Last Man Standing

by Julie Miller

  As she scanned the room for the best place to hide, she heard footsteps in the hallway, raised voices and shouts. And footsteps behind her.

  Behind her?

  She whirled around. The wall beside the bookshelf was sliding open.

  Tori bent her knees and raised her fists to defend herself.

  “Get in here. Now.”

  Cole didn’t even give her time for a startled yelp. He grabbed her fist and pulled her inside the dark, narrow passageway beside him.

  “Lose the light.”

  Tori turned it off and poked it into her pocket while he pushed the panel door closed with a scrape of metal against wood. The panel clicked shut, plunging them into utter darkness, just as a key turned in the lock outside Jericho’s door.

  “Let’s go,” Cole whispered, his fingers butting against her shoulders and trailing down to find her hand in the dark.

  But she dug in her feet when he pulled. “No. I could hear you in here. If we move, they’ll—”

  Cole’s large hand clamped over her mouth, making the passageway as silent as it was dark. He pulled her back against the wall of his chest and wrapped a restraining arm around her waist, holding her still as the outside door opened and Jericho and company came in.

  “I swear to God, it came from in here.” That was Paulie, moving around the room, judging by the changing volume of his voice. “It was a woman’s voice.”

  “Where’s your artsy-fartsy friend?” Lana’s condescending question came from the doorway. “She wasn’t at the meeting. We should account for her.”

  “I’ll go check her room.” That was Aaron Polakis, his voice fading as he hurried to do her bidding.

  Tori inhaled a startled breath, feeling the threat as if she’d already been caught. Cole’s chest swelled with a deep breath behind her, reminding her she wasn’t alone and she hadn’t been caught.

  Yet.

  Lost in the blackness with nothing but touch to guide her, Tori turned in Cole’s arms, seeking the anchor of his solid warmth. His arms tightened and held her close against the even rise and fall of his chest. He cradled the back of her head and tucked her snugly beneath his chin. Tori wrapped her fingers around the nubby texture of his lapels and nestled her forehead against the warmth emanating from the freshly showered skin at his neck. The clean scents of crisp cotton, wool and man replaced the dusty dampness that teased her nose.

  They held each other in the dark and waited.

  “Taylor left early too.” Paulie again. “You don’t suppose the two of them are gettin’ it on somewhere, do you? Maybe that’s why she screamed.”

  She could hear Lana’s cringing sigh through the wall. “That’s disgusting.”

  “They can go after each other like rabbits for all I care. We were talking about me and the danger I’m in.” Chad had to have his say. “Taylor’s not the only man I’ve seen her with. She comes off like money and class, but she’ll go after anything in a pair of pants. You saw her with me this morning. If she’s not doing Taylor right now, you’d better find out where the guards are.”

  Tori curled into herself at the insults, her stomach twisting in knots. Chad was calling her a tramp? If only he knew how sexless and inexperienced she was when it came to men. She should be laughing. But it hurt. It felt like a mockery, a reminder of all she could never be.

  Cole’s hands tightened with an almost painful convulsion around her. She felt the moist heat of his mouth at her temple, his breath stirring her hair.

  “What are you talking about?” Lana seemed more concerned about Tori’s social life than any threat to her engagement. “What men did Miss Westin see? When?”

  “All of you, get out. Get out!” Jericho shouted, right on the other side of the wall. Tori and Cole both started, but clung to each other and kept still. A fit of chest-deep coughing seized him. Someone tried to help, but he pushed them away. “Leave me alone. I will not tolerate these games in here!”

  “Jericho, here.” That was Lana.

  “I don’t want the stupid mint!” Something tiny smacked against the wall, and Tori jumped. “Go away!”

  Paulie ushered everyone out. “Let’s get out of here. Give him some peace.” There was a long pause before he spoke again. Chad and Lana must have left the room. “You need anything, Jer?”

  Though his breathing was a labored wheeze, Jericho sounded a tad calmer. “Time alone with Daniel.”

