LAST MAN STANDING

Three young men meet at the police academy. But, in end only one of them may be left standing.

CHAPTER 1

John Colby slouched in his chair and tuned out the instructors lecture. Pitman had to be the most boring instructor at the academy. He droned on in a dull monotone that was enough to make the most diligent student doze off. And it didn't help that he taught the class on ethics which was dull and boring to begin with.

To stay awake, Colby let his gaze drift around the room at his fellow cadets. There were twenty-two men and two women in their class section. There were four sections at the academy: A, B, C and D, and each section had 25 students. Statistically, at least 5 students from each section would either quit or get booted out of the academy before graduation. In Colby's section, Lopez was a lousy shot and one of the women, Morrison, was too high strung and nervous in Colby's opinion for police work. Matt Stiller had already been dismissed for failing two of his classes.

Colby's gaze drifted over the tall, good looking blond sitting at the front of the room. Ken Hutchinson was out of his element. He looked more like a male model than a police cadet. The poor little rich boy thumbing his nose at his daddy's money and trying to make a point by joining the academy. It didn't help that Hutchinson was a straight A student and always knew the answer to even the most mundane questions. Most of the other cadets called him the "Ice King" behind his back and avoided him. Colby tolerated him because they were roommates and pretended to be his friend.

The truth was John Colby couldn't be bothered to take the time to cultivate a real friendship with anyone. Underneath his friendly, outgoing exterior, he was a cold and unfeeling bastard who used people to get what he wanted. It didn't hurt to have a 'friend' with Ken Hutchinson's connections.

Colby's gaze shifted to the opposite side of the room and a scowl crossed his face. David Starsky was slouched in his own chair, staring at the instructor with a disinterested expression on his face. Starsky was the one cadet that Colby couldn't stand. Starsky was just too damn cocky for his own good. He was nothing but a two bit punk from New York who had used his time in the army and his connections to a decorated and highly respected police sergeant to con his way into the academy.

It didn't help that Starsky was also a handsome bastard who had a way with the ladies. They all seemed to fall in love with his thick dark curls, his flashing sapphire eyes and his rugged features. And he was Jewish which was another mark against him as far as Colby was concerned. Starsky didn't seem to take to the academics very well, but he still managed to keep his grades up enough to pass. Any cadet whose grades fell below a C average was automatically dropped from the academy.

But where he lagged behind in academics, Starsky was at the top of the class when it came to the shooting, the driving and the physical portions of the training. Colby was determined to find a way to get rid of Starsky too one way or the other before graduation. That gave him almost two months to come up with a plan.

Colby forced his attention back to the front of the room as Pitman dismissed the class. The cadets surged to their feet and left the room to get to their next class. Colby fell into step beside Hutchinson, tossing the tall blond an easy grin.

"Man, if ole man Pitman gets any duller, I'm never gonna make it through the next two months." Colby said

"He's not too bad." Hutchinson said diplomatically. "All you have to do is study the book and you can ace the course."

"That's easy for you to say." Colby shot back "That damn book is almost as boring as he is."

"At least you don't have to listen to the book." said Pete Swenson. He was another cadet who had been walking behind them and had overheard their conversation.

"Who asked you?" Colby said with a sneer. He turned his head to shoot a malicious look at the other man. Swenson was one of the cadets who hung out with Starsky which excluded him from Colby's chosen circle of friends. Hutchinson simply smiled apologetically offering no excuses for Colby's rudeness.

"Asshole," Swenson muttered under his breath just loud enough for Colby to hear him before he darted into the men's room.

Colby grinned as the two cadets continued down the hallway to their next class. At least Colby enjoyed this class. It was in interrogation techniques and the instructor was an attractive brunette in her late thirties who was built like the proverbial brick outhouse. Unfortunately she was also married and therefore off limits. Any other time something like that wouldn't have stopped Colby from trying to score with her but he didn't want to mess up his career before it even got started by letting his dick do his thinking for him.

