by Heskett, Jim
“Ember should’ve died. That’s what he wanted. He wanted me to make sure she died and there was nothing that could trace back to him. I tried to do what he asked me to do. I really did. But then she saved my life and I couldn’t go through with it. I thought I could manage her. I thought I could play both sides and keep Ember and Marcus happy, but it was too much. Too much.”
Naomi held out her hand. “Give me the gun.”
“I can't do that. Jules has to die, and the Board has to be dissolved. Nothing will be right until that happens. I know it’s messy, but I’ve given it a lot of thought and this is definitely the only way any of us make it through to the other side.”
Another explosion rocked the building. She and Wellner had to widen their stances as the aftereffects made the room rumble.
When they’d settled, he looked past her, his eyebrows raising and a strange mix of hope and confusion cut through the panic on his face. “Wait a second. Is that Marcus in the hallway? What’s he doing here? Marcus! Hey!”
Naomi turned around and didn’t see anyone out in the hall. She could hear the commotion and the people trying to grab things from their offices on their way to the elevator. Everyone else knew what would happen here. If there were any security team members still living, they had probably already extracted themselves from the building.
She took another step toward Wellner and put a hand on his arm. “David, look at me. Don’t worry about anything else right now. Please stay focused on me.”
He finally did look at her. Eyes bloodshot and wet, full of dread. “I’m so confused. I’m about to lose it all, aren’t I? He’s going to screw me over when this is done, isn’t he?”
“Give me the gun.”
“I don’t know… I don’t know what to do.”
She turned up her palm. “Give me the gun. We’ll find a different way out of this.”
With a dejected look and a tear streaming down his cheek, Wellner put the revolver in her hand. Naomi opened the cylinder and tilted the gun so the bullets would fall out, clinking and clattering at their feet. Wellner watched the bullets skitter across the floor as Naomi leaned over to place the gun on a nearby file cabinet.
And, all at once, she knew what she had to do. Naomi had watched Wellner dancing in a patch of poison ivy for weeks now, trying to keep him from exposure. But now, she realized that patch of poison ivy was on a cliff, and there wasn’t anything she could do to make Wellner keep his feet still.
There was only one way out.
While he stayed distracted, Naomi reached into her back pocket and drew the blade. She flicked her wrist to open it. He hadn’t noticed what her hands were doing. His eyes were still on hers, pleading, desperate, looking for someone to tell him that everything would be okay.
With a sigh, Naomi jabbed the knife into Wellner’s chest.
For a split second, he had no reaction. Only eyes on Naomi, then a slight curl of his lips to suggest confusion. Then, like a joke’s punchline taking a couple seconds to settle in, his face changed. He gasped, looking down at the handle of the knife sticking out of him. His eyes jumped wide as he took a step back. Streams of red darkened his white dress shirt. They cascaded down and then curved when they met his protruding belly.
He stumbled back a few more steps and put his hands around the knife, but he seemed unable to pull it out. His breaths came faster now. His mouth turned into a grimace as he tried to grip the hilt, which was now covered in blood.
“How… how could you do this?” he said, the words sputtering and thin.
“Jules was never trying to kill you, David. That was always in your head.”
“Her? You work for her?”
Naomi gritted her teeth as she could now hear gunfire from somewhere not too far away. “No, dammit. I don’t work for her. You know who I work for. He sent me here to keep an eye on you months ago. It was never supposed to be like this. Everything that’s happened here? You brought it all on yourself. I mean, he predicted it, but I thought you deserved the benefit of the doubt.”
Wellner looked past her. “Marcus.”
Now she turned and there he was. Marcus, hovering in the doorway behind Naomi. A little rush blossomed in her stomach at the sight of him. That happened every single time, and today’s adverse conditions and total bedlam didn’t prevent the reaction.
He was holding a bulletproof vest in each hand. A deep frown darkened his face as Marcus shook his head at Wellner. “Sorry, David. None of this had to happen, but the train’s been running without brakes for a while now. Even you had to have seen it coming.”
