by Heskett, Jim
Final Target
Six Assassins Book 6
Jim Heskett
Nick Thacker
Turtleshell Press
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
Notes for “A History of the Denver Assassins Club”
THAT’S ALL, FOLKS
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Chapter One
EMBER
WEEK SIX - DAY ONE
The assassin ached down to her bones. Weeks of full-throttle teeth-grinding and shoulder tensing had left her with a body that needed rest more than anything. But, rest was a commodity currently in short supply.
She was already accustomed to a crazy schedule of red-eye flights and working against the clock. She had no problem facing danger around every turn, either. “Work,” for Ember, was synonymous with danger. But the last five weeks of her life had been the most hectic, the most perilous, and somehow, the least rewarding. Too many bodies had been left in the wake of this trial by combat. And not only from the five assassins who had so far come at her unsuccessfully. There were other victims, caught in the undertow of the irresistible current of the Denver Assassins Club. Charlie. Gabe. Isabel. Real friends of hers, gone forever because of stupid politics and infighting.
The Branches were at war. Five Points had been essentially obliterated by Westminster, literally massacred on a figurative paintball battlefield. Golden and Highlands—two Branches most had thought aligned—were engaging in open skirmishes against each other, as of yesterday evening. She’d read police reports that chalked up a brutal standoff and shootings to “gang-related activity,” but when a few of the coded names of the deceased appeared below, she knew it was really an inter-Branch conflict.
No Branch was untouched by the fighting. Everyone had suffered losses. Avoidable losses.
How many dead so far? Eighty? Ninety? Nearly half the DAC gone.
And what was David Wellner doing about it all? From what Ember had heard, he’d been missing in action, holed up in his house with a bottle of bourbon clutched in his arms. Of course, that was hearsay and assumption, because no one had firsthand knowledge of his whereabouts. If there was a plan to halt the violence and curb the chaos, Ember hadn’t heard it. As far as she could tell, all the grownups had disappeared, and the toddlers were now running the daycare.
Ember Clarke gripped the steering wheel as she watched the park from her spot on the curb. She was in Broomfield, at the same little baseball field and playground park where she had tussled with Quinn Voeller a few weeks before. The same park where that psycho had buried himself underground to surprise her. When Gabe had made a valiant attempt to rescue her after Quinn had disabled Ember to take her hostage.
This mid-November morning, however, she wasn’t here to engage in a cat-and-mouse game or an open battle. She was meeting with two people who were virtually strangers, but also among her only allies remaining. Two people she hoped would give her assistance, since she had nowhere else to turn.
Strange to put her trust in people she didn’t know, but this was all Ember had left. And if this didn’t work out, Ember would take a bullet before the week was over. She was sure of it.
What would happen to Zach then? Her adorable boyfriend was smart and clever, but not so great in the self-defense department. He wasn’t trained to kill, nor was he trained to watch his back the way she knew would be necessary. With Zach’s job-related events of the previous weeks, he would need to be extra vigilant. He needed Ember. And if she went away, that left him completely defenseless.
Layne Parrish and Serena Rojas arrived together in a rental car, and then parked along the curb ahead of Ember, right next to the port-a-potty. They exited their cars and Layne turned his head back to Ember and nodded at her. Without another glance, the pair continued on toward the playground. Ember thought they’d make a cute couple — after all, they were two of the most beautiful people she’d ever seen. It would be a Mr. and Mrs. Smith-type situation, too, since both were extremely well-trained killers.
“Here we go,” Ember said as she exited the car. Her knees felt weak. Not because she was nervous, but more from the general energy drain. A sense of foreboding, dread, and regret weighed her down like an exercise vest loaded with metal plates.
Gabe was dead. Isabel Yang was dead. Ember didn’t know how much more death she could take. The longer she stayed alive, the more likely all her friends would end up murdered. So the only way she could push forward was to shove the losses to the dim corners of her mind.
Ember followed Layne and Serena toward the playground and then her two brand-new allies took up a position underneath a plastic slide. They crouched in the shadows, perched in a sea of recycled rubber tires, waiting for Ember.
The sun had barely risen, casting long, faint shadows on everything. From a distance, Ember knew they would all look like a bunch of weirdos doing a drug deal, and she hoped no patrol officers were nearby.
She trudged across the snow. It crunched under her feet, with the top layer warmed by the sun yesterday and then frozen overnight, making a crust that her feet breached with every plunge of her toes.
