by Heskett, Jim
“You thought I was about dead, bitch,” he said, growling as she felt her Halo knife slip out of her back pocket. He tossed it onto the gravel in front of her.
“I didn’t have time to stop and check.”
“Maybe you should have.”
At the time, Ember had been occupied with bigger concerns, like the war commencing around that shack. And now, it was still going on, but there were fewer bullets cracking the air than before. Probably, most of the people out in the woods of Ace Paintball Colorado were dead. The shooting did appear closer than it had before, though. Moving in this direction like a creeping storm.
Maybe Ember could use some of that to distract Cooper. But he probably wouldn’t fall for the distraction game twice.
“I wish I had time to go into how much you deserve this, and so much more,” he said, his voice wheezy and lacking conviction. He was close to death himself, it sounded like. If she could delay him for another thirty seconds, he might just bleed out on his own. Or he might not wait around. Any second now, the fighting would cross over from the woods to this parking lot. If he were smart, he would open her throat before that could happen.
“Any last words?” he managed to say between labored breaths.
“I do,” she said, then she sprang into action. She snatched at the wrist holding the knife to her throat with her right hand, pushing it away from her neck. Only an inch of space, but it was enough. He apparently didn’t have enough gas in the tank to resist her force.
With her left hand, she reached back and grabbed Cooper by the back of his head. Then with a primal roar, she placed one foot forward and then threw his body weight, flipping Cooper over her and onto the ground.
He yelped as he hit. A solid thud, all his limbs smacking out like a snow angel. His eyes were flaring, his mouth open wide to suck in air. Still, he hadn’t let go of his blade.
But he didn’t stay down. He growled at her, pure evil on his face. Still holding his knife.
Ember reached back for hers, but it wasn’t there. She’d forgotten. It was on the ground, a few feet away.
Cooper pushed himself to his feet, then took one step toward her. He looked down at the knife on the ground, then at his own. “Go for it,” he said, with blood in his mouth coating his teeth in burgundy.
Ember flexed her hands, considering the next move.
A gun blast echoed off the building next to the parking lot. Cooper looked down at his chest, now with a third hole there. He sank to one knee, lips quivering as a look of total confusion consumed his face.
When Cooper hit the ground face first, Ember could now see a guy standing next to the building, pistol raised. She didn’t recognize him. He wasn’t in camo, no paintball marker gun in a holster, no blue dot on an armband. This was a Westminster soldier, one of the invaders coming to annihilate a competing Branch.
The guy turned his face, brow furrowed as he stared at her. “You’re not from Five Points.”
Ember didn’t bother to answer. She snatched the gym bag, and her knife, then turned toward her car. The action had apparently broken his paralysis, because he started shooting at her. The first shot pitched a cluster of gravel into the air, three feet to her right.
Despite her tired legs and weary limbs, a renewed sense of mortality gave her the boost she needed to haul ass across the parking lot. Ember made it around the dumpster as bullets pinged off its metal surface, then she whipped open the door to her car. Her keys were under the floor mat, and she fumbled with bloodstained hands to retrieve them as more shots cracked the sunny day.
The cops and SWAT team would start arriving here any minute, and anyone caught within the grounds would absolutely become a suspect in what was sure to be the deadliest paintball battle in the history of the world.
Not something she wanted to wait around for. She slammed the car into reverse as a bullet cracked her window, pelting her face and neck with glass.
“This is just the beginning!” Cooper’s killer shouted, pointing his gun in the air and firing off a few more rounds. He had a grin on his face, seemingly content to let her drive away, for now.
Ember shook her head to wick glass out of her hair, then she gunned it to exit the parking lot. Panting, dizzy, with cuts and scrapes and bruises all over. The blood of two of her enemies coating her forearms and face and neck. But as she joined the highway, she looked over to the passenger seat. She had the gym bag, and that was all that mattered.
Chapter Forty
EMBER
The exhausted woman parked in front of Fagan’s house. She examined herself in the rearview mirror. Even with all that glass, she only had a couple of abrasions on her face. Her neck was another story. Blood had caked there in patches, and she wouldn’t know if it was hers or someone else’s until she showered and hunted for cuts.
“Money-maker is still okay,” she said to the face in the mirror, trying to convince herself she was fine. It didn’t work. This felt like one of those nights in college when she would stay up studying until midnight, then drinking with friends until dawn, then stumbling along campus to get to class, convincing herself all would be well. Twenty-year-old Ember could barely do it. More than a decade later, certainly not.
She grasped the gym bag and stumbled out of her car, then up to Fagan’s front door. With her jacket still in the car, the cold seeped into her bones, but Ember was too tired to shiver. Before she had a chance to take her keys out of her pocket, Fagan opened the front door.
“Holy crap,” the old woman said. “You look awful. Get in here.”
Ember shuffled inside then walked the gym bag over to the coffee table and gently set it down, then she collapsed on the couch. She let herself sink into it, feeling the comfort of the soft material envelope her. Fighting to keep her eyes open, she watched her mentor cross the room and frown down at her.
“What happened?” Fagan said as she sat in a chair opposite the couch.