As Colby and Hutchinson entered the classroom, Colby saw Starsky standing in the back of the room with a small group of his friends. The sound of Starsky's laughter made Colby cringe. Another thing that rankled Colby about the brunet was that he was annoyingly poplar with the other cadets. Colby had chosen his acquaintances carefully based on what he could get out of the relationship. Cadets like Starsky and his friends were beneath him.

Colby and Hutchinson settled into their usual seats and waited for class to begin. When it was over, the rest of the afternoon was taken up by calisthenics, self defense training, and two hours on the shooting range. At five o'clock classes were over for the day and the cadets had until ten o'clock that night to spend their free time as they wished. During the week, all the cadets were required to live in the academy dorms but on the weekends, the ones who lived in the city were free to leave the campus and spend time with their families.

Since it was a Friday night, Hutchinson was preparing to leave for the weekend. He was one of the few students in the class who was married. Colby had never met his wife but he had seen her picture. She was a knockout with long brown hair and big brown eyes. Even in her pictures she managed to project the image of class and breeding. The perfect "Ice Princess' suited to the 'Ice King'.

"Your old lady still bitching at you about joining the academy?" Colby asked trying to appear interested as he watched Hutch carefully hang his uniform in the closet until his return Monday morning.

"Vanessa is still not very happy with my decision but she's starting to accept it." Hutchinson said in a distracted voice as he rummaged through his closet for a jacket.

"It's about fucking time. You've been here for six months." Colby said dryly.

"Vanessa can be a very stubborn woman." Hutchinson said in a stilted voice. He seldom talked about his personal life. What little information Colby knew about the man he had learned by conning a pretty little clerk in the admissions office into sneaking a peek at the big blond's file for him. If Hutchinson's family wasn't so well connected, both socially and politically, Colby would never have tried to cultivate a friendship with the man. Not to mention the fact that Hutchinson and a younger sister were the sole heirs to the family fortune. His father was a prominent surgeon with a thriving private practice in Duluth, Minnesota.

Hutchinson wasn't the only man whose file Colby had gotten information from. That's how he knew what he knew about David Michael Starsky too. The information in Starsky's file had only reinforced what Colby had already suspected. The burnet was originally from Brooklyn, New York where he had lived with his parents and a younger brother in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood on the lower east side.

His father had been a uniformed officer with the NYPD who had never made it past the rank of sergeant. He had been killed in a drive by shooting when Starsky was 12. Less than six months later, his mother had sent her oldest son to Bay City, California to live with other family members. When he was 19, Starsky had been drafted into the army where he had spent the next three years as a sniper which accounted for his remarkable skill with a gun.

Colby prided himself on knowing the intimate details of the lives of the people around him. You never knew when some irrelevant information about someone might come in handy. Colby wasn't above using the information he learned to blackmail people if it suited his purposes.

Colby's own background mirrored that of Hutchinson. His father was a prominent criminal lawyer in San Diego. His family had money but not as much as the Hutchinsons. Colby had grown up spoiled and pampered with all the advantages that his father's money could afford. As an only child, his mother had lavished him with her attention and overlooked the flaws in his behavior. She never saw her son's cruel, vindictive side or the side of him that could be cunning and manipulative. If it hadn't been for his uncanny ability to fool people, Colby would never have passed the psychological tests required before being admitted to the academy. For underneath the façade he presented to others, John Colby was a born sociopath with no morals and no conscience.

"Have a nice weekend with the little wifey." Colby told Hutchinson with a smirk as the blond opened the door to leave the room. "Maybe you should just knock her up…give her a kid to take care of so she'll leave you alone." Hutchinson ignored the comment as he stepped into the hall, closing the door firmly behind him.

Colby grinned as he relaxed on his bed with his arms folded behind his head. He knew that he could be as crude as he wanted and Hutchinson's good breeding and manners would dictate that he ignore him. Colby wandered how in the hell the man was ever going to survive out there on the streets. He didn't have what it took to be a cop, at least not in a place like Bay City. Maybe he should do the man a favor and figure out a way to get rid of Hutchinson too. Slowly, an idea began to form in his mind. A way to get rid of them both, Hutchinson and Starsky.