Final Target: Six Assassins Book 6

by Heskett, Jim

  Ember crossed her arms over her chest. “It doesn’t matter. Six up, six down, and I want to hear you say that my trial by combat has been completed and I’m now found innocent of the charge against me. You owe me that.”

  She sniffled and pushed her jaw out to make her face look meaner. She didn’t know if it would conceal the fact that she’d spent most of the morning crying, but she’d reached beyond the point of caring what David Wellner thought about her. Ember was fueled by sadness and anger today, and without those to prop her up, she might collapse on the floor and sleep for a week.

  “I can’t just do that,” he said. “We need to have a Review Board meeting. Maybe we’re in a rough patch, but the rule of law still exists around here.”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say,” she said. She wanted to add, you coward. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter.” Ember took the other coin and set it next to Fagan’s, on the desk. The two golden circles caught the light, shining little beacons against the wood grain of his desk.

  “I hereby resign from the Denver Assassins Club, effective immediately. Any and all outstanding payments due to me can be sent to the bank info on file. Anything else… not my problem. This will be our last conversation, so if there’s anything you need to say to me, now’s your chance.”

  Wellner tented his fingers, a confused look on his face. “Let’s talk about this. I can’t convince you to stay?”

  “I don’t think so. Take care of yourself, David. The way I hear it, things aren’t good in the Club now. Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you. But you go ahead and have that Review Board meeting and officially declare me innocent, if you think it’s the proper thing to do.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, then hesitated, and Ember decided she didn’t care about whatever drivel came out of his mouth. With one last look at the two tokens on the table, she turned and left the room for the final time.

  Chapter Seven

  EMBER

  For the first time in three years, Ember Clarke had no token in her pocket. That gold coin to remind her of the oath she had taken, the promises she’d made to the Denver Assassins Club. For the first time in three years, she was a freelancer. Maybe technically, she was still a federal agent, but she didn’t think that was true any longer.

  Alone, with no tribe to call home, with nowhere to go.

  Even though she knew that was false, it still felt that way. She had Zach. Sweet and loyal Zach who had stayed with her, despite knowing the truth about her name and her past. Despite even knowing the truth about her present, he had opted not to leave her.

  She had Layne and Serena. Neither of them were in the Club, though. They were both current or former federal agents, but neither had walked a mile in her flats. Without that feeling of belonging to a tribe, isolation persisted. Ember had no idea this is what it would feel like to leave it behind.

  The last decade of her life had been in service of either federal law enforcement or the Denver Assassins Club. What would she do after this? She wasn’t qualified to manage a grocery store or work as a corporate headhunter. She didn’t even know how to fill out a minimum wage job application, and she wouldn’t know the first thing about starting her own business.

  Zach might know those things. He was smart enough to blaze a trail. Maybe together, they could both find a way to make a fresh start, away from here. But that fresh start might also require a lifetime of looking over their collective shoulders. Could they make it in Qatar? Could they make it in Bulgaria?

  Would they even live that long?

  She sat in the parking lot in front of her condo complex. A couple days ago, Layne and Serena had met Isabel Yang here to hash out a plan to help Ember. That meeting had gotten Isabel killed. One pull of the trigger, one fraction of a second had taken that human being out of the world.

  And Marcus had been behind it. Of that, Ember had no doubt. But proving the connection between Marcus and the hitter was an entirely different matter.

  Ember left the car and walked around her building toward the alley on the north side, between her building and the grocery store. Her condo felt so cold and impersonal now. It didn’t feel like her home, rather a place where tragic things had happened.

  She noted a single surveillance camera in this area at the back of the grocery store across the alley. But it was pointed at the wrong angle. Ember could see a dent in the casing, likely from some kid’s BB gun. She had seen it in the same state weeks ago. She would not find any reliable CCTV at the end of that camera’s feed.

  This is where Isabel had spent her last moments, in this spot. A fresh snow and subsequent melt had covered up and washed away most physical evidence of the crime, but Ember knew exactly where she had been standing.

