Unstable Target: Six Assassins Book 3

by Heskett, Jim

  Unless, of course, he didn’t do that.

  There was no law that said he had to kill her. He could simply acquire her and add her to his stable. After all, it seemed fair. She was the reason Gamma was no longer with him, so it seemed like Ember owed that to him.

  Of course, people in the Highlands Branch would be mad. His mentor would give him that same stern look he always gave whenever Quinn messed up. But, they wouldn’t kick him out of the Branch, or anything like that.

  Or would they? Probably not.

  And, even if they did, would it be so terrible? He loved the DAC, but the Club was headed for a civil war, anyway. President Wellner seemed to be losing control. Too many untrustworthy people among the Branches. Too many power-hungry opportunists looking for ways to capitalize.

  That’s what happens when you put two hundred lawless killers in a group and expect a bunch of flimsy bylaws to keep them all on their best behavior.

  Quinn sighed and pressed against the door, closing his eyes and resting his weight against it. He had a lot to think about. Too many unchecked items on his primary task list for him to waste time worrying about what would happen with Ember days from now. In a few hours, things would change. Things would slow down. And then, he could spend time waxing philosophical about what to do with Ember Clarke.

  He paused to sneeze, and he then ducked down to look at the glittering wet spot on the door where he had ejected the contents of his nose. Quinn squinted, looking for anything moving in the wetness. The other day he’d sneezed and had a seen the glint of metal, maybe a tiny piece of a microchip. But he’d been in the shower and it had washed away too quickly to know for sure.

  He saw nothing irregular this time.

  Quinn opened the door into his playroom. Alpha and Beta were down there, recovering from the drugs he’d given them for the move. Alpha was on her side, her hands above her head, chained to the hook on the wall. Beta was sitting up, her head nodding forward. She was handcuffed to a piece of metal welded to the floor. Her eyelids fluttered, trying to fight the forced sleep that had made her docile for transport.

  Quinn crossed the room to her and knelt down in front of her. “Good, you’re awake.” She mumbled something, and he was feeling charitable, so he unpeeled the duct tape from her mouth.

  “Where are we?” she asked, her head dreamily swaying on her neck.

  “You’re home, my darling.”

  Her eyelids drooped. “I’m hungry.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry about that. I know lunch is late, but I have a couple of things I have to do before I can worry about feeding you and Alpha. Not too much longer, though.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, my dear Beta, it’s time to get ready for the next big show. In just a few hours, it’s going to be your turn to be the star.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  EMBER

  Ember crossed the parking lot toward Gabe’s apartment. He lived in a building on Valmont Road in Boulder, the kind place that had been around forever, where everyone knew someone who had lived there at one time or another. Nearly three years ago, Ember had briefly dated a cute-but-boring CU professor who lived in the building, so she knew it well.

  When she saw the blue car parked in the lot, she noticed the two men inside it. One white and one Asian, both with shaved heads and mirrored sunglasses. They might as well have had “feds” tattooed across their foreheads.

  Ember pretended not to study their faces as she strolled across the parking lot. While it would be incredibly unusual for her to randomly run into someone she knew from DC, it wasn’t impossible. Especially after Isabel Yang had been so insistent on intruding at least once a week lately.

  So, Ember did her best to keep her face pointed away from the two in the car so she wouldn’t blow her cover. She stayed like this across the lot until she started up the metal and concrete stairs. As she ascended the exterior staircase to the third floor, she got a good look down at them. As far as she could tell, these two were not among the spiderweb of people she knew from Washington.

  Still, she didn’t like that they were sitting outside her recruit’s apartment building.

  Ember marched down the hall and knocked on the door to Gabe’s apartment, and he opened the door within a few seconds. He was getting better at knowing when someone was close. Good. But, he stood there, wearing the same robe he had since she had been here yesterday. Not looking too sharp at the moment.

  “Please tell me you’ve showered since I last saw you,” she said.

  “Yes. I was napping. I didn’t sleep good again last night. This is my comfort robe. Like comfort food, but it won’t wreck my cholesterol.”

  She entered the apartment and shut the door behind her. “It sucks that you’re not sleeping. When I’m short a few hours, I know it can obliterate my whole day. But what we witnessed in that bar… it was messed up. There’s no doubt about it.”

  Gabe nodded. “Yeah. And I’m sorry about Bryan. I know you guys were friends.”

  Ember sighed through her nose and gave him a nod, trying to shove down all the feelings that wanted to spill over the top. “Thank you. But did you know there are some g-men sitting in a car in the parking lot outside?”

  “Mirrored sunglasses in a blue sedan?”

  “The very same.”

  “They’re pretty obvious about it, right? There’s a guy on the first floor who is a big-deal dealer; mostly Molly and other club drugs. They’ve been watching him for a few weeks, actually.”

  “Ahh, that makes sense. I thought maybe they were here for you.”

  Gabe let out a morbid chuckle. “I would be pretty surprised. I’m extremely careful at home.” He wandered off into his kitchen, where he opened the fridge and took out a pitcher of purple drink, then held it up. “Kool-Aid?”

  "What are you? Ten?"

