Primary Target: Six Assassins: Book 1

by Heskett, Jim

  She’d had to kill five men that day in London instead of just the one she’d planned to take out. Not a feeling she relished, having to leave more bodies in her wake than the contract required. And she hated being chased. She hated not having the upper hand.

  Ember jumped when her hand vibrated, and it took her a second to realize her phone was ringing, clutched in her right palm. She saw the number on the home screen and held it up to her ear. “Tried any new good teas lately?”

  “If that’s a prompt for a passphrase,” her mentor Fagan said, “I would have to guess… Oolong.”

  “If you say so. I know nothing about tea.”

  “Where are you right now?”

  Ember clenched her jaw for a moment before answering. “I’d rather not say.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “It’s nothing terrible. But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

  “Spit it out, Ember. Where are you?”

  “I’m sitting in a parking lot across the street from the Westminster Post Office.”

  “You were right. I don’t like it.”

  “I’m not planning an assault on the Post Office. I’m not going to wait until dark and sneak in there like a ninja.”

  “Right,” Fagan said, “because doing those things would be insane, and a fast-track to being brought back before the Review Board to have your sentence revoked.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me, boss lady.”

  “Then what are you doing outside an unfriendly Post Office?”

  Ember swished her lips back and forth. “To be honest, I don’t really know. Maybe I’m hoping he’ll make an appearance. I have no idea where Xavier is, and I don’t like feeling this way. I don’t like that he has all the leverage right now. I don’t like that I’m constantly looking over my shoulder, waiting for the next attack. I mean, this bastard tried to snipe me at my home. Who knows what he would do next?”

  “That’s why I called. I was hoping to have good news, but all I can tell you is no one knows where he is right now. He’s gone full dark.”

  “Well, shit. That’s not great, is it?”

  “No, it’s not. I’ve got your recruit working on establishing the locations of sympathetic members who might harbor him.”

  Ember nodded as she watched a couple of assassins leave the front building of the Post Office and get into a car together. “Gabe’s good at that internet research stuff, isn’t he?”

  “We’re going to keep on this. We’re going to balance the scales and give you an honest chance.”

  “Thanks, Fagan.”

  “You’re welcome. Check in soon.”

  Ember said her goodbyes and then dropped her phone on the dashboard as the sun disappeared behind the mountains, turning the reflection from red to purple on the building's windows. She was presently in the vast parking lot of the dollar store and the gym across the street. There were barely any other cars near her, and not a single one within hundreds of feet. No trees, either. Terrible cover, but she didn't want to risk parking any closer to the building. Also, the wide-open space made her feel safer from attack. No tall buildings nearby for Xavier to station himself to pick her off with his sniper rifle.

  Her phone skittered across the dashboard as it rang again. Ember frowned at the display when she didn't recognize the number at first, then it registered. Still, she had to pretend she didn't know the caller when she answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, is this Ember?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Hey, Ember, it’s Zach. I’m glad to find out you didn’t give me a fake number this morning.”

  "Now, why would I do that? You gave me the goods; I gave you my phone number. It was an honest transaction. Do you think so little of me?"

  He let out a nervous laugh. “Ahh, no. You can just never be sure, you know? I’m sure you get approached all the time at strip mall patios by random strangers offering you doughnuts.”

  “At least once a week, for sure.”

  “I’m glad I made an impression. What did you think of the doughnut?”

  “Uhh,” she said, glancing at it, sitting half-eaten on her passenger seat. “Not bad at all. What’s up, Zach?”

  “I’m on campus, just walking into the lab to finish up some homework. Thought I’d give you a call to see what you’re up to.”

  “I’m not up to anything.”

  Zach started to say something in response, but Ember's attention was suddenly drawn to movement behind her. The back windshield of her car shattered with a roar, broken glass flying in toward her. The sound was deafening, completely drowning out Zach's voice, and she instinctively ducked sideways in the seat.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ZACH

  Two minutes earlier, Zach pulled back the door to the Molecular & Radiological Biosciences Building on campus. He held his phone in his hand, debating if it was too soon to call Ember. He had only met her a few hours ago, but something told him he needed to talk to her. To stay fresh in her mind.

  Zach had met plenty of girls on campus before. Usually, when rolling up to a random keg party, standing in line for the keg with his ten-dollar red Solo cup in hand. He'd see a girl chatting with someone else; then their eyes would meet. Hey, didn’t we have Intro to Philosophy together last year? The problem was, none of those girls made him rush with anxiety from head to toe the way Ember did. Even though she was older—and Zach suspected she was at least twenty-eight, maybe even older than that—he felt an irresistible connection with her.

  He didn’t know if she had felt the same thing. She’d worn a firm shell of sarcasm around her at all times during their brief conversation earlier. Still, he had to hope.

  She’d stolen several glances at him before they’d talked. That had to mean something, didn’t it? It had to mean she at least found him physically attractive. Given that, maybe he could win her over on his other qualities.

  The debate whether to call or not call raged on inside his head as he stood before the building's community board — thumbtacks and staples by the hundreds holding up sheets of paper all colors of the rainbow. His eyes moved over them, but he couldn't focus on any of the words.