  She had Serena’s report with everything they knew about the sniper. It wasn’t much, actually. Middle Eastern male, about thirty years old, brown hair and brown eyes. He had nothing in his pockets except for a pack of Parliament cigarettes with twelve left. No ID, no wallet. No car keys.

  The lack of car keys meant he had either walked, taken a taxi, or a Thum rideshare to the job. But, no phone and no wallet, so no way to know how he had paid for a ride. If he’d walked, that might mean he was a local. Ember didn’t know if Marcus would bring in one of his own guys or contract the job to someone here. She suspected he had hired this person, and maybe even done it through an intermediary, to keep more distance. Marcus was probably thrilled that the man was now dead. One less complication for him to resolve.

  She looked up at the spot where the sniper had been stationed, according to the report. Ember marched around the rear of the condo building and found the dumpster had been shifted from its usual spot. Someone had moved it over about three feet, which would allow access to a nearby second floor trellis, and therefore the roof. This also told Ember she was looking for someone with a considerable amount of strength, and an eye for logistics. He must have been there early, since Isabel and the others would have heard the screech of the dumpster on the pavement during their meeting.

  Ember stopped walking and pressed her lips together. Maybe the guy hadn’t been there to kill Isabel. Maybe he had been waiting for Ember, and Isabel had appeared as an impromptu alternate target. That seemed more likely. How would anyone have known where Isabel would be at that moment? It made perfect sense for Marcus to want Ember’s handler dead, but Ember herself would have been the grand prize.

  Also, if Marcus intended to kill off human liabilities connected to him, that meant something was happening. Something big.

  “Was Isabel on the verge of exposing you, Marcus?” Ember asked the dumpster. The dumpster gave no reply.

  She hoisted herself up onto the metal box and then jumped over to the second floor trellis. Her neck wound screamed at her as she pulled herself up to the roof, but she ignored it and pushed on. A quick check via the reflection in her pocket mirror told her the stitches were holding up.

  On the roof, she crossed over to the spot where the sniper had perched. A couple inches of snow sat there, uniform and white and reflecting the day’s meager sunlight. But then she noticed something. Amid the general flatness of the snow cover, a small bump in one spot.

  Ember dropped to a knee and wiped the snow away to find eight cigarette butts and a cigarette wrapper in a neat little pile. Serena had said the sniper possessed a pack with twelve left. Parliaments, a less-common brand.

  Here were the missing eight, plus the wrapper. He had bought the pack immediately before coming here.

  It wasn’t much, but it was all Ember had to go on.

  Chapter Eight

  HELMUT

  Helmut Semjonov’s tongue felt like a fat slug living inside his mouth. Slow and meandering, always bumping up against the other objects in there. No matter how Helmut tried to control it, the thing had a mind of its own.

  A few days ago, Helmut had gone to retrieve Zach Bennett from a motel room where the young man had shacked up with his little whore Ember Clarke, and the
re had been resistance. First—and most surprising—had been that Zach himself had taken up arms against Helmut. A headbutt to the face had bashed in Helmut’s nose. A quick escape out the door while Helmut had been disabled had given them too much of a head start.

  And then some brawny associate of Ember’s had met Helmut in the doorway. Through all the confusion of the rapid changes and moving pieces, Helmut had bitten down — hard — on his tongue, and now it sat inert and swelled inside his mouth. He could still talk, but not very well.

  Not that he’d ever been chatty before this. And he’d never enjoyed speaking in English, a choppy and unsophisticated language in which every word spoken sounded like a complaint about something.

  In the trailer at the north end of Fort Collins, Helmut and his boss Thomas Milligan sat in creaky chairs, with clenched fists and slumped shoulders. Thomas could speak fine, but he hadn’t said much, either. A small speaker sat in the kitchen, playing scratchy and muted music low enough that Helmut couldn’t make out anything specific in the melodies.

