by Heskett, Jim
“Sorry about the weather,” Yousef said. He grimaced up at the flakes cascading down, falling on the covered pool and the tennis court.
Gabe opened his mouth to respond, trying to decide which of the stock any-city-in-America retorts to use. It’s ok! Just wait five minutes, or eh, I’m used to it. Instead, he opted for silence.
The building’s giant rectangle frame stood six stories tall. The interior courtyard was a few hundred square feet located centrally to the rest of the building. From what Gabe could see, the rooftop that lined the edges of the courtyard spread about fifty feet wide on all four sides. If he wanted to access the building without anyone seeing, that seemed like the best way. Up the exterior, across the rooftop, and then down into the courtyard. Although it seemed like the long way around, he was much less likely to encounter resistance than if he tried a straight-on approach of breaking into a door on the ground level.
They were alone out here in this open space. Not too many people wanted to play tennis with several inches of snow predicted to fall this evening and overnight.
“I hear a big storm is coming,” Gabe said.
Yousef brushed snow off the shoulders of his suit. “We cannot control what God tells the skies to do, I’m afraid.”
"I don't mind. Hazard of living in Colorado, I guess." He inwardly kicked himself for resorting to using that bland nugget.
Yousef gave a contemplative nod. “Yes, indeed.”
“Are you, like, a hospitality guide? What do you do for the Branch, Yousef?”
“Guide? Hah! No, not at all. I am a bookkeeper, and I also work in Intelligence.”
“Is that so?”
Gabe now noticed that a couple of security guards had materialized across the courtyard. Large men in dark suits, both with matching yellow ties. Then, a third appeared. They spread out, each one marching to station themselves at different corners of the courtyard. But, their eyes stayed on Gabe. Not in a menacing way, as they kept their hands clasped in front of their waists. But, Gabe got the notion he was supposed to feel their presence.
"Yes," Yousef said. "It is so." He turned, so he was facing Gabe. "At the Golden Branch of the DAC, we value our privacy and security with immense care. Immense. It is one of the core values of anything we do."
“Okay.”
“That includes visitors and potential recruits to our Branch. You would not be standing here if we had not verified your identity.”
“Okay, sure, well, I told you my name. I don’t have anything to hide.”
"As you say. We conducted basic research only. We know who your mentor is, and we have an idea of why you are interested in speaking with us. I believe you supplied a false answer with this ruse about defecting to a different Branch."
Gabe noticed Yousef’s tone had gradually darkened, and the shorter man looked up at him with suspicious eyes. But, the corner guards had not yet moved.
"But I am defecting.”
“Mr. Jackson, there is no need to insult my intelligence. We are all adults here.”
Gabe studied the man's face and decided to set out the truth. Or, a version close to it. "Look, I'm just trying to find a member with the initials RHF. I need to talk to that person, and then I'll be on my way. If you're not interested in talking to me, maybe there's someone in your HR or Personnel department who could help me."
Yousef scowled. “I don’t think that will be an option. Yesterday, you somehow managed to bypass our security and get yourself to the third floor of our building. No one is allowed on the third floor without permission or an escort. If you were a civilian and had done what you’d done? The consequences would be grave.”
“I was looking for—”
“The bathroom, yes. I know that is what you said. But let’s drop the charade, Mr. Jackson.”
Gabe now noted there were six security guards in the courtyard, all of them spaced out. Still standing at ease, though. He pointed back toward the lobby. “Look, if you don’t want to tell me who RHF is, I can just go.”
“I think that would be for the best. Let’s not waste each other’s time any further today.”
Gabe pivoted, and as he did, he noted a set of metal rungs—like an unfinished fire escape—leading down from the rooftop to the interior of the courtyard. They were bolted to the wall. It was as if they had started to build a ladder from the rooftop, but then had given up ten feet into the project and left the remaining fifty feet to complete later.
The partial ladder wouldn’t get him full access to the courtyard, but it was a good start.
As Gabe marched away, Yousef said, “Do not come back, Mr. Jackson. Your request to join Golden Branch has been denied. Have a good day.”
Gabe thought about flipping the guy the middle finger, but he resisted the urge. No need to antagonize them, especially since he intended to sneak back in and infiltrate this damn place.
Chapter Twenty-One
EMBER
DAY FIVE
Ember pulled herself up in the bed, wincing and groaning against her injuries. As far as she could tell, Veronica had not broken any of Ember’s bones in the earlier baton assault. But she felt sore up and down the left side of her body. Yesterday’s throbbing and continuous ache had turned into today’s muted bursts of pain only when she moved.
Still, she rolled out of bed and took a few laps around the room, trying to keep her muscles from tightening. The thigh hit had given her a limp. The injuries to her midsection made moving her arms a challenge. These laps were painful enough to make her jaw ache from gritting her teeth, but Ember thought it was important to stay loose.
It did seem as if she had exhausted all of her chances to escape. For some reason, though, her mind kept open the possibility.