Marcus gave Naomi a kiss before lifting a vest and setting it over her head. He held her eye contact as he fastened the velcro on the sides and tightened it. His hand “accidentally” brushed against the swell of her breast. She giggled. Marcus grinned at her, causing her face to flush.
“We have to go,” he said. “It’s not safe here.”
Wellner slid down to his knees, his shirt now darkened with a wide triangle of red. “How could you do this?”
Naomi sighed at the dying man. “I’m sorry about this. None of it needed to happen. But you made your bed, David. I tried to help you as much as I could, but my hands were tied.”
As the life fled out of him, he made one last attempt to pull out the knife, but his hands, slick with red, failed to grab it. Wellner fell silent, his eyes shutting and his mouth dropping open.
Chapter Nineteen
EMBER
When Zach and Ember crossed paths on the second floor of the terminal, he lifted his hand and opened his palm toward her. As if he were going for a low-high-five.
Ember opened her hand, they brushed together, and the electricity of his touch made her both happy and sad at the same time. Happy for obvious reasons, and sad because she wanted much more of that touch.
Six weeks ago, she had thought Zach was cute and sexy, but she had never intended to let her heart get into it, because she figured she would be dead soon. Having six assassins come to kill you, one after another, could do that. She had agreed to keep an eye on Zach Bennett as a favor to Zach’s older brother, Ben. She had done so because Ember had been there to witness his initial recruitment by Thomas Milligan, and Ember hadn’t known what to think of it at the time. Thomas and his people had seemed suspicious, but it had been all theoretical for Ember at that point. She'd told Ben about it and he asked her for this favor.
Ember never intended for Zach to take up residence inside her thoughts and feelings the way he had. And she hadn’t expected to have been proven right about Thomas and Helmut.
And now, as she and Zach were effectively living together in motel rooms around Denver, she had something to lose: her heart. She didn’t want to forfeit her life before she had a chance to see where things would go with her strapping scientist boy.
They touched hands and then continued on their paths. Ember was headed toward the A gates section, in a separate wing of the airport. Zach was on course to cross over to the main B and C gates, near the central security area under the giant canvas domes. Neither of them had boarding passes, so they couldn’t venture into the TSA lines. But Ember was starting to think they wouldn’t need to see the gate areas. She had a feeling they would find what they needed here.
She reseated her earpiece. “You got anything?”
“Not yet,” Zach said. She turned and saw him now, about a hundred feet behind her. He made a cute spy. Maybe not a skilled one, but he sure looked good doing it.
“Above all,” she said, “we cannot let them see us. That’s more important than finding Helmut. Got it?”
“I got it. If we do see him, what do you think we’re going to find out?”
Ember paused as she reached the security line for the A gates. The TSA agent scanning IDs gave her a quizzical look, so she turned around and started patrolling back in the other direction. “I have some ideas, but I’m not certain. That’s why we do the work, so we can be certain. You might have spotted Helmut as he was
leaving for a flight to Fresno to see relatives.”
“Do you think that’s what he’s doing, parking in the long-term area? Maybe he went back to Firedrake headquarters.”
Ember paused at the edge of the railing overlooking the vast courtyard of the interior of the Denver Airport, with the enormous canvas domes overhead meant to replicate snowy mountain peaks. Giant video monitors overhead flashed ads for concerts at Red Rocks and for the University of Colorado.
“No, I don’t think that’s what he’s doing. I think he’s here. I think he’s meeting someone.”
“Who?”
“No idea. But let’s stay sharp. Don’t assume everyone walking around here is just a random citizen.”
She caught a glimpse of someone standing by the arrivals and departures board. A squat man, barrel-chested and with a wiry beard. White guy, sunken eyes, with gray threaded through his thick, black hair. At first, Ember didn’t know why this person stood out to her, but then she remembered. This man was a trainer of new recruits for Highlands Branch. One of the lecturers who specialized in Club law and taught it to classes of starry-eyed and ambitious new Branch members. Ember couldn’t recall his name, but they had met at an inter-Branch joint training event last year.