Ember pointed at the bag. “Bam is dead. The bombs are in there. Also, looks like war is here. Westminster launched an offensive against Five Points during the paintball game.”
Fagan chewed on this for a few seconds, sitting in silence. “I heard about that already.”
“Word travels fast.”
“Most of everyone in Five Points is dead now. Everyone who wasn’t out of town and therefore couldn’t come to the paintball outing. Maybe twenty total. Whatever the death toll, it’s not good.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“An entire Branch wiped out in the span of a few minutes. I can hardly fathom it.” Fagan tented her fingers for a few seconds, eyes closed, deep in thought. “We should probably have an emergency Branch meeting to discuss this. If sides are being drawn, we need to make sure everyone in Boulder is on the same page. I think we can count on Parker and Golden to remain sane, but Highlands and Westminster will definitely link up and form their own alliance.”
Ember stared at her mentor, the burned woman’s face a wash of concern. And Ember realized, at this moment, she didn’t care.
She didn’t care at all about the DAC’s squabbles. She didn’t care about war, or drawing lines in the sand to solidify Branch unity, or Five Points being eradicated, or the Club’s bylaws, or the Review Board, or her black spot trial by combat. She didn’t give two shits about any of it any more.
“You go ahead,” Ember said. “I need to rest.”
“I see. If you’re not available, I can bring you notes about the meeting.”
“Anything on Gabe?”
Fagan shook her head. “I’m afraid not. But there was something else I wanted to tell you about. I have good news and bad news.”
“Shit,” Ember said, rolling her eyes. “Just tell me.”
“From the skirmish at the motel this morning: Kevin is fine. A few bumps and bruises, but he held his own with no trouble.”
A sigh of relief pushed out of her mouth, and Ember’s lightheadedness reached a new peak. “Good. I was worried about him.”
&
nbsp; “But the man who came to kill you got away.”
“Helmut,” Ember said. “Figures. I’m sure it’s not the last I’ll see of him.”
“We’re available to help, however you need.”
Ember sat up and tilted her aching head left and right to crack her neck. “I’m going to go lie down. That’s what I need right now.”
“Sure, of course. I have to make some phone calls, but I’ll be here if you need anything. Tea will be ready shortly.”
“Thanks, boss lady,” Ember said, yawning as she stood. With heavy feet, she wandered to the guest bedroom and fell like a stone onto the bed. A small and simple room, with a framed World’s Fair Chicago poster and a canvas painting of a flower in a vase. The walls were white, harsh and bright, with sunlight filtering in from a lone window above the bed.
Ember blinked, her body hurtling toward sleep. As soon as her eyes had shut, her phone rang. Ember fished it out of her pocket to see an unknown number on the screen.
“Hello?”
“It’s me,” a deep male voice said, and she recognized it immediately as her neighbor Layne. His voice sounded slow and dejected, not the kind of tone to be the bearer of good news.
She wanted to ask him why he’d been posing as someone else for the last year, down the hall from her. But she didn’t have much room to talk in that department, actually. “How did you get this number?”
“I got it off Isabel’s phone.”
Ember labored to sit up. He hadn’t said he’d gotten the number from Isabel, he’d said he got it from her phone.
“Where is she?”
“I have to tell you a couple things, and they’re all going to be hard to hear. Are you ready?”
Ember’s heart thudded in her chest. “What happened to Isabel? Just tell me.”
“A sniper got her. About an hour ago. She and I were meeting with Serena to talk through our options. One round, a bullet right to the head, from a shooter camped out on top of our condo building. She never had a chance. Serena and I chased the guy, and she actually caught him as he was trying to get over the fence, but he pulled out a pistol and emptied the chamber into his own temple before we could get anything out of him.”
Ember breathed, unsure what to say. Her fingers touched the golden DAC token in her pocket. She pulled it out and turned it over, sighing at it. Was she really gone? Had Layne actually said so?
“There’s something else.” Layne said. “It’s not good news, either.”
Thoughts of Isabel swirled in Ember’s head, and she’d barely heard Layne’s last few words. Her eyes were on the ceiling, watching a line of dust on the dormant ceiling fan. “Huh?”
“I heard about how your friend Gabe was killed last week. And I know who did it.”
Ember cleared her throat and tried to speak, but it came out as a broken whisper. A shivering vibration started in her lower back and then coursed through her entire body. She set her jaw and tried again. “Who?”
“I’m reasonably certain your boss Marcus Lonsdale killed Gabe Jackson. Isabel, too. He wasn’t the sniper, but we think he sent the guy to do it. That’s our best guess, anyway.”
Ember held the phone away from her ear, with Layne still talking. She dropped it on the bed and let her wobbling head fall to the pillow, and then closed her eyes against the world.
Chapter Forty-One
WELLNER
DAY SEVEN
David Wellner had been ignoring his secretary’s phone calls for the last hour. Naomi had left him several messages, and he had checked a few, ignored some, and deleted the rest without listening. Most of the Westminster Branch members had interrupted the Five Points monthly gathering and slaughtered them. Estimates now put the total remaining Five Points membership at seven people. Someone at Parker had launched mortar shells at the Highlands Post Office. Six dead there, at least according to the current death toll. Five Golden members had been found dead a block from their Post Office, but no one knew how Westminster Branch had pulled it off, or why they’d done it.