“Hi,” she said as she took up a spot across from them, forming a triangle. “Thanks for coming out here so early.”
“Of course,” Layne said. He was dapper in a puffy down coat, with a few days’ worth of blond stubble on his ruggedly square jaw.
Damned if he wasn’t easy on the eyes.
“I know it was a challenge for you to come,” Layne said. “First Gabe, then Isabel.” He shook his head and looked down toward the ground.
Ember nodded. “They’re not the only ones, and I have a feeling there are going to be more before this is all over. But what’s important is what we do next.”
“We’re here to help,” Serena said, which sounded strange coming from her lips. Over the last couple weeks, this slender Latina beauty had been coming after Ember to kill her, at the request of Marcus Lonsdale. Fortunately for Ember, those attempts had been half-hearted, and she’d eventually been persuaded to stand down. Ember got the feeling that if Serena gave something her full effort, there was zero chance for her to fail. She had that look about her of someone who could slit your throat before you’d even detected her hands moving. Ember had seen her in action and knew it firsthand.
“I appreciate it,” Ember said.
“How do you want to proceed?” Layne asked. “You’re the quarterback here.”
Ember took a deep breath, sucking in painfully crisp morning air, and then cleared her throat. “What I’d like to do is fly to DC, wait in Marcus’ closet, then gut him with my Halo when he opens the door to put away his overpriced Berluti shoes. But, I know I can’t do that, which means there will be no justice for Gabe or Isabel.”
“You could do that,” Serena said. “It’s not a good option, but it is an option.”
Ember pursed her lips. “Yeah. That might buy me a few seconds of peace, but it’s not the end result I’m looking for.”
“Not to mention you wouldn’t be able to clear your own name if you did that,” Layne said. He tilted his head at Serena. “If I could make a suggestion: let Serena stay on Marcus, assuming he’s still in Denver. At least for now. We should keep you and Marcus apart until we know more about what he’s planning, and how we want to counter it. And he’s good, but he’s not Serena-good. No way he’ll touch you if she doesn’t want him to.”
Ember flicked her eyes toward Serena. “That’s smart. You good with that?”
“Works for me,” Serena said, shrugging. “As far as I know, he still thinks I’m on his team. That’s an advantage we should hold on to for as long as possible. What’s your plan?”
Ember considered this for a moment as foggy breath plumed from her mouth. “If you can give me whatever you have on the sniper who killed Isabel, I’ll follow that trail. Maybe I can find something that connects this hired killer to Marcus, and we can get him that way. No more bloodshed is my preferred way out of this mess.”
“Sure,” Serena said. “I’ll write up a report and get it to you later today.”
Layne scribbled notes on a small pad. “We have contacts in DC who can help, too. We should work that angle.”
Ember used a hand to smooth her raven-colored hair and then reached out to shake their hands, one at a time. “Thank you both. I know this won’t be easy. Marcus Lonsdale is well-connected, ruthless, and has seemingly unlimited resources. Pulling this off is going to require us being at the top of our game. But I’m going to make damn sure he settles up for what he’s done.”
Chapter Two
Ember
Ember parked in front of the Firedrake lab in Fort Collins and killed the engine. The heater shut off and created a void of silence in the car. Residual heat in the air kept the exposed flesh of her hands and face warm, but she could still see frozen morning dew on the windows of the building in front of them.
Two feet to her right, Zach sighed, looking up at the sun winking off the windows and melting that sheen of ice. For someone barely into his twenties, he seemed to have magically developed the brow wrinkles of a forty-year-old over the last couple of weeks.
“You okay?” Ember asked.
Lips pursed, jaw set, Zach nodded. “I’d like to get this done and over with.”
“We don’t have to. We could go to the airport right now. I can get you a ticket to Venezuela, plus another one for me for a few days from now. We could be sipping papaya juice and smoking palm tree leaves on the beach by the weekend.”
Zach said nothing at first, only giving his head a slow shake back and forth. She had taken him to the airport a couple days ago, but Zach had decided to stay at the last minute. At least for now. He had been quite assertive about it at the time, a strange tone to hear coming from his mouth.
“No,” he finally said. “I’m tired of running and hiding. There has to be something else we can do about them. There has to be something we can do to escape from all this.”
She took the keys from the ignition and pivoted in her seat to face him. “What did you have in mind?”
“As long as Thomas Milligan and Helmut are running around, we’ll always be in danger. We have to do something about it. Together. They have to go.”
“As in, killing them?”