  “I like Kool-Aid. I make it with artificial sweetener, so it’s not like I’m drinking pure sugar.”

  “Ugh,” Ember said, pretending to retch. “Kool-Aid with fake sugar? You’re not doing a good job selling it.”

  Gabe shrugged and poured himself a glass. “Fine, then it’s more for me. What can I do for you?”

  “I want to show you something,” Ember said as she took out her phone.

  Gabe held up a hand. “I know you just came back from raiding Quinn’s place. If you have pictures or video of another woman dying in some terrible way, I don’t want to see it.”

  “It’s not that,” Ember said, swiping along her photo album. “I shot video of Quinn’s house. Or, maybe not his house but what he was using as a headquarters. He’d fled by the time we got there, but he was definitely there at some point.”

  Gabe led her out in the living room and took her phone. He sat on the couch and watched the video, squinting down at the little screen. Ember had shot a quick walkthrough of the major rooms of the house.

  Gabe frowned and held the phone close for the duration of the two-minute video. A grimace did cross his face when Ember surveyed the basement with its abandoned handcuffs and grimy mattresses on the floor. The implication was enough to upset, and Ember didn’t want to stress Gabe, but she had to keep in mind how important and time-sensitive this situation was.

  “What do you think?” Ember said once the video ended. She stood over Gabe, arms crossed, tapping a foot on his carpeted floor.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it.”

  “Clues. Anything. I need a second set of eyes on it, and you’re good with this stuff. If Quinn’s 'two days, free shipping’ warning was legit, then I only have a few hours left to find the next victim.”

  “Send it to me, but I can’t promise anything. Maybe I can export the audio and run it through my program, but I can’t promise it would be any faster this time.”

  Ember opened the video to share it with Gabe, but then the screen changed as her phone rang. An unknown number, just like the last two times Quinn had called. She held up a finger to silence Gabe as she strolled into his kitc
hen to answer it. “Hello?”

  “Don’t bother trying to trace this call,” Quinn said, “I won’t make that mistake again. I would be angry, but I have to applaud your creativity.”

  She noticed his voice sounded different. He was filtering it through some sort of software to lower his pitch. “Okay. I won’t trace it.”

  "You found the house in the wrong way. I left you a different clue you didn't even notice. I thought I was being terribly obvious, but I've been known to misjudge these things before. But it doesn't matter. You brought a team to the house, so you failed. That was a test, and you failed, Ember Clarke. And it was pointless, wasn't it? I'll bet you didn't find a single stray hair or fingerprint anywhere inside, did you?"

  “You killed one of my colleagues, you bastard.”

  “No, Ember, you did that. You did that by bringing a half dozen of your Branch along with you. You should know by now that what we have is private between us. Involving other people is only going to spread rot and decay in this situation. But, like a child, you think the rules don’t apply to you.”

  A pang of guilt struck her. Quinn had a point. If she had gone into that house solo, she wouldn’t have had to focus on managing everyone, and she would have seen the trap on the stairs. Maybe she wouldn’t have found anything useful, but her colleague would still be alive.

  “What do you want, Quinn?”

  “If you don’t come alone this time, then the girl will die a horrible death. Is that what you want? Do you place no value on the lives of civilians?”

  “No. I will come alone. But I don’t know where to go. Tell me.”

  “You didn’t find the clue in the device? Free shipping? I thought I made that one so obvious that even you would see it.”

  All at once, the realization hit Ember like a baseball bat to the head. A rush of adrenaline coursed through her body. Free shipping. It was so completely transparent now, in hindsight.

  Just around the corner from the Night Owl bar was a brand new building. A shipping facility built by a giant retailer, but the company hadn’t yet filled it with workers. It was sitting there shiny and new. Free shipping. A massive warehouse-like space free of anything inside it.

  “I know where to go.”

  “Good, good. Now, let’s see if you can follow orders this time. Remember: it’s still on the table that if you beat me, I’ll let you put a bullet in my head, no questions asked. So far, you are losing terribly. I was a little worried when I made that deal with you, but now it seems like a no-brainer.”

  The call ended, and Gabe looked up at her as she rejoined him in the living room. “Where are we headed?”

  “I don’t think so. I need to go alone this time. After what happened at the house, I can’t take any chances.”

  “Doesn’t that sound like you’re doing exactly what he wants you to do?”

  Ember sighed. “Maybe so, but I don’t have a choice. I mess this up, and someone else dies.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  ZACH

  Zach stood outside the door to the Firedrake lab north of Fort Collins. He checked his phone to see a new message from Ember, and it brought a smile to his face.

  Come see me

  Zach opened the messages app to reply and found his fingers shaking as they hovered over the keyboard. Another sign of the low and persistent anxiety coursing through his veins, making him toss and turn at night, killing his appetite during the days.

  Zach: I wish I could. This week is crazy. I have two tests coming up and have barely had time to study.

  Ember: studying is overrated. Find someone to cheat off of. Bat your eyes at some pretty girl, and she'll let you copy. Just don't sleep with her. That's not part of the deal.