  “He’s dead, Jericho.” There was a sharp, impatient edge to Paulie’s normally jovial tone. “He isn’t worth this agony. Daniel was trouble when he was alive. And he’s still trouble. Let him go, and live out your days in peace.”

  Tori heard the clink of a jar and a scraping sound. An instant smell of sulfur stung her nose and she turned her face into Cole’s chest to stifle the urge to sneeze. There was the creak of a chair and the beeping tone of the computer being turned on.

  Tori held her breath until the standoff outside ended.

  Jericho Meade, sounding like the terror he must have been in the prime of his life, uttered two words. “Get. Out.”

  The door closed quietly behind Paulie. Neither Cole nor Tori risked moving until the silence in the outer room ended. She heard a series of clicks. Computer keys? The fruity odor of Jericho’s tobacco filtered through the cracks surrounding the passageway door.

  He was in there killing himself. A man who couldn’t breathe smoking himself to death. The irony of a man of Meade’s reputation for violence dying such a slow, pitiful death warred with her sense of justice.

  Killing him. Death. “Poison.” Tori muttered the word into Cole’s coat.

  Jericho sucked on those mints for his cough, chewed and smoked those cigars, and took medicine faithfully delivered several times a day by his old friend Paulie. Any of those would be an easy way to deliver a cumulative poison.

  Cole must have sensed the thoughts turning in her head. Perhaps she moved or tensed, because he was suddenly massaging the back of her neck beneath her hair and humming some throaty noise deep in his throat against her ear. Mindful of the danger they still faced if discovered, she sank back into his embrace and let the whisper of his voice soothe her into quiet again.

  But they both tensed when Jericho spoke again. “Talk to me, boy.”

  She heard a mechanical click and a low-pitched buzz from somewhere inside the passageway itself.

  Cole’s breath rushed out in a gasp beside her ear, as if he recognized the unfamiliar voice that had only startled her.

  “Father. The time has come for you to act upon my word.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Okay. That officially creeped me out.”

  “You heard the tape go on before it started?” Cole asked, typing in a command on his computer.

  “I heard it. That wasn’t any ghost talking.”

  Tori continued to pace the perimeter of his office while Cole rewound tapes from all the camera positions throughout the entire house. He’d come in here and turned them back on, just in time to realize that Tori wasn’t in her room. After giving her two undocumented hours to search for her statue, he knew she was either a) in her bathroom taking a shower, or b) about to get herself into trouble somewhere in the house.

  He didn’t waste much time thinking about choice “a.” Appealing as the idea of Tori naked and wet might be, he was counting on trouble. Sure enough, he’d detected her in Jericho’s office and had taken the shortcut straight from his office to get her out before the retribution meeting broke up and she was discovered.

  Now he was trying to account for everyone at the time Daniel Meade’s voice was telling Jericho to name Chad as his heir and to eliminate the man who’d killed him.

  Cole Taylor.

  “You’re sure that was Daniel’s voice? Chad wouldn’t shed a tear if you were out of the way. He could have dubbed it. I don’t think anyone else could convince Jericho to turn against you except his own son.” Tori raked her fingers through her hair and shook loose what was left of her ponytail. “Some
body’s gone to a lot of effort to make Jericho believe Daniel’s ghost is talking to him. I suppose that’s what those cards were about—convincing Jericho that Daniel was still roaming the house, meeting up with his latest conquest in the guest room.”

  The same protective anger that had seized Cole inside that passageway coursed through him anew. “What Chad said about you, about sleeping around—that’s bogus.”

  “I know. He was just making up lies to gain some sympathy. He obviously doesn’t know me. Men don’t…” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, chasing away a chill. She never finished the sentence. “He doesn’t know me.”

  Cole wanted to say something more. He wanted to do something to mend that gap in self-confidence that seemed to plague her. But Tori was in business mode now. And the thing she would appreciate most would be him sticking to business.

  He went back to queuing up the tapes. “So who do you think wants to discredit me?”

