Unstable Target: Six Assassins Book 3

by Heskett, Jim

  “I don’t… I don’t understand why you’re doing all this just to offer me a job.”

  “Because, son, you don’t understand how grave the stakes are here. I’m talking about millions of lives. I’m talking about saving the goddamned planet. Am I serious? Of course I am. You have a talent that isn’t meant to be squandered. You could be the hero. That’s the part I don’t think you connect with. I’m talking about them naming hospital wings after you, thirty years from now.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Thomas gave a pitying nod. “I know. You need to start thinking larger and put aside all this childish crap. Forgive me if I’ve come on strong. I’m not talking about a theoretical morality exercise about going back in time to kill baby Hitler. I’m talking about having the son of a bitch in your crosshairs, right now, with your finger on the trigger. That’s the kind of world-altering difference we can make together. You and me.”

  Zach’s head spun. The room shifted. He leaned forward, pressing his face into his hands. He took deep breaths to fend off the nausea.

  “Go home, Zach. I’ve got a flight to Boston this afternoon, so you get a couple more days to chew on it. Then, when I come back, I’m going to need your answer.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  EMBER

  She stared at the screw on the floor, a few inches out of her reach.

  Across the room, Angela gasped and then broke out into tears. “Oh, no, I’m so sorry. I tried to kick it to you. I really did.”

  Ember bit her lower lip. She eyed it, but there was no way she could reach that screw with her hands and feet bound to the pole the way they were. “It’s okay. I don’t want you to worry about it because I’m going to think of... something.”

  Angela bawled, her shoulders shaking. Ember smacked her lips as loud as she could to get the other woman’s attention. She stopped and looked at Ember with a quizzical expression.

  “I need you to stay positive, Angela. If we’re going to see the sunlight again, we have to think smarter. We have to find another way.”

  Ember’s head swiveled around, trying to identify anything within reach she could use to break free of the handcuffs on her wrists and ankles. She could see a little better in the dark now, but too much was blurry. Too far away. Her head still swam with whatever cocktail Quinn had given her to knock her out.

  “Do you know when he’s coming back? Did he say anything before he left?”

  Angela shook her head. “No. I don’t know. I woke up a few minutes before you did, and I’m pretty sure he was already gone. He wasn’t down here, at least.”

  Ember leaned her head against the aging column Quinn had chained her to, then a thought occurred. She pivoted around to look at it. A metal shaft reaching from the floor to the ceiling, with faded and chipped red paint. Paint she could peel off if she scraped the hard edge of the cuffs against it.

  It could work.

  She pressed her handcuffs against the column and pushed up. A chunk of red paint sloughed off like shaving a slice of cheddar from a block. She cut a piece an inch wide and three inches long. The slice fell on top of her palm, and she carefully transferred it to her other hand.

  “What are you doing?” Angela said. “I can’t see.”

  “I don’t have a screw, so I’m going to make one. I need to focus on this for a minute. Be right with you.”

  Ember put the thin slice of paint between her fingers and started to roll it back and forth. She kept working until she’d rolled it into a tube, three inches long and smaller around than her pinky finger. She worked at it more, squeezing one end to harden it as much as possible. Moving her fingers with the cuffs required all her concentration. If she dropped it, this fragile tube could roll away and she’d have to start again.

  Every few seconds, she looked over toward the stairs, checking for Quinn. If he came down here, that would be it. The next stop on the train was Ember's death.

  Today was day seven of his contract, so he had no reason to keep her alive any longer.

  It had to be now. This had to work.

  Once the little cylinder of rolled paint felt as stiff as she figured it would get, Ember turned her wrist over and inserted the tip of the tube into the keyhole in the handcuff. She gave it a little push, but the end broke off.

  “Damn it.”

  “What is it?” Angela asked.

  “I pushed too hard. I don’t know if it’s sturdy enough to trigger the unlock mechanism inside the little hole in the cuffs.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Ember grunted a sigh. “Try again. That’s what I’ll do.”

  She blew in the hole to clear it of paint chunks, then she inserted the tube again.

  This time, she worked slowly, holding it as close to the edge as possible to keep it from breaking. Back and forth, back and forth, working it deeper and deeper. She didn’t know where the tiny latch would be inside the hole, so she tried to move it in a circle to trigger it.

  Her heart thumped, and she tried not to keep checking the stairs, but her internal clock told her she was running out of time. Had to hurry. He could come back at literally any second now.

  The paint tube bent, and she thought if she pushed it any harder, it would snap in her fingers.

  Then the lock clicked.

  “Got it,” she said as she removed one handcuff and flexed her wrist to stretch it. She reached over to grab the screw on the floor, then she uncuffed her other hand and her ankles. The chains fell away, and Ember felt a rumble of nervous elation run through her.

  Angela gasped. “I can’t believe it.”

  “I said we were getting out of here. I wasn’t kidding.”

  Her legs and arms and all her other body parts were sore. She made two aborted attempted before she was finally able to lift herself to her feet. So tired. When Ember stood, the room tilted, and she had to steady herself against the pole after a failed step almost took her back down to the floor.