  Helmut could see the dejection written on his boss’ face. He had made a play to recruit young Zach, foregoing other opportunities he could have pursued. As a result, it appeared that while the main Draconis project was nearing its alpha phase, Firedrake’s alternative failsafe project was nowhere close. Millions wasted on R&D and other resources. All the infrastructure they’d created to make a soft and cushy environment for Zach to feel comfortable, and it was all wasted now.

  Thomas had lost. He had bet on the wrong horse, and now, they were out of time and too far behind to catch up. Even if Zach agreed to come to Sacramento, and they spent the time to integrate him? Even if they skipped past all that and decided to brief him on the full project scope right away, it would still be too late.

  It had probably been too late a week or two ago, but Thomas hadn’t wanted to see it. And nothing Helmut had been able to say so far had swayed his boss’ firm resolve.

  “Sir,” Helmut said, and through his broken nose and fat tongue, it sounded a lot more like “fwir.”

  “Sorry,” Thomas said. “Deep in thought. But, it’s fine. I know what we should do. I think we have to change our strategy. Persuasion and brute-force collection have been dismal failures so far. It’s like I keep walking out, deeper onto the icy lake, as more and more cracks form around me, but I keep telling myself I’m getting close to halfway, and it would be better just to keep on strutting to the opposite side.”

  Helmut didn’t speak again, but he leaned his head forward and raised his eyebrows to catch Thomas’ attention.

  “Termination,” Thomas said, answering the question on Helmut’s mind. “It’s time we cut our losses on Zach Bennett and gave our support to the main project at Draconis. I know, you’re probably thinking it was time for that weeks ago. Maybe I’ve been stubborn, and maybe I have, for too long, held onto the hope that we could make Zach see reason. Or, if he wouldn’t see reason, we could at least tempt him with cash. I mean, what twenty-one-year-old doesn’t want to become a millionaire at the stroke of a pen?” Thomas quieted for a second, staring at the wall. “Maybe we should have included a giant signing bonus. Something to grab his attention up front, instead of waiting for that first paycheck.”

  Helmut reached over to Thomas’ desk and lifted a small pad of paper and pencil. He wrote:

  Kill Zach = what corporate think?

  He turned the pad around and showed it to Thomas. The boss squinted at it for a second, until his jaw set and he sat back, his eyes flicking left and right over the ceiling tiles.

  “Right,” Thomas said. “What will corporate think if we get rid of Zach? Nothing. That’s what they’ll think. In the midst of all this chaos, I did one thing right, at least. I’ve kept Zach Bennett all to myself, and no one at Draconis knows anything about him. Our failure is self-contained, so I have that to be thankful for. They think I’ve been out here in Colorado using local lackeys for in-depth soil research. And that’s very close to the actual truth, so they don’t need to know any different. We go back to California, we probably close up Firedrake and let its operations fold back into Draconis. Neat and clean. It’s a knife to the heart, but it’s better than being roasted over a spit, if you ask me. Nobody wants to die with an apple shoved in their mouth and a stick up the ass.”

  Helmut gave a single nod of the head and slipped the pad into his pocket. He turned up his palms, hoping Thomas would understand he was asking for next steps.

  Thomas pursed his lips for a few seconds, nodding, eyes darting back and forth. “I have some ideas about where we go from here. But, first of all, we need more guys. It’s become quite clear that we have a formidable opponent, and we need to act accordingly. We can’t go straight at Zach as long as his pit bull Ember is hanging around.”

  Helmut gritted his teeth but tried to keep his face flat. He didn’t like the pit bull comment. Growing up in Warsaw, he’d had a pit bull, long before Poland had banned them. That dog had been his constant companion, his best friend. Helmut had been heavyset and overly tall in his youth, with long limbs and meaty hands. Other school children had not been kind to him, but his dog paid no attention to Helmut’s abnormal physical characteristics. The dog didn’t care. The only thing in Helmut’s life that didn’t judge him based on his appearance. His slobbering, jowly pet had greeted him every day with a wagging tail, with no stern looks about him eating too much, or not performing well enough in school, or not socializing with the other children. The dog loved him no matter what, a sentiment Helmut had never been able to source from another human being.

