Julie Miller - Last Man Standing

He was alert, but not afraid. He’d numbed himself long ago to the fear and danger he lived with every day. Ignoring his emotions was a matter of survival. Giving in to them meant madness or death. Or turning.

Some days he wondered if he’d gotten so good at his job that he had turned.

Truth and justice had once sustained him, driven him. But those ideals had blurred as he’d made enemies into friends, and a few friends into enemies. He’d ignored his conscience and turned his back on everything he’d once held dear. As the car picked up speed toward its destination, Cole admitted that this day—like so many others in these past few weeks—was more about surviving than caring why he was here.

Two years working under deep cover for KCPD and the DA’s office had whittled the scope of his day-to-day living down to nothing more than that. Survival.

It was a damn cold-blooded way to live.

He was the good cop gone bad, selling out his colleagues and his soul for big money and a chance to dispense justice on his own terms. That was the story that had gotten him here. Only the story was beginning to feel a whole lot more real than the life and loves and friendships he’d left behind.

“You seem antsy this morning, Cole—”

Years of training kept him from starting at the indulgent voice of the man sitting beside him on the black leather seat of the limo.

“Is something wrong?”

Cole pulled himself from his worrisome thoughts and turned to the white-haired gentleman. “Just a feeling.” He reassured his boss with an expression just short of a smile. “I wish you’d let me check out this private hospital before driving out here. You want me to be in charge of security, yet you insist on taking foolish risks like this.” He nodded toward the unlit cigar clenched in the other man’s arthritic hand. “And you know the doctor is going to tell you to give up those things, too. How many times have we had this discussion about your impulses?”

The older man laughed. “My wife, rest her soul, was the only one I ever let criticize my choices. Now you’re nagging at me.”

At six-four, with a muscular body and well-honed skills that made him a deadly fighting machine, no one would mistake former KCPD Detective Cole Taylor for anyone’s nagging wife. Yet Jericho Meade patted Cole’s knee and scolded him as if Cole were his nurse, not his bodyguard.

“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.