  It had been haunting enough to hear his own name uttered on that tape. It didn’t surprise him to learn someone wanted him dead. But to know that someone thought he could replace Jericho’s son, to know that Jericho valued him, loved him enough to consider naming him heir to his criminal empire—that rocked him to his bones and made his two-year journey over to the darker side of human nature complete.

  “Who in this house doesn’t, golden boy? How many times have I heard you referred to by that name?” Cole had heard it, too. “There are too many obvious suspects. We need to stick to facts to narrow it down. We need to get back inside that passageway with a light and find the electronic device. I think it was something Jericho triggered with a command on the computer.” She stopped moving for half a second. “He has a computer file called Daniel. We could go in and boot it up and see if it replays the tape.”

  Cole pressed his lips together to hide his unexpected smile. He figured he was going to die a young man. If this job didn’t kill him, then the tightness in his chest every time he found Tori diving up to her eyeballs into danger would.

  “You’re not going back inside that office a third time.”

  His warning fell on deaf ears. She clutched her arms in front of her as if she was cold, and resumed her pacing. “Do you know there’s a severed finger in that blue box he worships?”

  Cole stood. Understandably, she had a lot of nervous energy to work off. The threat of nearly getting caught. Being trapped in the dark. Finding dead body parts…

  But he had some energy of his own that needed to find an outlet. In the short time he’d known Victoria Westin, the longest she’d been still, the longest she’d dropped her guard, had been inside that passageway. Seeking him out for comfort and safety, cuddling close as if being with him grounded her somehow.

  Or maybe he was the one who’d rediscovered a sense of purpose, a reason to keep fighting and go on living each time he held on to her.

  He craved her gentle, almost shy, touches. They seemed intimate—soft and honest—a stark contrast to the evil, take-what-you-want world he’d lived in for too long. He loved kissing her. Hell, he would have bedded her in the car if his phone hadn’t interrupted them. She’d been hot to the touch, sleek and strong, and so responsive.

  He was going crazy with keeping her safe and keeping up with her perceptive ideas, such as those on the poison sources she’d suggested earlier. He was going crazy with needing her, with wondering if she’d ever need him half as much for anything more than her job.

  He was just going crazy.

  Work, he reminded himself. He needed to concentrate on his work. He picked up the remote and flipped through the black-and-white images on the screen. “I know about the finger. It’s Daniel’s.”

  “You could have told me. It was a little disconcerting to find it.”

  Disconcerting was a polite understatement, judging by the cry he’d heard. No wonder she was still shivering.

  “Would you have believed me if I’d told you he’d had it preserved as a souvenir?”

  She paused for another few seconds, then positioned herself in front of the monitors beside him. “What are you looking for?”

  “Jericho left his office about fifteen, twenty minutes ago, skipped dinner and went to bed. Told Paulie he wasn’t feeling well.” He pulled up the screen that showed the door to Jericho’s bedroom; there was no camera inside. “It took you and me another five minutes to traverse the passage and come out here into my office. So I’m checking what was recorded a little less than half an hour ago.”

  “You’re finding out where everybody else was when that tape was playing.”

  They watched together. Chad was in his office, on the phone. It wasn’t a friendly call, judging by the deep frown across his forehead and his nervous pacing. Paulie had pushed his plate aside and had dealt a hand of solitaire at the dining-room table. Lana and Aaron were…

  “I’ll be damned,” said Cole.

  Lana and the butler were going at it, hot and heavy, in the upstairs hallway. His hand was on her thigh beneath her skirt and she had her tongue halfway down his throat. Cole and Tori cringed in unison.

  “And Chad called me a slut,” she exclaimed.

  “Couldn’t they at least get a room?”

  “Wait a minute.” Tori had him replay the scene. “Is that hair on his head?” Lana was running her fingers through Aaron’s hair. Make that an off-kilter wig.

  “Now that’s a bad toupee.”

  “He actually looks better with his devil horns.”

