Chapter 9 - The Eighth Floor
The carpet on the eighth floor of the Drake was four inches thick, absorbing the sound of their boots as they walked down the long, wood-paneled corridor toward Suite 812.
There were no security guards at the door.
Grant had already cleared them—two quiet conversations in the service elevator three minutes earlier had ended with two local off-duty officers taking four hundred dollars each to go have breakfast in the kitchen downstairs.
Grant knocked once on the heavy oak door—three light, rhythmic taps that echoed through the quiet hall.
"Raymond," Grant called out. "The car for the airport is here."
A latch clicked inside.
The door swung inward three inches, revealing a tall, silver-haired man in his late sixties wearing an unbuttoned silk shirt and grey trousers. His face was thin, sharp, and lined with the heavy, sour folds of a man who had spent forty years getting his own way.
"Where is Callahan?" Raymond Vance demanded, his voice thin and sharp as a wire. "He was supposed to meet me at four—"
He stopped.
His eyes drifted past Grant to the man standing behind him in the dark wool coat.
"Cross," Raymond whispered, his face instantly draining of what little color it had.
"Good morning, Raymond," Adrian said, stepping into the suite without waiting for an invitation. He walked past the silver-haired man as if he were a piece of hotel furniture, scanning the room—the leather suitcases packed near the bed, the laptop burning bright on the desk, the three empty glasses of scotch sitting on the marble sideboard.
Raymond backed away, his hand going instinctively toward his belt before he realized he was wearing a silk shirt and no holster.
"You have no standing here, Cross," Raymond said, his voice shaking slightly as he tried to pull his old authority around himself like a blanket. "The precinct chief is a personal friend of mine. If you think you can come into my hotel room—"
"The precinct chief retired twenty minutes ago, Raymond," Adrian said softly, sitting down on the edge of the mahogany desk. "He took a sudden interest in real estate in Arizona."
Raymond turned his head frantically toward the door, looking for an exit, and his gaze fell on Evelyn.
She stood in the center of the room, her hands tucked into the pockets of her dark coat, her eyes fixed on his face with a cold, terrifying stillness that made him freeze in place.
He frowned, his mind scrambling through fifty years of faces, political meetings, and business deals.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"My name is Dr. Evelyn Carter," she said. Her voice was perfectly steady, filling the large room with a quiet, absolute authority that made the silver-haired man step backward until his calves hit the frame of the bed. "Five years ago, I was the attending trauma surgeon at Northwestern Memorial when your nephew Marcus was brought in."
Raymond’s mouth opened slightly, his eyes widening as the memory finally locked into place.
"You," he breathed.
"Me," she said softly. "I'm the person who tried to stop the bleeding while your friends held the door closed. And I'm the person who watched Callahan take his watch off the boy's wrist after he died."
"That wasn't... I didn't order..." Raymond stuttered, his hands coming up in a defensive gesture that looked pathetic against his expensive silk shirt.
"It doesn't matter what you ordered, Raymond," Adrian said, leaning forward on the desk and picking up a small leather-bound passport from beside the laptop. "What matters is what you signed. The transfer orders for the six million dollars were executed eighteen minutes before the medical examiner declared Marcus dead. That's capital murder under Illinois law."
From the hallway outside, the heavy, rhythmic thud of multiple boots hit the thick carpet.
Four men in navy blue jackets with yellow U.S. MARSHAL lettering across the back stepped into the suite, their sidearms drawn but low at their sides.
The lead marshal—a tall man with a thick grey mustache—looked at Adrian, nodded once, then turned to Raymond Vance.
"Raymond Vance?" the marshal said, pulling a folded paper from his pocket. "You're under arrest for federal wire fraud, conspiracy to commit murder, and interstate racketeering. Put your hands behind your back."
Raymond didn't move. He stood there, staring at Evelyn as if she were a spectre that had risen straight out of the floorboards of Trauma Bay 4 to pull him into the dark.
"It was five years ago," he whispered, his voice cracking into a dry sob as the steel handcuffs clicked around his wrists. "Nobody cared about that boy."
Evelyn walked up to him until she was standing three inches away. She didn't look at his hands, or his silver hair, or the expensive silk shirt that was now rumpled and stained with sweat.
May you like
She looked straight into his eyes.
"I cared, Raymond," she said softly. "And that was your first mistake."