  But today, Helmut said nothing, since he knew Thomas had not intended any personal slight with his comment. He didn’t think Thomas knew about the dog. They never talked about personal matters, and never on the clock, certainly. Thomas might not even have known Helmut was Polish.

  Instead, he raised his eyebrows again.

  “How many guys can you get here?”

  Helmut lifted one hand with his fingers spread out.

  “Five?” Thomas asked. “Is that all?”

  Helmut knew he could bring five men here within a day or two. More than that would take considerable effort and energy, reassigning them from deep in other projects. Still, he knew he had to tell Thomas what he wanted to hear. So, he raised his other hand and spread the fingers, while promising himself he would have to make contact with everyone on his payroll, to make sure they were ready to travel to Denver when he needed them. With a little more preparation and some luck, Helmut could arrange for about twenty-five men total. But not as fast as Thomas wanted.

  “Ten?” Thomas asked. “That sounds about right.”

  Helmut gave a grim nod and Thomas smiled, for the first time in days. The boss sat back, sighing at the ceiling. “This will get ugly before it gets better, but, once it’s done, we can go back to business as usual. With Ember dead, and Zach dead, we can pack up shop and go back to California, and then pretend this all never happened.” Thomas now leaned forward, head low, meeting Helmut’s eyes. “But they have to die, Helmut. This has to be done right. We can’t leave anything or anyone behind that ties us to this failure here.”

  Helmut considered opening his mouth to speak his reply, but he didn’t want his bloated tongue to get in the way. Instead, he gave a single dip of the head.

  Chapter Nine

  EMBER

  As the sun set, Ember pulled into the lot of the Boulder Post Office, for what she assumed would be the last time. She was no longer a member of the Boulder Branch of the DAC, so she wasn’t even technically allowed to be here. She studied the building. This monolithic structure out in the flats of eastern Boulder, surrounded by an unmaintained gravel parking lot with plenty of weeds poking through to the surface.

  Hands on the steering wheel, gripping and turning it like a motorcyclist revving the engine. She watched the early evening light shine golden on the building. Shadows tilted. A quiet rectangle, with years of secrets inside. Ember had been a par
t of that for the last three, and now she had nothing. No plans, no future. A present scarred with death and destruction and a gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach that she had played a pivotal role in the DAC’s current woes.

  Ember had no kids, no dog, no cat, no dependents who relied on her. She had Zach, though, and she still had a responsibility to keep that adorable man safe. After the visit from Helmut at the motel a few days ago, it was clear that Thomas and Firedrake were still very much interested in her boyfriend. Even if they were no longer recruiting him, he was still a loose end requiring closure.

  Ember didn’t know what the company was planning that required so much secrecy and care. It wasn’t any of her business, really. But, as long as Zach was mixed up in all of it — and as long as they wanted to hurt him — she would be there to stop any harm coming to him. It was part of her past, part of who she was. It had been ingrained in her ever since her brother had been slaughtered in the street.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and when she took it out, a smile crossed her face.

  “Hey, sexy. I was just thinking about you.”

  “Good,” Zach said. “You should always be thinking about me. If you’re not thinking about me, you should take a beat and then steer your thoughts back on track.”

  “Well, that’s a tall order. I have to also do things like walk and chew bubble gum. I can do two. Three is pushing it. So which do I sacrifice? Walking, chewing gum, thinking about you? Don’t ask me to make that decision.”

  “That’s fair. Hey, where are you staying tonight?”

  Ember’s eyes welled up, but she stopped short of letting the tears out. She hadn’t yet told Zach about Fagan. Ember had been living with Fagan for the last week. It still wasn’t safe to go back to her condo, and she didn’t want to sleep in the guest bedroom of a dead woman.