Vendetta Target: Six Assassins Book 5

by Heskett, Jim

  “Gotcha,” Ember said. “I appreciate what you’re doing there, but this isn’t about that. We need to ask you about something to do with Five Points.”

  “Sure, shoot. I don’t mind talking about my time as one of them.”

  “The monthly paintball game. What can you tell us about it?”

  Kevin shrugged, with a hint of a smirk on his face. “It’s like madness. If they were using real guns, they’d all be dead in five minutes.”

  “I assumed so,” Ember said. “Anything tactical you can tell me about the grounds or how the game will go? They’re going to meet at Ace Paintball in Hygiene.”

  Kevin frowned. “Ace? I’m not familiar. When I was a member of Five Points, we met somewhere else. It’s been a long time since I attended one of those.”

  “Shit. That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

  “You planning on crashing the party?” Kevin asked.

  Ember nodded. “Something like that.”

  “All I can tell you is this: don’t think because they’re running around with fake guns out there that you’d be safe to sneak around and be invisible. If you cover yourself in camo, with a mask and a hood? You might go undetected for ten or fifteen minutes. But believe me when I say every single one of those bastards will be ready and waiting for something to go wrong, for an intruder to lynch. Plus, they’ll have some members sit out of the game just to provide security for the others, since they’ll all be exposed.”

  Ember and Fagan shared a look as the possibilities ran through Ember’s brain. She hadn’t expected it would be easy. But maybe she should also consider the fact that it might be a one-way death trap.

  Chapter Thirty

  ZACH

  Zach leaned back to stretch. Unfortunately, the chair in the business center had no give to it, so the stretch was not productive. Deeply unsatisfying. He positioned his hands over the keyboard again and sighed. His research into the possibility that Ember Clarke was actually Allison Campbell of San Diego had hit a dead end. Never before had he found two people who had such sparse and unhelpful social media histories. Virtually nothing about either one of them online.

  Plus, every time he opened that box, he felt guilty. If Ember had been born someone else and then changed her name, maybe that wasn’t his business. There could be any number of reasons why she had changed her name.

  But he couldn’t help thinking that maybe she did owe him answers.

  They were dating — and had been — for over a month. She knew all sorts of things about him. If she was someone other than who she said she was, didn’t he deserve to know?

  There were many strange things about her. He had never believed she actually worked in “consulting” as she’d said. So far, she had dodged any attempts to get real about herself. Up until this point, Zach had been able to focus on his feelings for her as a shield against the possibility she could be lying to him. He had indulged in her attention and their pleasurable banter and extended make-out sessions. He still felt a nervous rush any time she smiled at him.

  But that wouldn’t last forever. Maybe with his life in turmoil right now, embarking on a relationship wasn’t the best idea. Especially with all these question marks.

  At the moment, he couldn’t make any decisions. His brain felt mushy.

  On a whim, Zach typed in Wanda Franzen into the browser’s search engine. According to Thomas Milligan, Wanda had accepted a job to come work at the Firedrake home office outside of Sacramento. At the time, Zach had been too freaked out to think about it. He was too busy worrying about what Helmut would do if Zach decided to flee from that bench out in front of his advisor’s office.

  The ancient desktop computer churned through the search query, and the results trickled along the screen. The first news result at the top of the page made Zach’s jaw drop.

  RANCHO CORDOVA - Wanda Franzen, originally of Trinidad, Colorado, died in a car accident at the corner of White Rock and Fitzgerald on Tuesday of this week. Ms. Franzen had been driving a green Kia Sorento, and upon making a right turn, swerved to avoid hitting a pedestrian on a sidewalk after a motorcycle ran a red light. She is survived by her daughter Elise and her sister Candice.

  Zach sat back, his heart thumping. It didn’t make sense. If she was making a right turn, why would a motorcycle running a red light cause her to swerve? Was the motorcycle coming up behind her? He tried to visualize it, but the choreography of the scene didn’t add up.

  Of course, Zach had a better idea of what had actually led to Wanda’s death. She’d taken the job at Firedrake, just as Thomas had said. But then, what happened after that? Did she get there, find out about the failsafe project, and figure out their plan? Did she demand out of her job contract? Did she threaten to tell someone about what was really going on in that lab?

  Zach still didn’t know himself what was going on in that lab. He didn’t want to know.

  An unsettled queasiness rumbled around in Zach’s stomach. Partially because he had a strong suspicion he would never find out what happened to Wanda. The only way to get answers was to accept the job offer, and he had no intentions of doing that.

  Also, he thought about the fact that he hadn’t told Ember about the meeting with Thomas. He’d told her about going back to his apartment, but not about the job contract. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to worry her. Maybe it hadn’t seemed like a big deal. But now, knowing Wanda had died, the whole thing seemed like a monumental deal. Yet another reason to get the hell away from these people.

  Zach stood, eyes on the monitor. He moved the mouse over to close the tab and then picked his jacket up from the back of the chair and slid it on. Aside from the upset stomach and a lingering drowsy feeling leftover from an unsatisfying afternoon nap, another feeling ran through him he couldn’t quite name. Like dread, but also mixed with guilt and confusion.