  Zach: if sleeping with this hypothetical pretty girl is off the table, what do I offer in exchange for letting me cheat off her?

  Ember: massage. Above the shoulders only.

  Zach: Hmm. I’ll look into it.

  He locked his phone and sighed. Not being able to tell Ember the extent of his troubles was killing him, but he didn’t know if it was a good idea. He had told her a little bit last week during their hiking date, but not about the planted child pornography. The situation was so serious and odd that it all felt surreal. How could he even explain it?

  What if he told her and then that dragged her into this mess?

  All of that would have to wait for later, though. Zach was about two minutes away from being late for work.

  He opened the door and first checked to his right to see if his boss Thomas Milligan was in his office. He wasn't, which made Zach so relieved he felt lightheaded for a moment. Thomas came and went like the wind, sometimes here for days in a row, sometimes gone for two or three weeks at a time. Zach always had a better day when Thomas wasn't here.

  The simple fact of Thomas sitting in that little room, silently watching, put Zach on edge. It seemed to put everyone on edge. Maybe that was why no one liked to engage in small talk, and everyone quietly shuffled out the door when their shifts ended.

  There were half a dozen others in the lab, including Wanda, the one coworker he’d been friendly with at times. Since he was on an afternoon shift, he hadn’t expected to see many other researchers here.

  Wanda was at her workstation, pencil scribbling over a notebook. She looked up at Zach and frowned, then lowered her head. The older lady had been weird like this for a few days now. He considered strolling by her desk to chat since Wanda was the only one of his peers who had ever bothered to engage with him. But, the quick look away told him she was busy.

  Or something else. Many in the room usually offered furtive glances when challenged with eye contact.

  The bathroom door at the back of the room opened and out stepped Thomas' boxy, buzzcut "driver" Helmut. The European man with the odd name who wore slick suits never spoke. Allegedly, Helmut didn't speak English, but Zach had heard him whispering to Thomas before. Zach hadn't eavesdropped on purpose, because there was no reason Zach would ever want to stand within spitting distance of that intimidating European man.

  With a newspaper tucked under one arm, he shut the bathroom door behind him and gave Zach a subtle sneer before crossing the room. His dress shoes clacked on the floor. Helmut eyed each person as he wandered along the aisles to Thomas’ office, then entered it without a word to anyone.

  Zach couldn't ever remember seeing Helmut here without the boss. Not once. What purpose could he serve aside from standing there, looking frightening, lording over this room full of nerdy and harmless researchers and chemists?

  Zach marched over to the login computer and noticed something strange about it right away. There was a device sitting next to the computer, a plastic box in the shape of a cube, with a small panel on the front. It plugged into the computer via USB.

  Zach leaned over and studied this curious little box, then realized the panel was for a thumbprint. Since when did they need a biometric scanner on the login computer?

  He turned around and met Wanda’s eyes, and she lifted a hand with her thumb extended, then she wiggled the thumb at him. Zach nodded and gave her a wave to let her know he’d already figured it out.

  So, this was something everyone knew about. It’s not as if Thomas had sent out a memo explaining the new procedure. Zach had a feeling if he asked Helmut why this was here, he would be greeted with opaque silence as a response.

  He logged in, including letting the little box scan his thumb. But he didn't like it. He didn't like that his biodata was now stored on a server somewhere, with no way to know who had access to it. Zach had not given consent.

  After, he cinched his backpack straps down onto his shoulders and made his way over to his workstation, but he stopped at Wanda’s first. “Hey.”

  She looked up at him, frowning. “I don’t really have time this afternoon, Zach. It’s good to see you, but I have a lot to do.”

  Zach flicked his eyes toward the office, where Helmut was sitting in Thomas’ chair, his face lit up by t
he glow of his phone screen. “What’s going on there?”

  “Nothing. Nothing is going on there. You shouldn’t pay attention to things that don’t concern you.”

  Zach burned to talk to Wanda. He longed to tell her about trying to look up Draconis at the library and being asked to leave, then finding the planted child porn in his kitchen. But, Wanda had been so weird lately. Maybe she wasn’t the confidant Zach had hoped for.

  But, he had to talk to someone. These secrets were burning a hole in his mind.

  “You should get to work,” Wanda said.

  “Right.” Zach gave her a nod and strolled past, then he dropped his backpack at his workstation and opened the cabinet containing his microscope. Across the room, Helmut stood and grabbed the office door as he held his phone up to his ear. Helmut’s eyes followed Zach all the way until the door closed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ISABEL

  Isabel Yang sat on the patio outside Illegal Pete’s burrito restaurant on Pearl Street. The sun was setting behind the mountains to the west, and a chill had descended, but she wanted to sit outside. She wanted to feel the cold. The dry quality to the air here made it a pleasant sort of cold, unlike the shivering east coast weather, which Isabel had experienced most of her life.

  So many thoughts ran through her mind; she barely had time to stop and categorize them all. Most of all, she kept thinking about the redacted report she'd found in Marcus' office, and whether or not it had been a good idea to keep that information from Ember. She thought about Ember telling her to look at Marcus. There was something going on with the two of them, no doubt, for each to point at the other as the source of information.