Last Man Standing. Julie Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 respectability 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.

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