by Heskett, Jim
“I appreciate that.”
“There’s more truth to tell, if you want to hear it.”
He paused, breathing. Five seconds of silence elapsed, then ten. “I don’t really want to have any more surprises. Not right now, at least.”
“Okay. That’s fair.”
She had a hard time reading his expression, mostly blank, a little bleary, confused and angry.
“Do I call you Allison now?”
“Ember. I’m not that other person anymore. I will tell you more whenever you’re ready to hear it. Right now, I have work I have to do.”
“Of course,” Zach said, looking out the window at a family dragging suitcases into the airport. He was still too hard to read. Why wasn’t he saying anything? Why wasn’t he yelling, or crying, or storming away from the car in disgust? Why was he still sitting here, all quiet and flat?
Ember felt a sinking in her stomach. She was losing him. “I have to deal with this. There’s a guy who’s north of Boulder at the moment, and he’s planning something. He’s got bombs. I think he might try to hurt people, and I need to go stop him. I’m already late.”
“What am I supposed to do now?”
“Get on a plane. Go anywhere. Text me when you land, and as soon as this is over, I’m going to come to you, and everything will be different. Everything will be normal, but I have to do a couple things first.”
“Normal,” he said, again in that unreadable and musing tone.
A car honked behind them, wanting their prime real estate in front of the airport entrance. Zach put a hand on the door release and eyed her, then he sighed at the sliding glass doors leading into the east terminal.
Chapter Thirty-Five
COOPER
Cooper Broyles checked his shoelaces one last time before he ventured into the woods. The last thing he wanted before sending a spray of red paintballs into the chest of his opponent was to trip over his own damn feet.
He was dressed head to toe in camo. He had a top of the line Tippmann A5 marker upgraded with a fourteen-inch barrel to shoot a hellacious fifteen balls per second. He was kitted out to perfection and raring to go.
He stopped at the east end of the field with eleven other Five Points members in blue arm bands. His earbuds were inserted into his ears inside his helmet, music blaring, so he was keeping an eye on his teammates since he wouldn’t be able to hear the starting whistle. He lifted a hand and waved down the line and received several head nods back.
His jaw was set, his eyes wide, despite the cold air seeping in through his clothes. The gloves on his hands were a size too small, but the tightness gave him more confidence in his trigger finger.
Somewhere out there on the western side of the woods were a dozen guys in red armbands. Every other day of the month, they were his brothers and sisters at Five Points. But today, they were Red Team, and he wanted to annihilate them.
Cooper needed this. It had been a terrible week. One of his best friends Tanner had died at the bottom of a damn swimming pool, stabbed and choking to death on icy water. That insane woman Ember Clarke had been responsible for it. Five weeks ago, Cooper and Tanner and their friend Elias had been hired by Westminster sniper Xavier Montrose to rough up Ember in a parking lot outside the Westy Post Office. Because of what she’d done to Niles, they had gladly agreed. After that, it became personal. Ember had broken Elias’ collarbone by stabbing him in a parking garage in Boulder. Tanner had gone after her a couple weeks ago in Parker and she’d wounded him, then finished the job the other day when she drowned him at the pool by Bam’s apartment.
Cooper still carried the scar on his cheek from when she had sliced him in the parking garage. He hoped to get a chance to pay her back some day. If Bam didn’t kill her in the next two days, maybe Cooper would take his chance, trial by combat or not.
The line of people to his right moved, and Cooper had to assume the whistle had blown. He hunkered down, raised his marker to eye level, and set out. A few of them paired off when they separated, but Cooper wasn’t interested in that. He wanted stealth. He wanted clean “kills” he could chalk up to his tactics alone. Few things in the world were more exhilarating than getting the drop on fools to drench them in lime green paint.
He saw a tall person dart between two trees, and he nestled against the nearest trunk to provide cover. He ducked around and saw a red armband on a camo-clad man, facing the other direction. The guy was stopped low, elbows out. Maybe he was listening for something.
Cooper raised his marker and throttled the trigger, sending a volley of paintballs. They peppered the ground, the tree, and a few smacked the target in his legs and back.
The guy spun around. “Son of a bitch!”
Cooper barked a laugh and raced in the opposite direction before his opponent decided to fire back. Regular paintball rules were out the window today. It was all about who had the most and least paint over the course of the day.
Cooper hustled, putting distance between him and the other. A few hundred feet ahead, he dropped down into a foxhole so he could make better time to reach toward the western section. Probably, a lot of them were still near their starting point, playing a “guard the base” sort of strategy. Fine with Cooper. Easier for him to take them out in bulk when they were clustered.
The foxholes had the advantage of cutting off anyone expecting to snipe from above, since there were many elevated positions and the foxholes kept you cleanly out of view. But there were twists and turns in these subterranean paths, and you never knew who you might meet around the next corner. Friend or foe, with only a split second to know the difference before the paintballs would splat.
He tried to keep his breathing even and calm, since he didn’t want to fog up the visor on his helmet. It was quite cold out here this morning, and every breath plumed in front of his face like a cloud of smoke.