  He left the business center and walked back toward his room, eyes down, hands deep into his jacket pockets. But a few feet from his door, he saw a pair of skinny legs in jeans sitting on the hood of a car.

  Zach looked up to find Ember sitting there, a hopeful smile on her face. There was something different about her, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  “Hey, baby.”

  “Ember?” he said, only miliseconds before he felt stupid for saying it. Of course it was her. This wasn’t a dream, and he didn’t think he was hallucinating. “I didn’t know you were coming by.”

  “I wanted to surprise you. Can we talk inside, though? I’m freezing my buns off out here.”

  “Sure, sure,” he said as he took out his keycard and held it against the door. He opened it wide for her and she strutted inside.

  Immediately, she dropped her coat, revealing a tight purple sweater on underneath. Form-fitting and damned sexy. He also noticed she was wearing makeup, or, at least, more than usual. Skin-tight black jeans, black belt with a silver buckle. She was drop-dead gorgeous and looked ready for a night of clubbing, not an evening of hanging around a drab motel room.

  She smiled at him again, looking a little bashful, a little mischievous. Her crystal-blue eyes twinkled against her black hair. There was something on her face Zach had never seen before. A little bit of danger there, sparkling in her eyes.

  “What’s going on?” he asked as he shut the door behind him.

  “I’ve been neglecting you. I am so, so sorry. You deserve the best in the world and I’ve been too distracted lately to give that to you. I get too overwhelmed too easily, and then I always have trouble figuring out how to balance all the important things in my life. I’ve always been that way.”

  For a brief second, he thought she was going to break up with him. Something about how her “work” was keeping her too busy for a relationship right now. It’s not you, it’s me, plus a whole teary-eyed spiel about how things could have worked out if the stars had aligned in a different way. He almost cringed, feeling it arriving like a speeding train.

  But she didn’t say any of that. She sashayed a
cross the room toward him, her hips swinging left and right as she walked. “In my head, I’m a much better girlfriend. Like, on paper. In reality, I haven’t been delivering, and I want to make it up to you. I want to be a better girlfriend for you.” She stopped in front of him and put her arms around his waist, then leaned up to kiss him on the neck. “Will you let me make it up to you?”

  Zach’s mouth dropped open. The question was on his lips: are you Allison Campbell?

  But he didn’t say it. He stood there, feeling a little lightheaded, blood flowing, heart racing, and he readied himself for what would happen next. Very different from what he thought would happen fifteen seconds ago, but he liked this option much better. He was ready for it. He wanted her.

  Her hands snaked down to his butt, pulling him closer and giving his cheeks a hearty squeeze. Without a word of hesitation from either of them, his fingers leaped to her belt, unbuckling it, and then he peeled her jeans down to the floor.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  WELLNER

  David Wellner came to a terrible conclusion. One he had not wanted to see, not wanted to know, not wanted to admit. He stumbled along a hallway in his house, his four fingers of whiskey splashing out over the sides of the glass. His third. But no matter how drunk he got, he couldn’t seem to pass out. At almost midnight, he should have been asleep by now. But his mind raced along with his heart. The alcohol only disturbed his motor functions and did nothing to calm his thoughts.

  He opened the door to his home gym, a room that might as well have been a museum. When he had built this house, he hadn’t been as thick as he was now. Back then, he still had dreams of slimming back down to the weight he’d been at in his twenties and early thirties. Now, he looked upon a treadmill, stair-stepper, stationary bike, and free weights. Cushioned mats on the floor and mirrors on the walls. Maybe it was the mirrors that bothered him the most of all. He didn’t want to look at a chubby piece of garbage panting on a bike every day, with rings of dark sweat around his neckline and armpits.

  Now, Wellner crossed the room and flicked on the light. He eyed himself in the mirror, wobbly, vision a little blurred.

  “How could you have got it so wrong?”

  He’d come to realize, finally, that Jules Dunard was not the scheming and spiteful woman he had assumed. She hadn’t been out to unseat him from power. She hadn’t been orchestrating secret meetings with people from the DAC government and Branches to make Wellner look foolish.

  No, he had done an admirable job of that all by himself. There was likely no truth to the rumors about her dealing cocaine, either. Starting a drug cartel inside the DAC? Ludicrous. Sending that Boulder Branch member to kill him in the parking garage two weeks ago? Jules hadn’t done that. The hit had been exactly what the man had said it was… a disgruntled assassin out to make a statement by killing Wellner.

  Jules wasn’t at all who Wellner had come to think she was.

  Or, maybe she was all those things. Maybe from the beginning, she had been gaslighting him and Wellner had been too stupid to see the truth for himself.

  Either way, he didn’t know, and acting as if he had all the answers had launched him toward his current predicament.

  But it was too late now. The wheels had turned. He had tried to have her killed. Jules had to know it was him, and that’s why she hadn’t said anything about it to the other Board members. Not with him present. No, sooner or later, she would call an emergency session of the Board without him, and they would use a process outlined in the depths of the Club bylaws to remove him for gross incompetence.

