Heartless: a Derek Cole Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thriller Book 1) (33 page)

“You are suggesting that I let you walk free from this place that you love so, walk down to your car where you will certainly drive as fast as your car will go, and wait with baited breath for you to tell me the rest of the story? Honestly, Doctor Straus. What do you take me for, a fool?”

“Not a fool, just someone who has no other options. You let me leave, and I will leave a note where my car is parked, telling you everything you need to know and to do to save your life. And, I will tell you that you actually now have everything you need to save your life right in this very room.”

Alexander glanced at Thomas O’Connell, who was slowly coming back to reality.

“That explains the look on your face when I told you that it was my brother sharing the bed with you. I must assume that he holds the key to my survival.”

“Let me leave, and I’ll tell you what you need to know,” Straus said, his voice hiding the excruciating pain radiating throughout his body.

“I find myself with no assurances,” Alexander said as Thomas opened his eyes.

“The only assurance I will give you is that you will die if you don’t let me leave.”

“I require more.”

“Isn’t the fact that I’ve always kept my promises to you enough?”

“You have been a man of your word,” Alexander said. “But your promises were what positioned you, my brother, and me in this dilapidated suite of rooms. Your promises, though always held, are the reasons my life was and is nothing more than a series of experiments. Of isolation. Of misery. Your promises, Doctor Straus, are the precise reasons why I may rather kill you and with your death, assure my own potential demise, rather than to see you walk free.

“You are asking me to trust you, Doctor Straus? Trust? You never entertained even the possibility that I wanted to have at least a chance at a real life. You presented yourself to me as my protector, my savior, when all along you were nothing but my captor. I was nothing more than your chance at fame. I know it wasn’t you who stole me from my family, but it was you who kept me from them. You could have said something. You could have kept the promise you made when you swore your oath to become a doctor. What of that promise, Doctor Straus?”

Thomas O’Connell had sat up and was quietly listening to the conversation between his brother and Doctor Straus. Neither noticed that Thomas held a gun in his hand, but both heard the loud knocking at the door.

Derek turned on his Maglite once he heard Thomas’s footsteps pounding up the stairway. He took no time to inspect the near vacant loading docks as he made his way across the area and into the stairway. He paused only at the bottom of the flight to listen to Thomas’s steps. He heard a door creak open two floors above him then he heard nothing.
 

The stairway was littered with discarded papers, broken glass, and pieces of insulation. As Derek made his way up the stairs, he turned off his flashlight, not wanting to give Thomas any visual signs of his approach. He paused after each step, straining his ears to hear. When he reached the second floor landing, he heard Thomas knocking on a door and demanding to be let in.
 

Silently, he craned his neck into the hallway, just in time to see Thomas walk through an open doorway and just in time to hear the door’s lock screech back into position.
 

He paused, catching his breath before moving towards the door. In his hands he held his small flashlight and a seven-inch, serrated, fixed-blade Gerber knife.

“Hope I’m not bringing a knife to a gun fight,”
he thought to himself as he reached the door.
“I wonder if this is a situation that Ralph would consider me leaving a better option than me staying.”

He pressed his ear against the cool, steel door. Though muffled, he could hear Thomas arguing with someone. He heard a voice return Thomas’s demands. A voice so weak, so thin that Derek questioned if the person Thomas was speaking with was preparing to make the great leap into the unknown.

He then heard a yell, followed by a quick scuffle. The thud sent vibrations into Derek’s legs.

He backed away from the door and stood in the pitch-black silence. His army and police academy training screamed at him to call for backup. He knew his life may very well depend on his next decision. And as he weighed the decision to either get help or to get into the room, Derek thought of Lucy and the look she would give him whenever he told her about his day at work. She never liked the risks he and the other members of the police force were expected to take on a daily basis.

“Risks are part of the job,” he would tell her. “And, we never go into a situation without backup.”

Now, standing in a dark hallway, the only glimpse of light coming from a setting sun and filtered through a dusty and smudged window at the hallway’s end, he knew he had no backup. Only Ralph knew where he was, but no one knew the option he was considering. He had no set plan if he were able to gain access to the room. No strategy. No emergency plan. But Derek was driven by his sense of responsibility. He was paid to keep Thomas O’Connell safe, and while Derek thought he may have been set up by the O’Connells, he didn’t know for certain. What he did know was that the person he was charged to keep safe was behind the locked door in front of him.

Derek Cole walked up to the door and knocked loudly several times.

“Popular place, this Ward C is,” Alexander said. As he turned away from the door and towards Straus and Thomas, he shuddered when he saw that Thomas was pointing a revolver directly at his head.

“If you so much as move towards me, I will blow your brains out.”

“You have my full attention,” Alexander said.

The knocking at the door resumed.

“Tell me,” Thomas said, “what did you do to my father?”

“You mean ‘our father?’”

The person knocking at the door switched from using his knuckles to pounding on the door with this fist.

“What did you do to him?” Thomas demanded.

“He was on the list.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“You also are on the list, dear brother.”

Despite Straus’s prognosis, Alexander’s reflexes remained insanely sharp. He leaped towards Thomas, driving his shoulder into Thomas’s chest. The shot fired came a half of a second too late, the bullet found no flesh, only concrete.