  “Devil horns?” He knew there was a story with that one.

  She pointed to her own forehead. “You know, receding hairline points. The description fits his personality.”

  Cole switched the monitors back to live-action shots. Maybe Lana wasn’t as heartbroken over Daniel’s death as she’d led other members of the household to believe. And her loyalty to Chad was certainly questionable. Perhaps having an affair with the hired help was her way of getting back at the men who cheated on her. It would explain the numerous passes she’d made at him over the past months.

  But that picture triggered another, more troubling possibility in his mind. Brown, shaggy hair. A familiar face out of context and unidentifiable. What might Aaron’s motive be for trying to kill Chad? Or him? Or Tori?

  Tori had resumed her pacing. Her thoughts dragged him away from his own.

  “So each of them was occupied,” she said. “That means the tape was already cued up and ready to play at whatever command Jericho inadvertently gave. Someone’s been driving that poor man into thinking his murdered son is haunting him.”

  “It’s something that’s been planned for a while.” Cole speculated further. “I’d bet good money that was Daniel’s voice on the recording.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  He grinned at the knowledge that that brief interchange was all it took to convince her.

  She stopped pacing. “That means Daniel felt threatened by you, too.”

  “I knew a lot of his secrets.”

  “But how could a son do this to his father?”

  “Daniel had everything he ever wanted from the moment he was born.” Cole couldn’t help but compare life in Meade Manor to his own poor beginnings, living over his father’s butcher shop in the City Market District. But he knew whose life had been richer. “It was never about family to him. It was always about Daniel. And Daniel didn’t endear himself to many people. They put up with him because of Jericho.”

  “Chad did tell me Daniel had ruined several business deals. He feels like he’s had to clean up Daniel’s mess.”

  A lot of people had cleaned up after Daniel’s impulsive mistakes. Himself included. He could see Daniel coming up with a clever scheme to ensure a massive inheritance. Get rid of the competition. Get rid of his father. “I don’t think he could pull off something like this on his own.”

  “Who? Daniel?”

  Cole was piecing random thoughts together now. If he could talk this through with To
ri, maybe he could even have it make sense.

  “Daniel comes up with this wild idea to have Jericho get rid of me. At the same time, he’s poisoning his father, so that once I’m out of the way and Jericho’s gone, he can come back and claim his position as head of the family.”

  She was thinking too. “He’d need an ally to plant the tape, deliver the poison while he’s hiding out.”

  “An ally who could run things while he was gone. Someone who’d benefit from his return.”

  Tori frowned. “But from what you’ve said, Daniel doesn’t sound like the kind of man who would cut off his own finger. You did verify that was his?”

  “I ran the fingerprint. It’s Daniel. And the lab said it came from a corpse.”

  “So his ally betrayed him. Killed him. Continued the plan for his or her own benefit? If you and Daniel are gone, who would take over for Jericho? Chad thinks he’s the man. What about Lana?”

  He shook his head. “Jericho would never leave the business to a woman. He’s from a different generation, old-fashioned.”

  “Well, who’s left?” Tori shrugged her confusion. “Aaron? He’s the butler-slash-thug. He doesn’t have the power or the business sense to manage all of Jericho’s holdings.”

  “What if it’s not about betrayal?” Cole had another possibility in mind.

  She frowned. “You mean his murder’s a coincidence?”

  “Daniel and his ally may have had this scheme in place, with every intention of reaping the rewards. But if he’s hiding out—away from the family’s protection—he’d be vulnerable. Someone he cheated or owed money to may have seized the opportunity to help Daniel disappear permanently.”

  Tori put her hands over her face and rubbed at her eyes. “So we’re back to square one. You have to find Daniel Meade’s body and prove who murdered him.”

  Cole sank into his chair and scraped his palm over the scruff of his five o’clock shadow. “Yeah. Square one. Everyone’s a suspect. Everyone has a motive.”

  In a resurgence of boundless energy, Tori sprang toward the door. “I need to get out of this place and go for a run.”