Cooper turned at a bend in the foxhole and noted a flash of camo moving at the edge of his vision. Marker up, finger on the trigger. The foxhole path ended at a T-junction, and this person had been moving from left to right.
He hustled forward, ready to shoot at the first sign of a red armband. When he reached the intersection, he peered around the corner and observed something strange. A smaller person, likely a woman, and she had on no armband at all.
They had rented out this facility for Five Points for the entire day. There weren’t supposed to be any civilians here. No referees, either. So why was someone skulking around in a foxhole without an armband? It didn’t seem likely that someone would have either forgotten to put one on, or had any reason to take it off once the game had started. There were no “independents” out here on the field of battle today.
The figure turned down the path, and Cooper decided to follow.
* * *
EMBER
With the mask on, Ember had a hard time breathing. She wasn’t used to encasing her head in a plastic prison. Did they actually provide much protection? She’d never been hit in the head with a paintball before; maybe this heavy thing was necessary.
The green and brown camo outfit was fine. Itchy, not very stretchy, but workable. The mask, though, cut her peripheral vision to almost nothing, and if she breathed through her nose at all, the visor fogged up instantly. But with the gear on, no one could tell her apart from the other couple dozen insane Five Points members running around in the woods.
She wished her Branch had thought to do this group activity instead. It looked like a lot more fun than a monthly Branch brunch. What better way to blow off steam than to run around the woods and shoot a bunch of people with no consequences?
Through the foxhole, she had her sights set on a particular structure near the main hill in the center of the park. There were about a dozen buildings scattered here and there, ranging from cinder block bunkers and shacks to a couple of smaller lean-to contraptions designed to provide cover.
In the twenty minutes she had been here, Ember had investigated four of them. All four had been little mor
e than temporary shelters to provide cover fire scenarios. She had seen no closets, no trapdoors, no hidden ceiling panels. No place that would make a good hiding spot for multiple bombs.
But they had to be here. She had already searched Bam’s car in the parking lot. She had searched the lockers inside the main paintball complex building. Nothing fruitful uncovered yet. He had to have stashed them out here in the woods somewhere, to keep them close by.
Ember rushed through the foxhole and surfaced near one of those smaller shacks. She found herself opposite a trio of camo-wearing guys, with a precious couple of seconds of surprise on her side, since they hadn’t noticed her yet.
She lowered her paintball gun and held down the trigger. She was surprised how quickly it spent the ammunition. A stream of pellets ejected from the end, blasting the ground and trees with lime green paint. She missed the three of them but it didn’t matter. They hadn’t seemed too interested in her, as they ran off to the east, not even looking in her direction before they hustled out of range.
One thing she noticed was that they were all wearing armbands with a blue dot. They must have divided into teams. Since Ember had no blue dot, or dot of any color, that meant she was at risk if anyone noticed. Better to keep on the move. Too bad none of her previous intelligence gathering had clued her in to this team designation method. A little late now to worry about it.
Ember couldn’t stop to catch her breath. The shack in front of her wasn’t her destination, but she figured she should check it while close. At least it would be a spot to stop and take cover while she could size up the situation.
A doorway with no door led into a single room structure with four walls and windows. One closet up against one wall caught her attention. None of the other buildings she’d checked had closets.
For the first time today, a promising lead out here in the woods.
Ember pulled off the helmet, taking in a deep breath of frigid air. Sweat on the back of her neck cooled in an instant, giving her a shudder. She thought she knew what Darth Vader felt like now, trying to breathe inside a plastic cage around his head. No wonder he was so angry all the time.
Ember set her paintball gun thingy on the floor and approached the closet. She opened the door to find blankets on the ground. Carefully, she lifted one and found exactly what she had been looking for underneath. Three bombs with detonators, sitting on the floor, lined up next to each other.
“Finally,” she mumbled.
But they didn’t look armed. She pursed her lips and lifted one, turning it. No ticking, no vibrating, no cellphone or LED panel with a countdown. Was Bam just storing them here? What was he planning to do with them, if they weren’t armed right now?
A footstep echoed behind her. Ember whirled around to find a tall man darkening the door of the shack.
“I don’t believe it,” he said. He pulled off his helmet, grinning at her. One of the three guys who had come at her in the parking lot over a month ago. This was the one who had pulled a knife on her in the parking garage the second time, the one she had slashed in the face on her way out.
He still had a slash on one side of his face, and he pulled out that same large knife, holding it up to the light.
“Ready to finish what we started?” he asked, sneering at her.
Chapter Thirty-Six
EMBER
“I’m not here for you,” Ember said, trying to keep the man’s eyes locked on hers as she snaked her hand toward the Microtech Halo knife in her back pocket.
She recognized him. This was the bastard who killed Charlie. “What’s your name?”
“Cooper. And I don’t care why you’re here, because you’re not going to do whatever it is you came to do. You killed Niles in October. You drowned Tanner just the other day. And you broke Elias’ collarbone, which put him out of commission for over a month. Whatever you’re doing here, it doesn’t matter anymore. Whatever reason you thought you would infiltrate our paintball game for means nothing. You’re mine now. It’s time you got what you deserved, and I’m going to enjoy the hell out of watching you bleed.”