  “Screw it.”

  Zach dialed her number as he turned to ascend the stairs to the third floor. It rang as he walked down the hall. She answered the phone as he entered the room and picked up a white lab coat and pair of safety goggles from the hooks by the wall.

  They engaged in a couple of minutes of small talk while Zach readied the microscope to study the virus samples. He liked this work, the stuff he did for his classes. The work he did on the side was hit or miss. But, specifically, he didn't like the guy he worked for. The boss rarely showed up in person, but something about him rubbed Zach the wrong way. However, this evening, he was on an interesting school project, he had a beautiful woman on the phone with him, and he didn't need to think about his part-time job.

  As the phone rang while he’d ascended the stairs, a dozen topics of conversation had floated around inside his head. Sushi, Asian food, hobbies, had she gone to college? Now, he couldn’t think of what to say. As Zach put a slide under the microscope and scooted his chair closer, a loud bang interrupted their conversation.

  "What was that?" Zach asked. It had definitely come from her end, over the phone. He looked around inside the lab, and it was as empty and undisturbed as it had been when he'd walked in here three minutes ago.

  “Just a second,” she said. “Let me put in my Bluetooth.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  Zach could hear the sound of the car door opening and closing, and then her voice changed a little. She was outside now. Were there voices in the background? Had she entered a crowded area?

  “Do you need to go?” he asked.

  “Uhh, maybe.”

  Zach thought he could hear other voices, but couldn’t be certain. She sounded strange, for sure. Whatever it was, she didn’t seem interested in talking about it, so he decided not to
press her.

  “Let me get to the point real quick, then, if you’re going to have to go.”

  “Sure,” she said in a breathy voice like she’d started jogging. He could hear movement, like someone else shifting near her. Was she not alone? Too hard to tell for sure. He kept telling himself to ignore it, to not get derailed.

  “I was wondering if you’d like to get food tomorrow. I could come to Denver.”

  “Sure.”

  He straightened, placing his free hand on the edge of the table. “Really? That’s awesome. I was thinking dinner around five. I know a few places close to downtown.”

  “Five? Do you have a senior citizen early-bird coupon or something?”

  He barked a laugh. “Um, no. I just have to be up early the day after, and it’s a bit of a drive down to Denver.”

  “I’m just messing with you,” Ember said, out of breath. There were sounds in the background, whiffs of air, like someone swinging a baseball bat. “Five is fine with me. Let me know where so I know how dressed up I need to get.”

  “I don’t think we need to go dressy. I mean, as long as we’re dressed.” Shit. He wasn’t sure why he said that.

  There was a pause, and Zach held his breath.

  “Works for me,” she said.

  Whew. “Good. Great. This is going to be great. I can text you about the details?”

  “Yes. Text me. Sorry, I’ve got a situation to deal with here. I need to get off the phone to take care of this.”

  "Sure, no problem. We'll talk later."

  The conversation ended, and Zach held his phone out to make sure since she hadn't said goodbye or anything like that. Strange phone call, indeed. But, it was progress. A date. A real date.

  Chapter Nineteen

  EMBER

  Ember panted, holding her hands out. She had ended the call with Zach only moments before. Standing at the rear of her car, rear windshield blown out by a damn baseball bat. Glass littered the trunk and a three-foot area around the back.

  They’d come in strong, taking her by surprise, but she’d reacted quickly and ducked down, dodging most of the glass from the back windshield. She’d finished her conversation with Zach, then poked her head up and peered out. Seeing that she had the space to exit the vehicle, she had popped the door open and stepped out carefully.

  The fact that I’m not dead yet means they’re probably just trying to rile me up.

  Three assassins from the Five Points Branch stood opposite her. One of them with a baseball bat, one of them big enough that he figured his fists would do the job. The third wore a pair of brass knuckles with something on the tip of each knuckle. A symbol or something. She couldn’t focus enough on his hand to tell what it was.

  Ember had dodged their initial attack, and now the three of them stood back, eyeing her, looking like they were considering their next move.

  “You know I’m in the middle of trial by combat, right?” Ember said. “What you’re doing is absolutely against Club rules. Unless one of you is the assassin assigned to kill me this week, and I happen to know that’s not true.”

  The husky guy with the big hands shook his head. "Niles was a friend of mine, and you killed him, you stupid bitch. I don't care what the Review Board says. We know they're not going to give you what you deserve. You'll weasel your way out of this, somehow, so we have to make sure that doesn't happen."

  “All I did was take out Niles before he had a chance to kill me. We were on the same contract, and he wanted to slit my throat and steal it. I was within my rights to defend myself and to stop that from happening. It’s not my fault.”

  “Not good enough,” the guy said. “This ends with you dead, tonight. That’s the only way.”

  "You came with a baseball bat and brass knuckles? And you call yourselves assassins?" Ember tried to put as much poison into her voice as she could muster. "Seems a bit unprofessional, in my professional opinion. You goons didn’t just take a shot at me while I was parked here? Why not?”

  She legitimately wanted to know, but she figured they were too high on their own power trip to be thinking clearly.

