by Heskett, Jim
Done. Ember had gotten Angela to safety, so there was one less thing for her to worry about.
Ember raced back inside the house and hunted around for her clothes. After sprinting through the living room, she caught herself. Despite her thumping heart, she had to slow down. This house had too many unknowns and she had to be careful. Each step considered, every nook and cranny checked.
Soon, her care paid off when she found a trap: a tripwire at the bottom of the open kitchen doorway. She stepped over it with no trouble. If she hadn’t thought to slow down, who knows what could have happened.
In the kitchen, she found a box sitting on top of the table with her guns, her knife, phone, her watch, and her jacket from last night. Had he hoped she would trip the wire when she saw the bait? It seemed a little too obvious a trap for Quinn's tastes.
It didn’t matter. She had to hurry. Ember retrieved all of her gear and then set out to search the house. No doubt Quinn would be back soon, and she wanted to find the best spot to ambush him.
First, she searched a bedroom on the ground floor. Nothing inside but a room that looked like it hadn't been touched in years. Dust had collected on the dresser drawers. She opened every one with deliberate movements, looking for guns stashed or other dangers. There didn't seem to be any. Maybe Quinn hadn't yet had time to set all that up in this new house.
Next, she headed for the stairs to the second floor, and she noted the same sort of holes along the wall as in the previous house. She went back into the kitchen and retrieved a broom that had been sitting in the corner. Holding it out, she tapped each step going up. When she pressed it to the fourth step, a slew of little darts shot out of the holes, whiffing through the air and harmlessly landing in the living room.
As she ascended the stairs, Ember could smell something not right as soon as she set foot on the second floor. As she approached the first door on the right, the smell grew stronger. It smelled like death. There was something ugly beyond that door.
Ember held a pistol in one hand, then she opened the door with the other.
There, on the bed, was the body of the woman Ember had seen shocked to death in the Night Owl bar, almost a week ago.
Gamma.
Chapter Forty-One
QUINN
Two minutes before, Quinn strolled down the sidewalk, a grocery bag clutched in each hand. As he was preparing to cross the street, his eyes landed on something that made his mouth drop open. It took him almost a full second to process the scene in front of his eyes.
Alpha, in the back seat of some old woman’s car, stopped, poised to turn out onto the major street. The woman was checking both ways, her hands on the wheel, oblivious. Quinn thought he had seen her before around the neighborhood, but he couldn’t be sure.
Alpha’s head turned in his direction. Her eyes shot open with with recognition.
“Alpha?” he said, although she wouldn’t hear him with the closed car window, a hundred yards away.
She scooted over in the back seat to press her hands against the glass as she gaped at him. Quinn’s new work jacket had been draped over her shoulders.
She’d taken his jacket? How was that possible? How could she have even gotten free from her chains in the basement?
This couldn’t be happening. His stomach bubbled like a witch’s cauldron as his heart pumped harder and harder.
He blinked a few times and confirmed Alpha was still there. He considered running, but the car was a few hundred feet away, and the traffic had now cleared. No way could he reach it in time.
The car turned onto the street and drove parallel to his sidewalk. As it neared him, one of those damn brown delivery trucks pulled onto his neighborhood street. Quinn barely registered it out of his peripheral, because the chaos in front of him had stolen his ability to use logic.
As Alpha sped away in the back seat, her surprise turned to scorn and she raised her middle finger at him and bared her teeth.
The rage on her face broke his heart. How could this have happened?
Alpha had escaped? How was this possible?
Ember. Ember had made it possible. There was no other explanation.
As Quinn stopped at the street corner, he watched Ember rush across the street and back into the house. As far as he could tell, she hadn't seen him. She would probably still be half asleep from the heavy-duty chemical cocktail he'd given her for transport last night.
Why was she going back to the house? The wheels in his brain spun, trying to think of how he could twist it to his advantage.
Maybe this could still work. He could treat this as an opportunity. One he didn’t need to take for granted. He had hoped to set up a few more things before springing the trap, but with Alpha gone and Ember on the loose, he was too short on time.
Part of his brain told him to run. To unearth the duffel bag he’d buried two streets over and make his way to the nearest bus station. He still had four or five clean passports to get him out of the country. He still had contacts in South America who could give him a fresh start.
But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t let Ember get away with all she’d done. Gamma, then Beta, and now Alpha, all gone. That woman had stolen everything from him.
Everything. And she had to be punished.
Quinn took his phone from his pocket and dialed the number. He reminded himself of the magic words and took a breath to calm his racing nerves. He wanted to seem frantic on the phone, but not out of control.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
"I'm near Baker Street in Aurora. The house is the blue one on the corner, number 1193. I just watched a brown-skinned man wearing one of those turban things go inside the house. He had red on his shirt. Maybe blood. There is also another woman with him, tall and white, with dark hair. She had something in her hand, like a gun or something. My neighbor is in there, but I haven't seen her in a couple of days. Please. You have to hurry."
“Okay, sir, stay on the line while—”
“Hurry. Please hurry. I think she might be hurt in there.”
