Last Man Standing

by Julie Miller

  “I’m not nagging,” Cole insisted, hating these fond, almost familial feelings he had for his employer. “I’m laying it on the line. You make my job harder than it needs to be.”

  “Keeps you on your toe—” Meade’s laughter wheezed into raspy puffs of air. He pressed a gnarled fist to his chest as a fit of coughing seized him.

  Cole squeezed a supporting hand around the man’s bony shoulder. “Jericho?” The old man snatched at his left jacket pocket, desperate to retrieve what was inside. But twisted bones and rattling coughs kept him from succeeding. “What is it?”

  “His mint.” The robust man sitting across from them leaned forward. Paulie Meredith’s thin strands of black hair barely covered his scalp, making it impossible to hide his deep wrinkles of age and concern. He reached into Jericho’s pocket, pulled out a foil-wrapped piece of candy, opened it and slid it into his friend’s mouth. “It soothes the cough.”

  Cole frowned. “You’re sure he won’t choke?”

  Sinking back into the plush upholstery, the seventy-six-year-old patriarch waved aside Cole’s concern. “I’ll be fi—” Another fit seized his chest, ruining the reassurance.

  “Jer, old friend, you have to take it easy.” Paulie wore the trappings of his wealth in a half-dozen gold and silver rings, and the paunch of his belly that pulled at the buttons of his designer suit. “There are hundreds of doctors in K.C. Good ones. I don’t know why you insist on seeing this Kramer guy way out here.”

  Jericho’s chest shuddered in and out, indicating just how difficult it was for him to catch his breath. But the firm command in his steely blue eyes brooked no argument, even from his oldest and closest friend.

  “First of all, Paulie, never call a sick man ‘old friend.”’

  The teasing fell on deaf ears. “You’re not dying.”

  “The hell I’m not.” Jericho’s breath whistled in his throat as he gasped for air. But then, through sheer will, it seemed, his breathing regulated to a raspy but even rhythm. And though his pasty skin didn’t regain its healthy color, he smiled. “Dr. Kramer said he could run the diagnostic tests at his private research clinic with few questions asked and no publicity. My heart and lungs may be going, but I don’t want anyone outside the family to know about it. Not until I find Daniel.”

  Find Daniel? Cole discreetly looked away at the mention of Jericho’s son. It was the one aspect of his employer’s personality he didn’t know how to handle.

  Paul Meredith was more direct. “Daniel’s dead, Jer.”

  “We don’t know that. I’m not selling the business, no one’s running me off, I’m not naming a new heir until…” He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t bring himself to speak of the gruesome task he’d given Cole. Find my son’s body and bring it to me. Then I’ll know he’s dead. The shallow wheezing became a moan of pain. But it wasn’t physical. “He’s still with me, Paulie. I feel him. I know he’s trying to reach me. He wants me to find him. He wants to tell me something.”

  The pallor of Jericho’s skin alarmed Cole more than did his boss’s ramblings. “You need to take it easy.”

  “You should be lookin’ to rip out the heart of the man who did that to your son,” Paulie advised, talking the way a strong, healthy Jericho Meade would have talked months earlier, “not pretending he’s still alive.”

  “Paulie,” Cole warned. There was honesty, and then there was cruelty.

  Jericho’s blue eyes clouded. “I’m not pretending. I know what I’ve seen and heard. If it’s not Daniel, it’s his damn ghost.”

  “It’s obvious you need some kind of treatment, Jer. I want you to be in a place where they have the best staff and equipment.” Paulie slicked his hand across his ruddy scalp. “How do you know we can trust this Kramer guy?”

  How could a man like Jericho Meade, who had destroyed so many lives in his half-century-long quest for wealth and power, ever trust anybody?

  Cole watched the old man steel his will and battle past the grief that consumed him. He was considerably calmer, if weaker, when he spoke.

  “I’m paying Dr. Kramer enough money to ensure his loyalty. He’d better work a damn miracle.”