The man had a large bag over his shoulder, and he was holding a boarding pass in one hand. He caught Ember staring at him, and he lifted a couple fingers of one hand at her, in a hint of a wave. A sort of wistful and guilty look on his face. She returned the wave, low-key and designed not to attract attention.
Ember understood. This assassin had a plan to get out. He had a design to escape Denver while he still had his life, before the civil war could claim him. A year ago, if Ember had seen a DAC member trying to flee a difficult situation, she would have felt differently about it. But now, she applauded his sense of self-preservation, and she did not begrudge this man wanting to leave before the whole house came down on top of him.
The fleeing assassin gave her a dip of the head and then he turned away, marching toward the security line.
“Wait a second,” Zach said. “Where are you right now?”
“Overlooking the security entrance, closer to the A gates.”
“Come back over here to the north side of the courtyard. I think I see him. He’s facing the other way, but I’m pretty sure that’s him. He hasn’t looked toward me at all.”
Ember spun around and plotted a course through the ambling airport denizens. She put one hand in her jeans pocket to grip the hilt of her knife. “Stay back.”
“Don’t worry,” Zach said. “He’s below. I’m out of sight.”
Ember spotted Zach, standing next to the railing, his eyes intently down. She sidled up next to him, a little winded from rushing across to join him. She gave his butt a quick squeeze as she looked down to follow the path of his gaze.
“Those are arrivals,” he said.
“Yep.”
“Which means —“
“Yep.”
They stood in silence for a few seconds. A slew of carry-on luggers were coming up the escalators. Beyond a short divider, a few dozen others waited to pick up their friends and relatives coming from flights. And the beefy Helmut with the stubble atop his head stood facing away, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was currently under observation.
Ember thought Zach had done an excellent job spotting him. Zach wasn’t terrible at this spy stuff. He was definitely rough around the edges, but he could be trained up in certain areas. Also, she didn’t know why she was analyzing and critiquing his espionage talents.
“If he turns, we turn,” she said. “Don’t give him a chance.”
“Got it.”
A few more seconds they waited, and then Ember discovered the reason Helmut was here. Four guys in suits, all variations of the same charcoal color, came up the escalator. One right after the other, each one basically a carbon copy of the last. All four were muscular, trimmed, with short-cropped hair. They definitely looked military, or ex-military, or probably members of a private security force.
Helmut raised his hand toward them, and the Charcoal Suit Goon in the lead nodded and waved the other three men toward Helmut. They crowded around each other, speaking close in tight formation.
“Who are these guys?” Zach asked.
“Backup. He’s called in reinforcements. Helmut parking in long-term must mean they’re all leaving in a different car, probably a van. My best guess is that your recruitment phase is over. Now they’ve moved on to the cutting their losses phase, and these guys are here to help them kill the both of us.”
“That’s not good.”
Ember shook her head. “Nope.”
“But this could be good.”
She pulled back away from the railing so they wouldn’t be spotted, and she met his eyes. “How do you figure that?”
He gave a wry smile. “Because now we see the scope of what we’re up against, and they don’t know we know, so we have a chance to set a trap.”
Chapter Twenty
MARCUS
Marcus had a keycard and an all-access visitor’s badge just for this occasion, but no one had asked to see it lately. In this Denver building they called the “Holdings” building, everyone was too busy worrying about the angry mob outside to care about Marcus. He had flashed it to Security in the parking garage, then never again as he had ridden the elevator up to this floor and strutted into Wellner’s office.
After his exit from the elevator to the floor, the commotion grew even worse. Apparently, a cluster of about twenty assassins from various Branches had gathered outside to demand their pound of flesh. They were armed and ready to bring this building down. If they had an intended goal, they hadn’t stated it. Marcus doubted they even knew what they wanted. But they looked angry enough to burn the world just to have a little of their righteous anger sated.