  “Are you okay?” Angela asked.

  “I’m fine.” She crossed the room, one foot in front of the other, and freed Angela. With the screw as a master key, she had no trouble removing the cuffs.

  The poor blonde hostage stank like sweat and body odor. How long had that bastard kept her here without a shower?

  Ember helped the girl to her feet. They both staggered to the stairs, using each other as support. Ember was woozy, and Angela didn’t seem too solid on her feet, either. They paused in front of the wooden steps leading up to a door shrouded in darkness.

  Angela tried to take a step up, but Ember gripped the woman’s shoulders and shook her head.

  “Wait a second,” Ember said. “I don’t have any weapons. It’s possible we could walk up these stairs and find Quinn already sitting there, waiting for us. This could all be a game he’s playing.”

  “What do we do if we see him?”

  "It doesn't matter what he does. We have to go. We have to get out of here. We have to try. It doesn't matter that we're tired and sore and can barely stand on our own two feet. If you see him, you push your legs harder than you ever have before. I'll be in front of you, holding your hand, keeping you with me. If we get separated, you have to find an exit. You keep your eyes open and look for the way out. Look for a door or a window, or anywhere you see light. Then, you run until you can't run any longer." Ember turned Angela's shoulders, so they were face to face. "But I am not going to leave you, okay? We're in this now."

  Angela gulped as she nodded. Ember noted the younger woman had cute dimples in her cheeks. Maybe that was the reason Quinn had picked her over some other random pretty girl.

  “Okay. I’m ready.”

  Ember helped Angela up the creaky stairs, and they opened the basement door together.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  ISABEL

  Isabel Yang strolled by the water in Meadowbrook Park. Wool coat cinched close, scarf around her neck, a knitted cap keeping her unruly hair at bay for the moment. The late m
orning air felt crisp and cool. It might actually turn out to be a nice day in DC.

  Stones lined the banks of the water to her left. The water level was low enough that it came nowhere close to brushing up against those stones. They sat dry and unused, ready to help keep the path free of floods if it came to that. It often did, in the spring. Not so much past the middle of October.

  This park was far out of the way in DC. Far from Isabel’s home, far from her work, far from the places she might run into any of her colleagues in the FBI. She liked being far away from things there. In the city, there weren’t too many places to walk alone and think. She had to cherish an oasis like this.

  But, with everything on her mind, Isabel had too many threads of thoughts to parse. Yesterday morning, she had spoken to Jacob in New Hampshire, an old-timer who had been around for her earliest days in the FBI then had retired—only semi-willingly—in her second or third year in the Bureau. In that short time, the older man had taken the green Isabel under his wing. He had taught her many things, but she remembered one lesson in particular: knowing who to trust was more valuable than the sum of all the other lessons.

  And now, Isabel knew why. Her boss Marcus Lonsdale had had a semi-public affair with Allison Campbell that had killed his marriage, then she’d gone undercover as Ember Clarke. Ember had now veered off task in Colorado, and the investigation was teetering on the brink. Isabel and Marcus had effectively been keeping it a secret from most people in the Bureau for weeks. Isabel hadn’t fully understood why until now.

  Marcus wanted to sabotage Ember’s investigation. And he would use Isabel to do it. That way, he could accomplish multiple goals at once. Ruin Ember, benefit himself, and place the blame on Isabel for the whole thing exploding. Isabel was an expendable underling, someone Marcus could use to further himself and the unkillable cockroach that was his career.

  As she meandered along the trail and sipped her coffee, Isabel didn’t know what to do with the information. There was no hard proof of Marcus’ deception. She’d seen a redacted document showing Marcus and Ember listed on a disciplinary infraction. Jacob had told her the real story behind it, but that was hearsay. Nothing Isabel could use to definitively link to the current situation.

  If she even blew the whistle to the higher-ups within the FBI, what could she say? Anyone important at the J. Edgar Hoover building knew Marcus by his first name. He either drank, played tennis, or basketball with almost every suit in that building. Not to mention NSA, CIA, the Marshals, even the ATF and DEA. He probably played weekend chess in the park with Secret Service members, too.

  Marcus had always been good at the after-work networking game of knowing which parties to attend. Knowing the right people and getting his name out there. Maybe if Isabel had spent the last several years networking instead of doing actual work, she might have clout on par with Marcus. No such luck.

  She paused in front of the water, listening to it lap against the bank. This part of the park was dead quiet, and she appreciated that. Inside her head was already so loud.

  And then, she saw something in the trees on the other side of the water. A man in a suit, hidden back behind a cluster of green. He was wearing sunglasses, with a coil stuck out from his ear. Isabel only spotted him by the pale flesh of his neck.

  When she squinted and angled her head forward to get a better look, he pulled back into the trees.

  But he was still watching her. Barely visible, this spy was good at his job. But, she still wasn’t sure about him.

  Isabel pointed her feet back along the trail and drank her coffee, making sure that her eyes stayed forward. She didn’t dare look again across the water.