  As she expected, they didn’t answer.

  “Right,” she continued. “Which means you might want me to be dead, but you’re afraid to do it yourselves. Best you can do is rough me up a bit, huh? Afraid the Board will come down on you if you kill me?”

  The idiot she was talking to lunged forward, swiping a hand down to clobber her on the top of her head. At least, that's what she assumed he was trying to do. He roared in the air, his movements clunky as a bear's but seemingly as powerful. His fists met as he descended, and Ember thought he looked sort of like a terrible volleyball player, trying to bump a volleyball straight down to the ground.

  Ember hardly had to think to dodge the attack. She slid to her left and launched a roundhouse kick into his stomach right as he landed, his fists totally missing her and nearly catching himself right in the crotch. He doubled over, and she smacked the back of his head with a closed fist. His momentum sent him head-first into the bumper, then he tumbled over and through the open back of her car, through the hole where the rear windshield used to be. She could hear the glass scraping against the trunk as he collided with window fragments.

  She knew that it would only occupy him for a moment, though. The other two came at her, both at the same time. Baseball bat high. Running at top speed to close the twenty feet between them.

  She had her Enforcers tucked into her waist, but she knew killing them would only add to the list of grievances the Board had against her. She sighed. I’m going to have to do this the hard way.

  Ember flew forward, crouching into a somersault and rolling between them at the last possible moment. As soon as she had cleared them, she planted her feet on the ground and pushed herself up, then swept her leg behind her to knock them both off their feet. It was a move she'd seen executed poorly in most every ninja movie she'd ever seen, but she'd also practiced it the correct way over a thousand times. The key was to aim a bit higher than one might think, near the ankles or shins, where the leg would be most injured and overcompensate. She connected with the area just above both of their ankles, then quickly jerked straight back in a sort of pulling motion. It sent them both to the ground.

  As the two hit the pavement nearly simultaneously, the guy on the right cried out. The baseball bat he had been holding had landed first, and he'd crashed down on top of it. He might have seriously injured his back.

  Surprisingly, he sprung up and swung the baseball bat. The motion took her completely by surprise. In one fluid movement, from down to up and swinging. She needed to stop underestimating trained assassins, no matter how stupid she thought they were.

  The bat cracked against her side, and she let out a gasp of pain. Her right oblique muscle sizzled with fire.

  At first, she tried to shrug it off, but the ferocity of the pain left her lightheaded. She tried to recover, to stumble backward. Another attack came at her legs before she could get away. Dammit.

  Thankfully her vision was working just fine, so she was able to assess the situation. The bat was headed for her knee, once again hefted into the air by the assassin, but she lunged forward, eliminating the leverage he had, and snatched it before it could begin its downswing. She twisted, ripping it out of the man's hand in a singular, fluid motion. He stumbled forward in response, and she slammed the end of it into his face.

  He staggered backward, hands over his eyes. By her estimates, he would be out of the fight for at least a few seconds. But the other man had stood up, a mouthful of blood beginning to drip down his chin. She could see that he was missing a few teeth. He must not have been able to turn his head before he'd hit the deck.

  Good thing he’s an assassin, and ‘looking great’ isn’t part of his job description. He wouldn’t have to explain his missing teeth and smashed-up face to anyone in the office tomorrow.

  Ember held the bat awkwardly. It wasn't her weapon of choice. If she thought har
d, there might have been a time or two she'd held a bat before, but she'd never been good with one, even using it for its intended purpose.

  Whatever, she thought. I can do this better without it. She tossed the baseball bat away from them, hurling it as far as she could across the parking lot. It clanked onto the ground somewhere behind them, but she was totally focused on the task at hand.

  She used her training. Assess, identify threats, decide, act. AITDA. It wasn’t much of a clever acronym.

  The big guy was still half-in, half-out of the back of her car. He looked like he was still breathing, but he clearly wasn't in any hurry to rejoin the fight. Brass knuckles guy was wiping blood from his mouth, panting, his legs in a wide stance. He was ready to attack but waiting. Catching his breath, hoping his teammates would join in. The third guy was blinking away something in his eyes. Maybe splinters from the bat Ember had smacked him with, or he was just seeing stars.

  “You bitch,” said the bloody-mouthed guy.

  “Yeah, you called me that already. Your vocabulary suggests that you’re a bit too stupid to know what you’re getting yourselves into. You say you came to kill me, but are you going to stand there or are you going to make your move?”

  The two of them came at her simultaneously. This time, though, they were spread too far apart for her to take them both down with a single move, and she knew they were quickly smartening up to her abilities. As idiotic as it all was, they were still trained assassins, so she had to make sure they didn’t get an opportunity. She had to choose which of them to take down first. She went for the one on the right — the bloody-mouthed guy didn’t seem as confident.

  She took a step to her right and ducked the attack, then swung around to backhand him. Her fist connected solidly with the side of his face, but then the bloody-mouthed guy took advantage of the angle and landed a punch right into the middle of her back, inches away from her spleen. The hit was close enough to the baseball bat injury that she staggered, then fell to the ground. One of her Enforcers toppled out of her waistband and clattered to the asphalt.