  “Maybe you should check yourself in to Kramer’s clinic, then.” Paulie was sounding like a gentle, lifelong companion once more. “I can run things for a while. Get yourself out of the house. Forget the business right now. Worry about yourself.”

  “I am the business.” Jericho’s voice was firm. “I wanted Daniel to become the business too. Until I understand what he’s trying to tell me, I intend to hang around.”

  Paulie shrugged. “What would a voice from the grave be trying to tell you?”

  Cole had asked the same question the first time Jericho had pounded on his door in the middle of the night, sobbing and disoriented, claiming his son had been in his office and left a message, begging his father to listen.

  “Maybe the name of whoever killed him,” replied Jericho.

  The answer still didn’t make much sense.

  Jericho pressed his tattered cigar into Cole’s hand and closed his eyes on a weary sigh. “Now you two shut up and let me rest. And tell the driver to kill the air-conditioning. He knows I don’t like it this cold in here.”

  Paulie quickly spun in his seat and knocked on the partition window that separated the driver from the back of the limousine, to do his boss’s bidding. Cole tossed the cigar onto the car’s drink console before settling back into his corner. Then the three men fell silent and tuned in to their own internal musings.

  Cole had been there four months ago, the night the unmarked package was delivered to the estate. After screening the box for any trace of explosives or chemicals, Cole himself had opened the box in front of Jericho, Paulie and a handful of family members. He’d nearly retched at the sight of the dismembered finger. Jericho had identified the ring he’d given his son and then collapsed in his chair.

  Amidst the tears and curses that filled the room that night, Cole had read the attached, computer-generated note.

  Jericho—

  I thought a deal was a deal.

  You took what was mine, so I’m taking what’s yours. Without an heir, the days of your empire are numbered. Start counting.

  Jericho Daniel Meade Jr. had never come home, and his father had never recovered.

  Cole watched the gray ribbon of highway pass by in a blur. He’d taken this assignment two years ago with the intent of destroying Meade’s criminal world from the inside out. Now, someone was trying to do the job for him by killing Jericho’s son and driving the man toward madness. Leaving every part of Jericho’s world in chaos until he named someone new to take over the family business—or someone moved in on the weakened patriarch and simply took what they wanted for themselves.

  It was a lose-lose situation as far as Cole was concerned. He knew the likely successors Jericho might name. Every one of them would continue his reign of violence and intimidation under the guise of civilized gentility. And if an outsider was behind this takeover threat, a retaliatory mob war unlike anything Kansas Citians had seen before would leave the streets strewn with innocent victims. Battles for drug turfs would ensue. Good men and women would be cheated out of their livelihoods. Children would live in fear.

  Cole felt the heavy weight of fatigue and responsibility down in the marrow of his bones. He had to keep Jericho alive until he was ready to name names and turn over state’s evidence and end an era of terror before a newer, less certain one could begin.

  His deep sigh fogged the glass, obliterating his view. Waking himself from his own murky thoughts, Cole wiped the window clear with the side of his fist. He pulled at his ponytail before glancing across at the dying old man he was destined to betray.

  Dozing with a peaceful expression on his wan face, Jericho Meade resembled any self-made multimillionaire who’d lived long enough to enjoy the power and profits of his labor. Tall and slender and wizened as any much-loved grandfather might be, he wore his distinguished cloak of r
espectability like a second skin, giving no hint of the ruined lives and deaths and addictions that could be attributed directly to his position as one of the Midwest’s most powerful and feared crime lords.

  Meade’s empire might include legitimate forays into the oil and natural gas industry, real estate, the restaurant business and numerous charities. But it also included arms and drug trafficking, murder, witness intimidation, money laundering and any other number of crimes on which Cole had been assigned to uncover and deliver information to the District Attorney’s office.

  It galled him that he should feel any sort of sympathy for a man like that. Whatever pain or danger or heartache Meade faced now had been brought on by himself and the greedy, ruthless habits that made the man a name on every federal, state and local most-wanted list.

  But dammit, he did pity Jericho. Cole blinked his eyes and turned back to the sporadic traffic outside. Hell, he almost cared about the old man.