Ember sat down in front of the closet with the shiny metal box. She had been over and over this little contraption for hours during the course of her luxurious four-day stay at Veronica’s Five-Star Concrete Resort. The box didn't appear to have any weaknesses. No way to break in.
Ember leaned back until she was prone, staring at the ceiling, feeling the hard floor press back against her. Maybe keeping the door to hope open was a foolish waste of time.
“This is it,” she said.
Her last week on the planet. When Ember had opened that slip of paper with the black spot from the Review Board, she figured she might last for a week. Maybe two, depending on who they’d intended to send against her.
After three weeks done and three assassins fended off, Ember had started to think maybe she could do this. Maybe she could last the whole six weeks.
But no longer. Ember had been on borrowed time since day one, and the lease was almost up. She’d been sloppy and had paid the price, and the options whittled down to zero.
Veronica had trapped Ember in an impossible situation. There was no way to escape this room, as long as Veronica had control of these damn magnet cuffs. She was too well trained and experienced to allow a situation where Ember could get the best of her. Especially now that she had tenderized Ember’s meat with that baton.
Veronica’s response to Ember’s lack of cooperation had escalated, which meant the next time Ember attempted something, it would likely be the last. Veronica had been delaying the final punishment for some reason, but Ember knew there was a time limit: Veronica had a week, with a finite number of days within.
Prior to yesterday morning’s pancake incident, Veronica would bring the meal tray downstairs, holding onto the key fob thing as a precaution. But, for lunch and dinner, she had pressed the button before she had even opened the door, rendering Ember powerless. Then, Veronica dropped the tray on the floor and marched back up the stairs. Only then did she relax her grip on the button. How was Ember supposed to fight against that?
Today was day five. Whatever Veronica was waiting for, she didn’t have much longer to delay.
If Fagan or Gabe or anyone from Boulder Branch knew Ember’s location, then they would have come for her already. Ember would even accept help fr
om Isabel Yang, at this point.
Ember stared at the metal cube as memories of Isabel floated through her head. Cloudy, uncomfortable memories. They hadn’t known each other long. And, for the bulk of their relationship, Ember had been ignoring this new FBI handler. As to why she’d done that, Ember still wasn’t sure.
Something had happened. During the two-plus years she'd lived among these assassins, something had changed within her. Ember had heard all the horror story clichés about undercover cops, FBI agents, and CIA officers becoming sympathetic to their faked causes as a result of prolonged exposure. If you hated country music but listened to it all day every day for two years, soon enough, you'd start thinking about belt buckles and pickup trucks.
But, this wasn’t a case of Ember falling in with white supremacists or domestic terrorists and then mimicking their twisted beliefs. No, Ember finally saw these assassins as people. That's what had happened. Yes, there were bad people in the Club. There were people who killed purely for money without any regard for the ethics and morals of doing so. But there were good people, too. There were people who didn't take on contracts that conflicted with their personal code. There were people who did good things by doing bad things.
Once Ember saw them as humans capable of acting according to a defined set of scruples, everything changed for her. Part of her still felt like an undercover FBI agent, still collecting intelligence and noting the details of colleagues, keeping track of anything that could contribute to a future case.
But, part of her felt distant from that, too. And so, when Isabel showed up at her apartment and told Ember she had to make a choice, Ember still didn’t know why she’d decided to push the FBI away and choose the DAC.
It didn’t make sense, really.
Maybe if Ember had chosen to go back to Washington with Isabel Yang, things would be different now. Or, perhaps she would still be in cuffs — just in federal custody instead of private custody. She wasn't sure which she preferred. At least in federal prison, they wouldn't try to assassinate her at the end of each week.
But in private custody, at least she had a reasonable chance of escape. Maybe.
Eyes closed, she breathed until her lungs were full as she pondered the futility of hope.
The door opened, and Ember sank to her knees out of reflex. It would only make the coming magnetic torture session easier. She would end up on the floor, no matter how hard she tried to fight it.
But, as Veronica descended the steps, she did not trigger the device. Ember watched her come around the bend in the stairs with a food tray hoisted up on her fingertips like a server at a restaurant. She gripped the key fob in her other hand, finger on the button. The days of her carrying it nonchalantly were long over.
“Are you going to behave?” Veronica asked.
From her spot on the floor, Ember gave a compliant nod and shifted to sitting cross-legged. Her hip bruise screamed at her as she did, but Ember kept her face neutral. She didn’t want to give Veronica the satisfaction of seeing her discomfort.
“Is today the day?” Ember asked.
Veronica shook her head. “Not yet. You’re going to have an audience. Someone else affected by what you did.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what that is?”
Scowling, Veronica delivered the meal on the opposite end of the room. She'd opened her fingers to release the tray a few inches above the floor, so everything made a clanky rattling sound when it landed. "You ain't figured it out yet?"
“No. I know you think I did something, and I know you’re super-pissed about it. Pissed enough to construct a lair like a James Bond villain, so it must be a pretty big deal. But I have no idea what it is. Did I steal a recruit you had your eyes on? Did I step on your toes with a contract, or something like that?”
“Not exactly. When you found out your little brother had been murdered, how long did it hurt for?”
