoning is connected to Energy Integrated Solutions or my consulting there,” Drake said, challenging Cabrillo’s reasoning. “Kawasaki was killed before I arrived.”

  “It’s possible. But my money’s on the energy company. And I didn’t say it was connected to your consulting. I think it’s connected to the company itself. Maybe something they’re working on. Or intellectual property someone’s trying to steal. Maybe it’s the Chinese. They’re stealing our companies blind, I hear.”

  Drake didn’t tell Cabrillo about the cyber attacks the company had been experiencing. The reason he had been asked to pay a visit to EIS was to keep the problem out of the news. If Cabrillo launched an investigation into Kawasaki’s death and started poking around, it would mean headlines in no time. But he was willing to consider the possibility that recent events were connected to the company and work it was doing for the government.

  He had a question of his own. “Have you checked the closed circuit video surveillance at the hotel? Is Mike’s attack recorded?”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t identify his attacker. It shows a woman kneeling in front of your door, then Casey walks down the hall. When he gets closer, she stands up and walks back toward the elevator. Casey backs up against the wall and then falls against your door. It looks like he tried to get a shot of her face on his cell phone, but he only got from her chin down. We never get a good look at her face on the CCV either. ” Cabrillo paused. “Were you expecting a visitor?” he asked.

  “No, I wasn’t. And I don’t like your insinuation.”

  “I’m not insinuating anything, Mr. Drake. We’re accustomed to businessmen being visited in their rooms late at night by working women. I’m not making a judgment about your sex life. I’m trying to find the person who poisoned your friend.”

  “Look, Cabrillo, I don’t use prostitutes, and I don’t have any idea who this woman was. But you must have seen enough on the hotel’s surveillance video to have some idea.”

  “Like I said,” the detective repeated, “the video doesn’t show her face. She held her purse up in front of her face on the way to the elevator, then took the stairs down. Great body. Tight black dress. She’s a pro. She knew where the security cams were, and there’s no video of her leaving. She could have slipped out or still be in the hotel, for all we know.”

  Which meant that he, Drake, was the target. The woman had been at his door. She’d had no way of knowing that Casey would show up when he did. He was the reason his friend was paralyzed and in a hospital bed upstairs.

  “Detective,” Drake said as he stood up, “I need to get back and see how Mike’s doing. If you need to talk with me, I’ll be in town until this gets resolved.”

  Resolved on my terms, Drake promised himself. On my terms.

  Chapter 30

  Adriana Hermann was now standing at the window of her room at the Marriott Marquis, waiting for a male companion to arrive. The rising sun was beginning to put an end to a night she wanted to forget. But she knew her employer wasn’t about to let that happen.

  To minimize the risk of being identified, she had been ordered to wait for a man who would pose as her husband and leave the hotel with her. In her entire career, she had never needed a man to help her carry out an assignment, and she didn’t think she needed one now. But she had never failed before.

  Everything had gone as planned…until Mr. Helpful had shown up at the target’s door. She should have been warned. No one bothered to tell
her that the attorney had a friend or that they had returned to the hotel together. She would have waited if she’d known, waited until she was sure she wouldn’t be interrupted.

  But her employer didn’t want to hear any excuses. He just wanted her safely out of the hotel. And that made her nervous because the fake husband was to be the charmer who had picked her up at the airport.

  She was good at reading men. It was a prerequisite for her line of work. But this young man with the looks of a Latin movie star that Ryan Walker was sending to her had the eyes of a snake, a viper that would just as soon kill her as try to kiss her. If the Alliance was concerned that her failure to kill the attorney would somehow be traced back to it, if Walker had decided to terminate her contract permanently, her soon-to-be fake husband was the right man for the job.

  Saleem Canaan, aka Anthony Capelli, knocked softly at the door of Adriana’s room at seven-twenty. When he slipped into the room, the first thing he saw was her Walther PPK. It was aimed at a spot between his eyes.

  “Walk to the bed and lie down on your back,” she commanded.

  “You don’t need a gun,” he smiled, “if that’s what you have in mind.” He obeyed her instruction.

  She walked to the foot of the bed and pointed the gun between his legs. “If I wasn’t ordered to leave here with you,” she said, “you would die right here. I would do to you what I was going to do to the attorney.”

  “But that’s why I’m here,” he said. “Isn’t it? You failed to kill him.”

  “He is alive because Walker’s spotter failed to tell me he returned to the hotel with a friend,” she said softly. She kept the gun pointed at his groin. “You would be wise to remember that I was the one Walker chose to kill him. Not you. Did you park your car, or do you need to call the valet to have it brought around?”

  “I parked it myself,” Canaan said. “Why don’t you put that gun away. We both know you’re not going to use it. I’m essential to Walker’s plan, and you’re not crazy enough to screw this up for him.”