  And nothing he could do would stop it. It seemed no amount of salesmanship or clever planning could prevent the ship from sinking into the water. Or could it?

  He could kill Jules. He could drive over to her house, tonight, and shoot her in the head. But if she now had bodyguards, could he even succeed at something like that? And if he swallowed his distaste and did the deed, would it be enough for him to regain his tenuous hold on the Board itself?

  No, he had to dissolve the Review Board. It was the only way to salvage this situation. But again, did he have the authority to do that? Even if there was a loophole mechanism in the bylaws allowing it—which he didn’t know—would they obey him, as erratic as he had been lately?

  Without a Board, he would have to form something else immediately. A new type of governing body, with people chosen by him. People he knew could remain loyal. It would be a hard sell to certain Branches. Some—like Highlands, Westminster, and Golden—wouldn’t care, as long as the flow of contracts stayed undisturbed. But Boulder, Parker, and Five Points would rebel. They would not accept Wellner as dictator, forming the government in his own image, even if he was doing it for the long-term benefit of the Club.

  “They’re already rebelling,” he said to his reflection. “The toothpaste is out of that tube.”

  Wellner left the exercise room and stumbled back into his living room. He sat on the couch, staring into the fire pit in the middle of the room. Crackling, popping, the logs at the bottom glowed orange like magma.

  “This is how it ends, isn’t it?” he said.

  War was coming. The Branches were fighting, and those fights would escalate to all-out insurrection soon enough. One of them would come out on top. That Branch would take its most senior members and put them on the Board. Hell, they might even forgo the Board and the entire government and form six separate Clubs, and then it would be back to the early days of squabbles and ceaseless conflict.

  No matter how it turned out, Wellner would be done. He didn’t see any way around it.

  And then there was Ember. Poor Ember, sentenced to six consecutive weeks of contracts. Sentenced to die by her colleagues. What would she think if everyone discovered Wellner had been lying about the black spot this entire time?

  Not if, actually. More like when. It was only a matter of time. Wellner knew it, and there was nothing he could do to stop the flow of information now.

  Wellner had come to a terrible conclusion. He wasn’t a good guy, and all of this had been his fault.

  How would everyone in the Branches react when they found out he knew that Ember and Niles were going to be in Rocky Mountain National Park at the same time, both trying to go for the same contract?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  EMBER

  DAY SIX

  Ember shifted under the covers and her arm landed on Zach’s chest. She probed a little, exploring his chest hair. It felt warm. Zach was a safe place to be at the moment, young and vibrant and full of passion. Calm and comforting, two things she hadn’t experienced in a while. Not since Gabe died, and before that, too. Maybe long before that.

  He stirred and blinked open his eyes, a goofy grin on his face. “Good morning.”

  “Morning, sexy.”

  “When I was in high school, I used to have a fantasy about finding some hot divorcee in the neighborhood and becoming her pool boy. You know how the rest of it goes.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not that much older than you, jerk, and I’ve never been married.”

  “Come on. Just let me have this.”

  “Okay, fine. You sleep well?”

  “Yes, actually. First time in a while.”

  “Me too.”

  He cracked a smile. “Then we should have started doing this weeks ago. I don’t know what we were waiting for.”

  She feigned shock. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

  “No?”

  She gasped and smacked him on the chest, but they both chuckled. After a couple seconds, the laughs faded, and they stared at each other. Blank, uncertain, afraid.

  Ember didn’t know what she was doing, exactly. It would have been an understatement to say she was playing it moment by moment, not only when it came to Zach. Last night had been an impulse to come see him at this motel. With a toothbrush and a clean pair of underwear in the glove compartment of her car, she had set out to make sure Zach knew how she felt. Had she accomplished it?
Judging by the satisfied look on his face, she had to assume so.

  She took his hand and laced her fingers through his. “I had a great time with you last night.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You deserve someone who will be there for you every single day.”

  “Not this again,” Zach said. “When you gave me this speech yesterday, I thought you were about to dump me.”

  “I’m not going to dump you. I just need you to know that I plan to be better. I plan to give you everything you want and need, despite what it looks like. I haven’t been great at being your girlfriend these last few weeks.”

  Zach rubbed sleep out of his eyes. “We have plenty of time to be good to each other, starting right now.”

  “Things might get worse before they get better. For me, at least. It’s going to be a busy couple weeks, then all that should be over. You probably don’t want to hear that, but I don’t want to sugarcoat things.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. It’s okay.”

  Ember kissed him and then sat up. “I’m starving.”

  “I could eat. There’s a diner across the street that makes a solid breakfast burrito. A little heavy on the green chile, which isn’t my thing. But every food item in Colorado has to be smothered in the stuff. It’s state law, right?”

  Something shifted outside the window, and a pulse of fear ran through Ember. By instinct, her eyes moved around the room, searching for her twin Nighthawk Enforcer pistols. But they, like her spare toothbrush, were in her car.

  Again, a shadow moved outside the door. Ember pointed her ears, trying to cut through the silence. She could hear muted traffic on the street outside, but nothing closer than that.

  “Zach, you need to get dressed.”