  Probably because he’d been separated so long from the people he did truly love that Jericho’s dependence on him felt like something more substantial. It didn’t matter that their relationship was based on a lie. Cole had done his job well, starting as a bouncer in one of Jericho’s clubs and working his way up through the ranks to become the boss’s personal bodyguard. He’d immersed himself in this assignment so completely that turning Jericho over to the Feds or the DA, and testifying against him almost felt wrong.

  He clung to that almost like a lifeline, using it to salvage whatever was left of his conscience and soul.

  But any guilt, confusion or wishful thinking vanished as the limousine slowed and turned onto the outer road. Cole voided all emotion whatsoever and tuned into the survival instincts that had gotten him this far.

  As they drove along the long, horseshoe-shaped driveway, he noted that each of the tall, ancient oaks that shaded the sloping hillside was painted white, four or five feet up the trunk. A sharpened sense of vision looked beyond the immaculate grounds, scanning the shadows behind each tree and evaluating the condition of the three redbrick buildings perched at the top of the hill.

  Two of the twentieth-century buildings appeared abandoned, judging by their boarded-up windows and crumbling facades. Not good. Any busted window or broad tree trunk would provide ample camouflage for an enemy. Construction scaffolding and canvas drapes obscured sight lines even further.

  Cole shook his head. For a kid, this would be a primo location to play hide-and-seek. For a man of Jericho Meade’s reputation, this remote place was the perfect setup for an ambush.

  Despite the new sign that labeled this former nursing home a medical complex, it appeared that only the main building had seen any sort of renovation. Freshly painted black wrought-iron work framed each door and window, and stood out in sharp contrast to the sandblasted brick. Through the modern double-paned windows, he could see the bright lights and sterile decor of the foyer and waiting room. Inside, a handful of patients and an attentive bustle of men and women in white lab coats and colorful scrub uniforms were clearly visible, even from a distance.

  Every one of them made an easy target.

  Jericho would be no different.

  His bones radiated with an unspoken warning, an uncanny survival instinct that, combined with his unique, formidable skills, had kept him alive when other men would have ended up dead. Cole trusted that instinct the way a newborn babe trusted his mother. There was something in the air. Something waiting.

  Automatically, he patted the Glock 9mm that hung beneath the hand-tailored cut of his suit coat and adjusted his pant leg to cover the smaller Beretta strapped to his ankle.

  Feeling the easy possibility of an attack like a personal threat, Cole wrapped his hand around Jericho’s arm and nudged the older man awake. “You don’t go anywhere without me or Paulie right by your side. Understood?” He made the demand as if he was the one in charge.

  Jericho smiled at his audacity and nodded. “Your concerns are duly noted, Mr. Taylor.” He turned away in curious anticipation as the car came to a halt in front of the double front doors and the driver hurried around to open the door.

  Cole was already there when Jericho climbed out. He stood several inches taller than his ailing boss, making Cole an ample shield and giving him a clear, 360-degree view of their surroundings. With the driver leading the way and Paulie bringing up the rear, they formed a protective triangle around Jericho and walked him into the clinic.

  A young man, barely out of his teens, greeted them with an articulate, guttural accent. “Right this way, Mr. Meade.” After several furtive glances, the waiting attendant sat Jericho in a wheelchair and guided them at a brisk pace past the admissions desk and down a newly tiled hallway.

  Cole couldn’t tell if the young man was new on the job, nervous about working with a patient of Jericho’s reputation, or just plain intimidated by Cole’s imposing size and demeanor. Whatever the cause might be, his rabbitlike movements only heightened Cole’s suspicions about the place. He took note of the attendant’s name tag. Joe Barton. Yeah, right. Not with that accent. Cole planned to run a few tests of his own while Dr. Kramer evaluated Jericho.