With little resistance, Alexander wrenched the revolver from Thomas’s hands. Straus, sensing an opportunity, bolted towards the door. He reached the door, slid the bolt free, lifted the steel bar-bracing and pulled open the door. His way was blocked by a man he’d never seen. Then his movement was halted by the bullet entering his lower back, ripping through his muscles and sending him to the floor. He lay half in the hallway and half still in the hub room of Ward C.

“Kindly step into the room,” Alexander said as he continued moving closer to the door, pointing the revolver directly into Derek’s chest. “And, if it isn’t too much to ask, kindly drag the good doctor inside as well.”

Derek, having learned to obey the commands of anyone pointing a gun at his chest, stepped into the room with his arms raised. He then grabbed William Straus’s legs and dragged him out of the hallway.

“I hope to learn your name,” Alexander said.

“My name is Derek Cole. I’ve been hired by your father and your brother to protect them from you.”

“I honestly never expected to cross paths with you, Mr. Cole. But I do know about you. You have been played a fool, I’m sorry to inform you. Have you yet deduced that you were not hired as a protector but as nothing more than one of my dearly departed father’s minions?”

“I kind of figured that out, but, here I stand in the same room with you and a person I was charged to protect,” Derek said.

“You have not done a good job, Derek Cole,” Alexander said. “My father’s intense greed caused him to have a very fiery death. As for my brother here,” he said, gesturing behind him and towards Thomas, “he seems to have lost his will.”

“Alexander,” Derek said, “I am not claiming to know everything that happened to you, but I do know enough to understand how you must feel.”

“Feel about what, exactly?”

“About feeling the need for revenge. I met with Mark Rinaldo and Michelle Mix. They told me what they did to you. I know that you’ve killed Rinaldo and Zudak, along with the others, but ...”

“Oh no, no, no, Derek Cole,” Alexander said, inviting Derek to follow him out of the hub room and into the bedroom by waving the revolver towards the bedroom. “You’ve not done a good job with your understanding of your charged responsibilities at all. I didn’t kill Mark Rinaldo or Henry Zudak. The man at your feet was the cause of their deaths. I can claim others as my trophies, but I cannot in good faith claim the fine doctors of Saint Stevens.”

Derek glanced down at Straus. He was still breathing, moaning in both pain and astonishment.
 

Things began to fall in place. Though he had no idea how Straus had killed Rinaldo and Zudak, it made more sense that someone else had murdered the doctors in Chicago rather than Alexander.

“Please,” Alexander said, “you appear to be quite confused. I think you deserve to know the truth. And it just so happens that my brother, Doctor Straus, and I can answer your questions. Please, continue dragging the good doctor into my old bedroom.”

Straus squealed in pain when Derek grabbed his legs and began dragging him into the bedroom. The bullet hit no major organs but lodged itself deep inside of William Straus’s ass.

When all four were in the bedroom, Alexander positioned himself in the doorway, preventing any escape.

“Doctor Straus,” Alexander whispered, his voice becoming weaker with each word spoken, “would you be more comfortable if Derek Cole were to prop you up in a chair?”

“You’re gonna die, you bastard,” Straus said.

“Not before you do,” Alexander replied. “Tell us about how you killed Mark Rinaldo and Henry Zudak. And please inform us as to why you did not send Stanley Mix to the same fate as his partners?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Straus said through grimaces of pain.

“Now Doctor, remember that I told you that I read Doctor Lucietta’s journal while I was waiting for him in his office before the meeting I had scheduled with him? What you may not have been aware of was that he took copious notes of your and his conversations. Complete with the details of your plans to avoid any ramifications of your actions. So, please, Doctor, do tell Mr. Cole here about how you nearly pulled off the perfect murders.”

Thomas had recovered his clear thinking. He moved closer to Alexander, who responded only by raising the revolver and pointing it directly at Thomas’s head.

“Need I remind you that your name appears on my lists?” Alexander said as Thomas backed away. “Doctor Straus? Please do not keep Derek Cole waiting. Proceed with your recounting.”

Straus began to detail how, when he received the call from Ken O’Connell, he contacted an associate of his who was known to have “connections.” He explained how he planned to counter Ken’s scheme of blackmail by eliminating everyone who had knowledge of Alexander Black. He said that when he realized that Alexander had killed Jacob Curtis and Peter Adams, he set his focus on convincing Brian Lucietta to deny everything and to eliminate Rinaldo, Zudak, and the Mixes. Both Michelle and Stanley.

“I didn’t want to have to hurt Michelle, but she knew too much. Problem was that they couldn’t be found. Rinaldo was easy. My friend told me that they found him sitting at home in his living room, drunk as a skunk. My friend told me that finding Zudak took some time, but that he had made the mistake of staying at a hotel that is often used by people running from something.

“They never found Mix. Have no idea where he and his hot little wife ran off to. No matter. I hear that he is on his death bed anyway. As for Michelle, I doubt that she really cares about what happens and probably won’t say a word to anyone.”

Alexander smiled at Derek.

“And now, should you wish for full disclosure, I invite my twin brother to explain his role in the deceptive plot.”

Thomas was quick to begin his explanation, giving details about his plan to free Alexander and then to expose the doctors and their illegal and immoral activities.

“I only wanted justice. I never wanted anyone to get hurt.” Thomas turned toward Derek and continued. “I needed to convince you that I was truly concerned for my life. I had no idea that my father’s plan was to extort money from the doctors. Honestly, I had no idea.”