It didn’t matter to Marcus, because he had a simple plan for his visit to the headquarters of the DAC government today: to tell Wellner that his services were no longer required, and to inform Naomi she could stop pretending to be his secretary.
Of course, he hadn’t expected to find Wellner dying already, with Naomi hovering above the man as he bled out from a knife wound. She was such an enigma. Very young, but ruthless and efficient. She had been working as Marcus’ eyes and ears inside the DAC government for months now, and Wellner hadn’t suspected a thing. With a kind face and looks good enough to distract a horny bastard like Wellner, planting a spy inside the inner workings of the DAC had been too easy. She had played the role to perfection, and the best part was that Marcus didn’t have to pay her bonus in a monetary format — she was interested in the more primal sort of reward.
And Naomi could do a sort of cyclone thing with her hips that made Marcus want to pop right away, like an overstimulated fourteen-year-old. He didn’t know if that talent alone was worth keeping her around, but he did often think about it, in the last few seconds before he fell asleep each night.
Marcus slid the bulletproof vest over her head so they could escape, and she said a few final words of goodbye to Wellner as his breaths slowed and then stopped. Marcus wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t uncommon for planted people to develop kinships while undercover. Shit, she had even aided Wellner in an insane operation last week to murder the DAC Vice President. Marcus hadn’t had an opinion about that, so he had let it all play out, waiting to see if Wellner would succeed, or if Jules Dunard would catch him and retaliate. Neither outcome had happened.
“We have to go,” Marcus said. The natives were restless outside, and they had already taken a couple of chunks out of the building and killed the guards, which meant the police would be crawling all over this place within minutes. Even if they didn’t find a way to breach the exterior so they could storm the building, law enforcement would be here soon to take an accounting of the action. Marcus didn’t have a solid reason to explain to local cops why a highly respected FBI Supervisory Special Agent was alone in a building of assassi
ns with no sanctioned order to be there. In a situation like this, the uniformed cops would arrest everyone, and then sort it out at the station afterward.
“I just need to grab my purse,” Naomi said as she stood and wiped a tear from her eye. Was she actually crying over schlubby loser David Wellner? Maybe they’d been shacking up. Maybe she had only been giving him some extra attention in the evenings, and she had somehow developed romantic feelings for him.
Marcus didn’t care. If Naomi thought blowing her boss gave her an edge into gaining his trust, that was fine with him. He expected his operatives to do whatever it took. Probably best to make Naomi get an STD test soon, though, because Marcus detested condoms and he wasn’t about to start wearing them now.
He grabbed her arm as she walked past him, then he pulled her in for a kiss. He shoved his tongue in her mouth and she reached behind him to grab his butt, making his blood flow south. They would definitely need to go back to the mansion in the mountains after this. Part of him wanted to ravage her on Wellner’s desk right now, but that was a foolish idea. Exciting, but foolish.
He let her go and then his eyes landed on the desktop computer sitting on top of Wellner’s desk.
Yes.
An idea so grand and so amazing occurred to him in that instant, fully formed and ready to go, that he had to bark a laugh. He couldn’t believe he’d never thought of it before. It was the kind of bold maneuver he couldn’t have done when Wellner was alive.
But now, with that hunk of dead weight out of the picture, Marcus had a way to bring about his endgame. And it was so simple, so elegant, and seemingly foolproof.
Ember Clarke had been terribly elusive. She had been sent to Denver to die, but had somehow avoided that fate for long enough to make simply murdering her untenable. Isabel Yang had been unable to control her. Serena Rojas, the assassin Marcus had hired to kill Ember, had also failed at her task. Marcus had a strong suspicion that Serena had been turned, anyway. Based on what Marcus had been told about her skills, Serena didn’t fail unless she wanted to fail.