  All the doors along the corridor stood open, and the rooms were apparently empty. Strike that, Cole amended, as a chin-high stainless-steel cart, packed with fresh, folded linens, rolled through a doorway just before they reached it. Instinctively on guard, he pushed Jericho’s wheelchair and the attendant against the wall and positioned himself between their entourage and the cart. His hand was inside his jacket on the butt of his gun when the cart swung around and he got his first look at the man on the other side.

  “Whoa. Sorry, pal.” Stooped over in green scrubs and a white lab jacket, the orderly barely made eye contact before pushing the cart on past.

  Cole’s breath eased out between tightly compressed lips. He nodded to the attendant to keep moving, but remained behind to cool an edgy pulse that was still firing jets of adrenaline through his system. He breathed in deeply, a new plan forming in his head before he followed Jericho into an exam room. The green clothes and shuffling walk were different, but the orderly’s scraggly brown mustache and beady black eyes behind the glasses were the same.

  Lee Cameron.

  His contact with the DA’s office.

  Something was up.

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Jericho was secure in the exam room with Dr. Kramer, a nurse and Paulie. The driver had parked the car and returned to stand watch at the door. The nervous attendant had been sent back to the main foyer and Cole was plugging change into a vending machine and waiting for a can of soda to fall through.

  Lee Cameron leaned against the wall beside the vending machine, facing Cole’s direction without actually looking at him. He looked for all the world like a worn-out clinic worker who needed every bite of the candy bar he was munching on to sustain him to the end of his shift.

  “You’re not looking nearly as dapper as when we met in the bank last week.” Cole’s words teased his fellow investigator, though he pretended a rapt fascination with the ingredients on his can of soda.

  “Budget cuts hit me in the fashion department.” Lee chewed a mouthful of chocolate and peanuts. “You might give me fair warning next time you change plans. I could have scrounged a tie and posed as a doctor instead of borrowing these from the laundry.”

  “Meade usually sees a doctor named Lyddon, east of the Plaza.” Cole popped open the soda. “I didn’t know we were coming here until this morning. If Powers is pressing for something new, I haven’t got it.”

  Assistant District Attorney Dwight Powers could be a real hard-ass when it came to an investigation. But what the man lacked in personality he made up for in courtroom performance. Powers got convictions that were rarely overturned. When he sent felons to Jeff City or Potosi, they served their time.

  But it was up to men like Cole and Lee to find the ammunition to make Powers’s big legal guns work.

  Lee scanned the break-room area and ran through the usual
questions. “We’re ready to serve the warrants on the drug trafficking tip you gave us. Nothing on the new money laundering scheme?”

  Cole moved to the candy machine and studied his choices. “I haven’t gotten anything on the new accountant. Except that Chad Meade hired him, not Jericho.” He dug some change out of his pocket and made a selection.

  “Chad’s the nephew, right?”

  “Heir apparent.” Cole pulled the candy bar from the bottom bin. “He doesn’t have the brains Jericho or even Daniel had, so if he’s up to something, you can bet he’s not in it alone. I’ll keep digging.”

  “No news on who ordered the hit on Powers’s family?”

  That was the ADA’s one suspicion he’d found no evidence to corroborate. Powers’s obsession for the truth bordered on vengeance.

  “Nothing I can prove yet. The timeline fits. Powers was gearing up to prosecute Jericho’s son. Two large sums of money were withdrawn from the Meade accounts that same week. But I’ve got no phone record, no eye witness to place Jericho with the hit man.”

  “And we’ve got no hit man,” Lee added.

  Cole nodded. “I’m still waiting for someone in the Meade camp to let something slip. But I haven’t heard anything concrete yet.”

  Lee wadded up his empty wrapper and shot a basket in the trash can. “I’ll pass the word along, but you know Powers wants every loose end wrapped up before we pull you in.”

  Cole shrugged his shoulders and took a drink. The few minutes they’d been conversing would start to draw attention soon. Lee Cameron was his one link to the DA’s office, Cole’s only safe channel of information in or out of the game. Lee wouldn’t risk making contact with the UC operative just to shoot the breeze. “So I’ve got nothing new, you’ve got nothing new. Why are you here?”