The most serious expression she had ever seen cross his face appeared. “Maybe so. Maybe we can set some kind of trap?”
“This isn’t going to work like an action movie. We can’t just drop a bag with a dollar sign on it and then catch them in a fishing net when they show up to grab it.”
“Damn,” Zach said, a smile cracking his grim face. “That was my exact plan. Well, actually, there was also quicksand involved, and we got to wear cool raccoon masks.”
Ember chuckled and reached across the center console to squeeze his hand. “We should go. We’re on the clock, my sweet boy.”
They left the car and entered the building where Zach had worked as a Firedrake researcher for the last few months. Ember still didn’t have a firm grasp on what he did here, but she knew the underlying company mission statement. To save the world. To recruit him to come work on some secret special project in California that — undoubtedly — had ominous intentions.
With her twin Nighthawk Enforcer pistols stowed, she and Zach made their way around the back of the building to the maintenance entrance, where there were no security cameras. Also, another keypad entry system. Had they nullified Zach’s keycard yet?
Gabe would have had tools to hack into it. But Gabe was gone — gone forever, along with Charlie and Isabel. Ember bit her lower lip to ward off tears as she tried to push thoughts of the lost ones out of her mind.
Ember contemplated the lock on the back door, and Zach tried his keycard. The pad beeped. The door drifted open.
“I didn’t think that would work,” he said.
Ember turned her palms up in a shrug, and he held his phone’s flashlight toward the darkened maintenance room. It stank of bleach and vinegar. Were those two chemicals, when combined, able to kill someone? She tried to remember her training from the chemistry expert, Joshua, from her branch. The class had been on how to maim, kill, or knock out victims using nothing but household ingredients.
She knew bleach was involved, but couldn’t remember if she was supposed to mix it with ammonia or vinegar, or something else entirely.
Doesn’t matter, she thought. I’ll look it up later.
Ember led the way, pushing through the doorway and into a hallway and toward stairs. Zach gave quiet commands about which way to go, and he directed her to the right floor. Automated lights flicked on every few steps, guiding them to the room where Zach and others—presumably in lab coats—had worked under unknowingly false pretenses for some time now.
“When all this is over,” Ember said, “I want you to wear your lab coat for me. Just your lab coat.”
“Kinky,” Zach said in an absent-minded tone as his eyes crawled over the room from the doorway.
This early in the day, there was no one here. The timing of their visit had been by design, based on Zach’s best guess as to when they would be alone in the facility. So far, so good. They entered the lab room and Zach stood with his hands on his hips for a moment, surveying the surrounding space.
To Ember, it looked not unlike her high school science lab in San Diego. There were long, wooden tables with built-in shelving underneath each. On some tables sat computers and microscopes, and along the walls, whiteboards filled with equations that might as well have been an alien language. Nothing but numbers and symbols. She recognized a few of them — sine, cosine, pi — but the rest were gibberish. If Zach could understand all that crap, then he was on a whole other set of brainwaves Ember didn’t possess.
It added a layer to his sexiness. She might have to make him wear professor goggles along with the lab coat.
No, that’s too far. She grinned, trying to imagine it. Better save something for later.
“Anything you might have touched,” Ember said, bringing her attention back to the task at hand. She glanced around at the ceilings and walls, looking for cameras. Zach had explained to her that usually Helmut watched the room from outside of Thomas’ office, so there was no need for additional surveillance, but she had to be sure.
“On it,” Zach said as he slipped on latex gloves. He t
ook a rag from his back pocket, wiped down various surfaces, and then collected a couple of notebooks from a cabinet under the table.
After a few minutes of erasing fingerprints and written materials, he walked over to a computer workstation on a table by the wall, and pulled a panel off the side.
“What are you doing now?” Ember asked.
“This is the lab’s login computer. It has some of my personal data on it. Fortunately, it’s a standalone machine, not networked.”
Zach’s hands searched through the mass of cables and wires inside the computer tower, then he worked a bit to unplug a flat metal object from the inside, then pulled it out. Ember guessed it was a hard drive, but she kept her mouth shut so she didn’t open it and sound like an idiot. For all she knew, it was the computer’s flux capacitor.
Once he’d removed the hard drive thing, Zach replaced the panel on the side, then he leaned back against the table. He slipped the drive in his pocket and then took off his gloves, casting forlorn eyes at Ember. “I can’t believe this is my life now. Wiping down fingerprints.”
“I know the feeling. But what matters is what we do to ensure we come out on top. Because not winning is not an option.”