For Wellner, one thing was certain: war had come to the Assassins Club. The signs had been there for weeks, but only now did it all come to light.
And now, he was drunk at eight o’clock in the morning, in his robe, sitting in front of the fire in his living room. In one hand, he cradled a Scotch and water, in the other, a stack of yellow pages torn from legal pads. He drew the pages one by one and tossed them into the fire, watching each yellow thing crinkle and curl and burn.
A knock came at the door, and Wellner set his drink next to the fire as he staggered to his feet. He had never been a day drinker. Not until the last couple weeks. But he still made his way through the hall without much trouble, and he looked out the peephole to see a man standing on his front porch, holding a brown paper sack of something in one hand.
“Shit,” Wellner said, and he put his hands out to brace himself against the door. Head down, world spinning, he took several deep breaths before he opened the door.
“Morning,” the man said, grinning from ear to ear. “Going to let me in?”
Wellner moved aside and let the visitor through. He stopped in the foyer, looking around. “Damn. Love your house, David. I always have. I don’t know how you manage to keep it looking so new all the time.”
“I don’t use most of the rooms. What’s in the bag?”
“Pork ribs for breakfast. I brought enough for two. Do you like ribs?”
“I don’t do pork.”
The man snorted a laugh. “Right. I always forget about that. More for me, then. I love ribs. There’s something so primal about tearing meat from the bone with my bare teeth. It gets my dick hard.”
Wellner didn’t comment, but he leaned up against a nearby wall for support. His eyes were drooping, his knees weak, and he didn’t know if he had the capacity to hide his inebriation.
“You okay? Smells like a distillery in here.”
“Having a rough week,” Wellner said. “Or month. Or year. I don’t even know.”
Wellner slipped past him and into the living room, where he resumed his task of dropping the pages into the fire.
The man pointed as he came to a stop behind the couch. “What’s that about?”
“These are Review Board meeting notes from the Club Historian. I’m burning them.”
“I’ve never been one to micro-manage, David, but don’t you need those? Isn’t keeping archival records pretty important to how the whole thing works?”
“Yeah,” Wellner said, then stopped himself from saying more. Instead, he picked up another page and flipped it into the crackling fire. His houseguest stood there, hovering behind the couch, frowning down at him.
Wellner pretended not to notice. “Why are you here, Marcus?”
Marcus Lonsdale rounded the couch and sat next to Wellner. He positioned himself at an angle, and Wellner also turned so they could make eye contact. Marcus reached out a tentative hand and put it on Wellner’s shoulder. “I’m worried about you, buddy. Haven’t heard from you lately. Is everything alright?”
“No, Marcus. It’s not alright. I have a feeling… maybe more than a feeling. It seems like darkness is right around the corner. Like every time I wake up, it’s going to be my last day as a free man on earth.”
“Okay,” Marcus said. “I’m going to need you to be a little more specific.”
“The things we did? I think we’re about to get caught.”
Notes for “A History of the Denver Assassins Club”
Part 5 of 6
By Kunjal Anand
Despite the struggles of the “Dark Ages” in the Denver Assassins Club, the DAC survived. The 1970s and 1980s were fraught with many challenges. But because of a strong system of checks and balances and decades of putting the right people in power, no one Branch was able to cause too many problems.
It was not easy, as the records of the era have shown. Many assassins in middle management had to be forcibly removed from their positions when asked to
give up their powers. Many difficult Review Board meetings ended in the execution of members who refused to see the ultimate goal of unity over personal glory.
Then in 1989, a severe blow hit the Club. The man known to our history as “Unger” finally succumbed to his illness and passed away. To this day, the nature of the illness has not been confirmed.
By the time of his death, the Review Board had been functioning well for many years. Unger no longer held any official position of power within the DAC. But as a figurehead, he had become all-important.
With his passing, many thought the Club would fade and disappear, or devolve into civil war. But neither possibility happened during those years after.
The 1990s were another decade fraught with difficulty, although not in the same manner as the dark ages. Now, there were no publicized wars. The battles in the DAC became increasingly political and less bloody. According to some, this made the in-fighting more acrimonious. It’s easier to fight a demon with a face than one without.
The Review Board government’s operating procedure changed many times in the intervening years. Small tweaks designed to increase efficiency. Positions were added and removed, the bylaws were amended several times. Certain people took power and perverted the rules to benefit themselves, rather than the greater good. Others worked to undo these selfish changes, and the DAC often came out the other side having benefited from outlasting would-be tyrants and usurpers.
By 2005, to anyone not paying close attention, the Club seemed to have collected itself and found a way to function without issue. But like the duck moving gracefully above water while chaos reigned below, not all was well. The DAC President was assassinated in 2008. The bylaws were changed in 2011 to financially benefit Parker. As the custodians of the Club archives, some feared they had gained too much power. The occasional backroom political wheeling and dealing of the 1990s had become the new norm, and the average member had little insight into where the Club was headed.