Ember pursed her lips. She had no idea Veronica knew about that, because Ember had told only select people in the Assassins Club. “It still hurts.”
“Right. Maybe now you’ll understand. You took a contract in Memphis, about a year ago.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific. I’ve been to Memphis a few times.”
“This contract was a slipped-through-the-cracks type of kill. I don’t know if you call them that, but I do. A citizen wanting justice for someone getting away with a terrible crime.”
This was starting to sound familiar. Ember had a memory of landing at Memphis International, scoping out a target at some industrial building. She remembered tracking this person to her home and slipping in through an open window in the laundry room. Then, waiting until she fell asleep and injecting her in the neck with a cocktail to paralyze her muscles and stop her heart. She could picture all that, but not this woman’s face, or name, or what she had done to warrant the contract. So, Ember held her tongue and waited for Veronica to continue.
“The job came from a young mother who had been involved in a hit and run that killed her husband and infant daughter. Remember now?”
Ember nodded, but still said nothing.
"You flew to Memphis, and you took out this woman who had gotten away with killing a baby. You set it right for that widow. But, you made a major mistake."
“What mistake?”
“Did you ever have that woman’s name? Your target?”
Ember shook her head. "I had a description and a photo, place of work, and her work schedule. I followed her home after I found her."
“That’s what I thought. Did it never occur to you that there might be two half-black, half-Latina women working in the same shipping distribution center?”
Ember felt her stomach sink. “Wait. What are you saying? Are you saying I killed the wrong woman in Memphis? Who did I take out, if it wasn’t the right target?”
“You killed my sister Zoe, you careless bitch. My sister, who never did nothing wrong to anyone, is dead because of you. Because you can’t tell two-mixed race women apart when they’re wearing the same blue loading dock uniform.”
Ember’s jaw dropped. Could this be real? Had she accidentally killed an innocent person in Memphis? The magnets were off, but she felt her limbs being pulled toward the floor anyway.
“This can’t be right,” Ember said. “I would have heard about it. If the job had gone as wrong as you say, then it would have gotten back to the Board, but there were never any disciplinary hearings. Not a word.”
Veronica stared, with ice in her eyes. “I made it go away before anyone else found anything, so only I would know what you did. I wanted my own justice.”
Ember’s mind swam, thoughts firing a million times per second. Ember had a strict policy against killing innocents. She always took extreme care to cause no collateral damage.
Had she really done this?
“Our brother is trying to get a flight. We talked about it, and he wants to be here when you get what’s coming to you. There’s a big storm on the way to the Front Range, so I’m not sure when he’s going to arrive. But you will know when it happens, November Clarke. And there ain’t a thing you can do about it. Zoe will have justice.”
Veronica sneered at Ember, panting, saying nothing.
The prisoner watched out of her peripheral because she couldn't bear to meet Veronica's eyes.
“Enjoy your damn eggs,” Veronica said, then she spun and stomped back up the stairs.
Chapter Twenty-Two
WELLNER
David Wellner paced from one end of the line to the other. He stood opposite two members of Five Points and one member from Westminster. All three of them were tied to chairs in this little interrogation room in the basement of the Holdings building.
Chairs, a table, and a disabled security camera. Nothing else to clutter the space.
Two of Wellner’s recently expanded bodyguard team were also here, hovering in the corners of this small concrete room. The concrete was for soundproofing. They’d replaced the previous
walls about five years ago because the neighbors down the hall—the building’s maintenance staff—had complained about the noises of those being interrogated in here. That had been before Wellner’s time as President, a little piece of trivia he had been privileged to learn when his predecessor had stepped down. One of many secrets Wellner had come to know since working his way up through the government of the DAC.
It was a messy and unpleasant business, securing the privacy and sanctity of the Denver Assassins Club. But one that was a necessary evil at times.
Wellner stopped in front of the Westminster member, a young man with a trio of slashes above his left ear. Scars that prevented hair from growing there. They looked like racing stripes.
“I will ask you one more time,” he said, holding his hands behind his back, “why were you meeting with Jules Dunard that night, the one on the video I showed you?”
The kid spat blood on the floor, then he sneered up at Wellner. “I already told you. Vice President Dunard wanted to pitch us a kind of youth program. Like ambassadors, because we’re all under thirty. Whatever you think it is, it’s not that. This is a total witch hunt.”
One of the Five Points guys cleared his throat. “She came to us about forming an inter-Branch team. She said she wanted us to start it. A way to keep the Branches from fighting by having a 'young face' to keep people on the same side.”
Never had this concept of a “youth ambassador” program ever come up in Review Board meetings or in any conversation with Jules. If she had actually been planning this, Wellner felt certain she would have shouted it from the rooftops. She was never one to do anything without receiving the proper acclaim.
Wellner continued skulking from one end of the line to the other, back and forth. He was surprised how little anxiety he felt in the moment. There was a strange sense of calm between his ears that he didn’t quite understand. The last time he’d done this, he had nearly peed his pants several times in the first ten minutes.