Quinn ended the call and thought of how his plan would have to change now. Inconvenient, but still workable. Based on his previous dry-run trials and the fact that the police station was right around the corner, he could expect a response time of somewhere between two and four minutes. But, if the cops didn’t get her, he still needed to be ready.
Chapter Forty-Two
EMBER
The drugged woman stood in the upstairs bedroom, looking down at the dead body of a person known to Ember only as Gamma. In Ember’s three years as a member of the Denver Assassins Club, she had seen worse. Unspeakable horrors committed upon people, both alive, and to their corpses after they had died. But the fact that this dead body on the bed had no name—only an assigned designation—bothered her more than most. She didn’t know why.
Ember knelt next to the bed and considered taking a picture of the woman so she could identify the body later, but it was too risky to walk around with something like that on her phone. This was one she would have to let go. Maybe an anonymous call to the cops on her way out would suffice.
Also, the fact that Ember was lingering here bothered her. A year or a month ago, she wouldn't have stood here, on the verge of tears. Was she getting soft? Were three consecutive weeks of being chased dulling her hard edges? She should have been out the door the minute she had recovered her gear.
She remembered what Charlie had told her once: “You go soft only after you’ve been hardened as hard as possible. After you’ve seen it all. Only then does it really start to get to you.”
She hadn’t really understood that sentiment at the time, but she felt as though she were beginning to now.
Ember stood and cleared her throat, and that’s when she heard the car doors shutting out front. She hopped over to the window and looked down to see three police cars parked in the street, positioned so they blocked the street exit. Uniformed officers poured out of those cars, all of them in tac vests,
carrying assault rifles. One opened the trunk of his car and pulled out the full riot shields, as well as a battering ram. Were they preparing to go up against a terrorist cell on this block?
She regarded the body on the bed. The realization hit her. This was why Quinn had placed her guns and clothes somewhere she wouldn’t miss, to make it obvious for her. Not as bait to trick her into tripping the wire leading into the kitchen; that had been the fake trap, the one she could easily spot. The real trap had been to entice her to stay inside the house long enough for the cops to arrive.
He probably hadn’t intended for her to escape and free Alpha, but he had been prepared for it. He probably hadn’t had enough time to set more traps, so this was his ultimate strategy.
This was Quinn's last move: to frame Ember for the murder of Gamma. But if she were arrested, how would he get to her? He had less than a day to kill her.
Maybe he no longer cared about the contract at this point. Perhaps he would be happy to send her to jail for taking away all three of his precious hostages.
The front door of the house crashed open. Battering ram. No time to stand here and think about it.
Ember sprinted out into the hall. To her left were the stairs down, leading directly to the cops rushing inside. To her right, the short hallway ended in a window. Jumping out of second-floor windows had been a habit for her these last couple weeks, but she didn’t see how she had any other choice. The cops were now hovering at the bottom of the staircase. They would be on this second floor in two or three more seconds.
She zipped up her jacket and pulled the hood tight to shield her face, then she backed out of this room and dashed down the hall. A nearby dresser contained a series of porcelain ice-skating figures on top, and she snatched four of them in a swipe. She cradled them in her left hand and used her right to fling them at the window like ninja throwing stars.
Nothing happened except for the figurines exploding into pieces and falling harmlessly to the floor. Not even a crack.
The window was far too thick and well-made to be smashed by tiny porcelain figures.
She sighed. Going to have to do this the hard way, I guess.
She hurtled toward the window.
Five feet away from it, she heard someone behind her yell. “Stop!”
Ember pressed harder to barrel ahead, focused on the window. She lifted her leg just as she reached it and hammered her foot at the lower pane.
The glass cracked on the first kick. Then, on the second, it smacked apart in large, thick sections, and she roughly kicked a few of the chunks out of the way. It was dirty work, but she knew it would have to do.
She lowered her shoulders to let the jacket’s hood take the brunt of the sharp glass, then she pushed herself through the window. Glass scraped her jacket, her shoulders. A shard cut her nose. Wet blood met cold air. Eyes shut, she tried to keep glass from getting in her eyes as she fell.
She forced her hands tight to her chest as she plummeted through the air. The ground rushed up to meet her. Ember pulled herself into a ball and rolled forward, letting her shoulders contact the hard grass first. Momentum carried her forward, and her back connected next.
The air rushed out of her as her legs toppled over and smacked the ground. Her shoulders, hips, butt, and ankles all pulsed, but she didn’t feel anything broken. Just the cut on her nose and a series of spots that would later become sizable purple bruises.
She creaked open an eye to see two officers peeking out the broken window above her. Ember leaped to her feet, head pounding from a lack of oxygen. Hoodie up, shielding her face from their view. She couldn’t draw a breath.
“Stop right there!” the cops shouted. She heard the rustle of weapons, but she dared not look up to give them a clear view of her face.
Ember raced toward the front yard. Finally, air seeped back into her lungs as she hopped the wooden fence. No cops in the front yard because they had sent everyone in for the raid. They would be back out here within seconds, though.