“Is that so?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Where’s your pistol?”
“You think I want all of your cronies rushing in here at the sound of gunshots?”
“I could just shout and accomplish the same thing.”
“Try it.” Ember’s thumb and forefinger touched the edge of her Halo, jutting out of her back pocket. Cooper held his knife high, a pointy and serrated hunting thing, large enough to take down a bear. it looked like it still had some crusty, dried blood from the last time he’d used it. It was an arrogant choice, the choice not of a trained professional but of a neck-bearded basement dweller who spent too much time on angry internet forums.
But Ember didn’t mind. She had a pretty big knife of her own.
As they stood ten feet apart, eyes trained on each other, Ember heard a rising commotion outside of the shack. She dared not look, but she could have sworn she heard the sound of a real gunshot. Much different than the ticking blasts from a paintball gun. Another came soon after, louder and closer this time.
Cooper’s head tilted a fraction of an inch toward the open window, drawn by the same sound. His eyes narrowed, squinting out into the daylight to spot the source.
Ember took her chance. She rushed forward, drawing the Halo and pressing the button to reveal the blade. She narrowed the distance to five feet in less than a second.
Cooper reacted, seemingly surprised Ember had made such a bold move. He moved his right foot back, exposing his midsection as he raised the knife with the tip pointed at her. He looked ready to thrust forward.
Ember changed her angle, leaning a step to her left, away from the blade. Cooper tried to adjust and pivoted his frame toward her. But this now put his center of gravity in a weird position. He had left a wide open chunk of torso vulnerable to attack. She had to move fast, before he realized his mistake.
One more step. Ember leaned back, moving her upper body away from his blade while also thrusting her knife arm low. She sliced across the leg of Cooper’s pants, tearing open the fabric and drawing blood underneath from his upper thigh.
He grunted and tried to adjust by swinging his arm, but he was still too far back. He missed, and now his arm was out of the way. His body was bent, pointed the wrong way to slash at her again without readjusting his posture.
Ember jumped in and raised her left arm to block Cooper’s knife hand while thrusting forward with her right. She jabbed her Halo into his stomach. At first, he didn’t react to the wound. With all the adrenaline, he might not even know he’d been stabbed yet.
Cooper’s arm came down, his forearm bumping into Ember’s raised forearm. She tensed her arm to withstand his downward force, took her other hand off the Halo, and plucked the hunting knife from Cooper’s hand.
She then plunged it into his chest as her Halo hovered for a split second and then fell toward the ground. In one fluid motion, she snatched her weapon again in midair, flipped it around, and then shoved it too into his chest, inches away from his own blade.
Cooper’s eyes shot open, now with two sizable holes in his front. He gasped for air as he stepped back, foot over foot until he bumped into the window. Mouth working, eyes open, like a fish on dry land trying to breathe.
He looked down at the knife hilts sticking out of his chest. He put two hands on his blade, tried to grip, but then his hands fell away. Grunting, Cooper sank to his knees as his eyelids fluttered.
He fell forward, crashing to the ground. Ember plucked her knife from him, wiped each side on his jacket, then retracted the blade. She took the colored armband from off his arm and slid it on her own. Cooper was on his side, still breathing, but unable to move. His life was rushing out of him in a tidal wave of red, spilling out onto the floor of the cabin beneath him. His eyes were open, bloodshot, but dimming.
Endorphins had flooded Ember’s senses, but now she thought she had heard more gunshots. Real g
unshots.
Quickly, she searched Cooper for a gun. He didn’t have one. Hers were back in her car, and maybe now was the time to retrieve them.
“Damn it. This is about to get ugly.”
Ember gripped her knife and stepped through the door of the shack, out into the open. Yes, there were real guns going off out here. She had walked out into a war zone. There were guys in camo with red and blue armbands running around, but they weren’t shooting paintballs at each other any longer. Their paintball markers were now littering the ground, abandoned in favor of more lethal options.
Because there were also at least a dozen unfamiliar people on the scene. Guys with assault rifles and shotguns, chasing after the Five Points members, who were mostly armed only with pistols. This didn’t seem like a fair fight.
She hid behind a tree as a cluster of six of these new people swept across the woods, hanging tight to each other, weapons up. They moved like an elite tactical unit, only firing when they had a target in their sights. So far, at least, they hadn’t noticed Ember, taking cover off to the side. She was not in their path, so she held tight until they passed.
Ember recognized one of the new arrivals as someone from Westminster Branch. This wasn’t part of the game. This was an invasion. This was the beginning of a war.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
ISABEL
The FBI Agent stood behind the grocery store, next to Ember’s condo building. The sun was shining this morning, but it was still cold enough to make her shiver. She tapped her foot and flexed her hands inside her coat pockets to keep blood moving around. The cold wasn’t the worst of it, being out here. The constant sense of dread felt much worse. Her mind raced and she couldn’t seem to stay focused.