  For two minutes she kept on like this, enjoying a late morning stroll on the path amid the trees. She tried to let her peripheral vision wander, but it was too hard to see anything definite among the trees and shrubs over there.

  Then, she stopped to pluck a rock from her shoe. As she bent down, with her face pointed at the ground, she let the end of her scarf fall forward the shield most of her face. Now hidden, she slid her eyes to the other side of the water. There he was, the same man, concealed in a different set of bushes.

  Isabel was definitely being followed.

  Chapter Forty

  EMBER

  She opened the basement door, and light flooded in like a blast of air from a hot furnace. Both Ember and Angela had to shield their eyes from the sudden change. As soon as she could see again, Ember noted this was not the same house where she had brought the raiding party the other day. She had no idea where they were. But, she had spent somewhere around twelve hours in captivity, since it had been barely after dark when Quinn had taken her. Now it was morning, or maybe afternoon.

  She didn’t have her watch, so she couldn’t know for sure. That also meant she wasn’t getting credit for any of these steps. A bummer, but not a high priority right now.

  “We have to move,” Ember said. But then she remembered the traps from the last house. Quinn had boobytrapped the stairs — had he done the same thing here, maybe in a different location?

  Her vision was still foggy, her feet felt like lead weights every time she planted them on the ground, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to accurately assess her surroundings. If he had left traps for them in case they escaped, they might be as good as dead.

  In that case, we’ll just have to move quickly and hope for the best, she thought.

  The basement poured out into a wide hallway, with a living room on the right and kitchen dead ahead. Another hallway branched off to the left, but it didn’t matter. Ember could see the front door at one end of the living room, past a set of leather couches.

  “This way,” she said, pointing toward the front door and trying to keep the weary Angela on her feet. Her head swiveled around, looking for pressure plates or cameras or suspicious holes in the floors or walls. For the first few steps, at least, nothing got in her way. Her buzzing and cloudy brain made focusing on more than one task a challenge.

  Ember stopped at the closet near the front door and grabbed one of Quinn’s coats, a heavy canvas work jacket, like the kind construction workers preferred.

  “I’m sorry you have to wear this,” she said as she draped it over Angela’s shoulders. “But you’re not dressed for outside. It’s cold.” Angela had been wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants, both of them dirty from however long she’d been wallowing in various basements around Denver.

  Angela nodded, lip trembling. “It’s okay. Thank you.”

  Ember also took a pair of his boots and laced them up over Angela’s bare feet. The former hostage also consented to this, then she stifled back tears and looked at the door.

  “It’s time to go,” Ember said.

  Angela shuddered. “I’m ready.”

  Ember opened the door and a blast of cold made her eyes water. A couple of inches of wet and mucky snow sat on the ground. Seemed unusual for there to be so much snow this early in the season. Ember had only been in Colorado for a few years, but she didn't remember such a cold and gray October before.

  “What do we do?” Angela said.

  “Follow my lead,” Ember said as she eyed a car driving through the neighborhood. Ember hurried down the front porch steps and out into the middle of the street, pulling Angela along with her. Squinting, trying to focus, she concentrated on not mixing up her feet. Breathing the crisp air of the outside world had improved the buzzing her head, but hadn’t erased it.

  Ember jogged at an angle to head off the car before it could disappear onto an adjoining street. They halted in front of the car, driven by an older white woman with silvery hair trapped in a ruthless braid at the base of her skull.

  Ember waved her arms. “Wait, please! We need help.”

  The car rolled to a stop, and Ember moved around to the driver’s side.

  The woman rolled down the window. Her eyebrows clenched together with concern. “Are you okay?”

  "It's my friend. Her boyfriend got violent with
her, and she needs to go to the hospital. Please, he's going to be back any minute, and I don't have a car. Can you take her? She just needs to get away from here as soon as possible."

  The woman eyed Angela, her lips swishing back and forth for a few seconds, indecision on her face.

  Eventually, after what seemed like hours of frozen time, the woman tilted her head to the back seat as she offered a tentative smile.

  Ember felt a rush of relief bloom in her stomach.

  "Thank you," she said as she opened the door and helped Angela inside. Once in the car, Angela's shoulders slumped, and her eyes pointed forward. She was frozen, breathing shallow breaths with no expression on her traumatized face.

  Ember leaned over her and buckled the seatbelt for her.

  Ember said to the driver, “Where are we?”

  “You’re in Denver.”

  “Denver proper, or a suburb?”

  The woman frowned. “You’re in Aurora. Why?”

  Ember ignored the question and helped Angela unzip the heavy work jacket since she could feel heat blasting from the front. She briefly considered telling Angela Quinn's name but decided against it. Hopefully, it wouldn't matter soon.

  “What happens now?” Angela asked.

  “I’m going to kill him. That’s what happens now.”

  Ember watched the driver study her in the rearview with a raised eyebrow, and the assassin angled her head to make her face less recognizable. She stepped back and shut the door, then stood by until the older woman started the car and put on her blinker to exit from the neighborhood.