And then, across the street, Ember watched Quinn duck down behind the neighbor’s fence. He’d wanted to sit by and watch the whole thing go down. Arrogant prick. Just like a sociopath to stand by and watch his chaos unfold.
Ember sprinted across the street, ignoring all of the sore spots across her body and the drug-induced congestion in her brain. She was thankful that the heavy exertion would make it wear off faster, but she was worried that it might not work fast enough.
She made it to the neighbor's property in under a second, then planted a foot in the middle of the fence to vault herself over it. She grasped the top to give herself the final push over.
On the way down, she observed Quinn still there. Why hadn’t he fled?
Her eyes shot to his hand, and now she knew why. He had a Taser gun in his grip. A split second before Ember hit the ground, Quinn shot the barbs into her thigh. Sizzling electricity passed through her body. She felt herself going stiff. Teeth gritting. Tick tick tick tick tick tick.
As she crashed to the ground, groaning in pain, Quinn took off. He raced toward the back edge of this yard, then scrambled his bulky frame over the fence and disappeared.
She worked against the paralyzing energy coursing through her. Forcing herself to rise onto all fours, then pushing up against the ground.
Ember staggered to her feet. Little tendrils of shocks raced all around her body, but she could still move. Shaking hands plucked the tiny Taser barbs from her thigh.
She launched toward that same spot in the fence where Quinn had disappeared. Pain squeezed her insides. She could feel herself slowing—arms and legs like molasses. From a distance, she heard the police shouting, but couldn't make out the words.
Ember ignored all this sensory input as she smashed into the fence and pushed herself over it. Hitting the ground on the other side, she had to blink a few times to clear her vision.
There was Quinn, only fifteen paces ahead of her, jogging along the sidewalk. His long hair had come free of his ponytail, greasy chunks flapping behind him as he ran. She could hear his labored breaths from thirty feet away.
Ember raced to the edge of this front yard. Something crunched under her feet. Her head pounded. She didn't know if she could run anymore. Her body told her to quit. To sit down and collapse under the strain.
Quinn's arms flailed as he ran. He looked back behind him to see Ember, and he grinned, red-faced and wheezing.
She had her guns. She could shoot him. But, in the middle of all this suburbia, attracting attention was one risk she couldn’t take. No, she had to stop him, then capture him, then take him somewhere more private.
But he was still running, with enough speed and a significant head start. She was too exhausted to chase after him.
Ember realized she was in a xeriscaped yard, full of rocks of all sizes. She reached down and snatched a rock as big as her palm. A soft and smooth, oval-shaped river rock.
She tensed her arm and spun like a shot putter. The rock launched from her hand, soared in an arc through the air, and smacked Quinn in the back of the head.
He immediately stopped running and put a hand to the injured spot as he stumbled, hunched over. He staggered to his left, out into the middle of the street.
Just then, a large brown delivery truck turned the corner.
Ember spied the driver, who was looking down. Probably looking at his phone. Driving too fast on these wet and snowy neighborhood streets.
The driver looked up a split second before the front of his truck slammed into Quinn.
Screeching tires, the driver swerved, but it was too late. The truck’s grill enveloped Quinn, contorting his body like a rag doll. He bounced off the truck and landed headfirst on the sidewalk, twenty feet away. When his body hit, he tumbled a few times, then settled flat on his back, legs and arms spread.
The driver screeched to a halt. Ember took a few steps to her left to hide behind a boxy Volkswagen. She ducked down, panting as she focused on Quinn.
H
is eyes were open, flat on his back, mouth agape. Those creepy eyes didn't move. His chest didn't rise or fall. His body was splayed out like a snow angel, still on the pavement.
The driver hustled out of the van and raced over to Quinn's body on the sidewalk. In brown shorts and a brown shirt, panic on the man’s face. His mouth dropped open, his eyes wide and full of frenzy.
The driver sank to his knees, anguish on his face.
"Help," he babbled. He pulled Quinn up by his shoulder to cradle him, talking at a rapid clip, trying to shake him awake. But nothing the driver could do would now help. The man responsible for all the madness and chaos this week was gone.
She felt bad for the delivery driver, but there wasn’t anything she could do to help him now without revealing herself. But what a surprise that guy was in for when he eventually learned about this freak who had died in his arms.
He would go from manslaughter to snuffing out a villain.
It hadn't been the way she'd intended, but the job was done. Quinn was dead. Ember picked a direction along the street and ran.
Chapter Forty-Three
EMBER
The assassin limped up the stairs at her condo building, clutching her side. Jumping out of a second-story window onto hard October grass wasn't how she had intended to spend her morning, but that's what had happened.
Now, on the last day of her third week of a six-week trial by combat, the assassin assigned to her this week was dead. She had six hours remaining in a day when no one currently owned an active contract to kill her. She intended to spend those hours sleeping.
Ember stopped off at Layne Parrish’s front door and peeked into the curtains. Still, lights off, no movement inside. His car had been gone as well. Four days ago, Layne had swooped in and rescued Beta right out from under her nose. Then, without a word, he had disappeared into the night.