Page 35 of Oleander

“Okay, okay,” said Luke lightly touching his leg. “It’s time for pain meds. You’ll be guarded. No one gets in here except our team. We’ll take what you gave us and make sure we find him.” Cam ducked his head out the door and called for Ambry or Marnie who were standing at the nurses station.

“Is everything okay?” asked Marnie.

“He’s ready for pain meds now,” said Luke.

“Finally! You’re going to feel a lot better and heal quicker with this. Just hang on,” she said leaving the room to get the medication.

“Rest easy,” said Eric. “We’ll let you know what happens from here.”

“Make sure the witnesses and family members are protected. I wouldn’t put it past him to either bribe them or kill them,” said Voss. Ambry injected the medication into his IV and his eyes slowly fluttered shut.

Outside the room, Luke, Cam, Eric, and Hex whispered among themselves, finally Luke nodded.

“It’s time to hunt.” As they walked away, Brunson and Rowe smiled at one another.

“Did you hear that? ‘Time to hunt’. Epic movie shit, brother. Epic.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Imperium lay at anchor in the Gulf of Mexico, two hundred feet of white steel and smoked glass turning lazily against its chain. From the upper aft deck, Hollis Burton could see nothing that did not belong to him—or so he preferred to think.

The broad Gulf was his mirror. The yacht was his proof. The soft click of ice in his bourbon, the cedar bite of a cigar, the discreet footfalls of men paid never to interrupt him: all of it confirmed the order of his world.

He sat beneath the shade of a cream canvas awning in a linen shirt opened one button too far, bare feet crossed on a teak ottoman. Three screens had been set into the bar opposite him.

On the left, financial channels rolled red banners beneath grave-faced analysts. In the center, a Burton Drilling dashboard displayed production figures from the Gulf, the North Sea, and West Africa. On the right, his general counsel waited in a silent video window, shoulders rigid, eyes lowered whenever Hollis looked over.

Burton Drilling had lost another eleven percent before lunch. Hollis watched the number change, drew on the cigar, and exhaled toward the ceiling fan.

“Temporary,” he said. He said it as if the market could hear him and would be embarrassed into obedience. The analysts were frightened children. The lenders were opportunists. The board was weak. Everyone but Hollis misunderstood the scale of what he had built.

Platform Nine had been an accident. That was the word he had purchased, repeated, and polished until it shone. Not negligence. Not falsified inspections. Not a cascade of ignored alarms and exhausted crews.

An accident.

The dead had become a line item, the survivors a litigation reserve, the photographs a problem of distribution. He had stopped the internal reports before they reached the courts. He had stopped the maintenance logs before they reached the press. He had stopped people, too.

Lyle Voss had been the last of them.

Hollis pictured the head of security as he had last seen him: battered, cornered, and finally silent. There had been no body presented to Hollis, but his new security chief had used the reassuring vocabulary of professionals—contained, resolved, final.

Hollis had accepted those words because they agreed with his wishes. Somewhere far from the Imperium, however, Lyle Voss still breathed in a room Burton’s assassins had not found, guarded by people who understood that absence could be camouflage.

The secure phone vibrated against the bar. Hollis let it buzz twice before answering.

“Yes?”

A superintendent on the Neptune rig reported that thirty-two crew members had failed to return after shore leave. The remaining hands could not safely cover the control room, drilling floor, cranes, and emergency response. A full shutdown was recommended.

“Recommended by whom?” Hollis asked. The superintendent named the offshore installation manager. Hollis smiled without warmth. “Then recommend that he find his nerve.”

“Sir, we’re below minimum complement.”

“You’re below a number written by a lawyer,” Hollis said. “Keep producing.” He ended the call before the man could answer.

The yacht’s steward appeared soundlessly and refreshed the bourbon. Hollis raised the glass in acknowledgment, pleased by the economy of command: a sentence from a deck in paradise, and machinery hundreds of miles away continued turning.

A second call came from the Atlas platform. Two medics short, a fatigued driller, a failed fire pump awaiting parts. Then the Kestrel: catering staff gone, crane operator refusing a double shift, lifeboat inspection overdue.