Primary Target: Six Assassins: Book 1

by Heskett, Jim

  He had a quick pang of regret, a memory of this late father, but he pushed it aside. It was getting easier and easier to do that, to change the direction of his thoughts away from his dad, and he wasn’t sure he liked that, either.

  Still, he had other things to focus on tonight, and he figured Ember didn’t want to talk about people who had died. He turned his attention back to the woman sitting across from him.

  He used an old trick he’d learned, probably another thing his dad had taught him long ago. He imagined a thermometer hovering in the air next to Ember’s head. Every conversation point either raised or lowered the temperature. If he let it sink too far, he might not be able to raise it back up. This was why he hated first dates. With most of the college girls he knew, he didn’t even have to take them on “dates.” You hook up with the same girl a couple of times after whatever keg party was on that night, then you’re dating until you’re not. End of story.

  ‘Real’ dating — the adult, not-college-kids-anymore kind — was much more difficult.

  “Been here before?” Ember asked.

  “No. I’m not really a sushi guy.”

  “Oh? We could’ve gone somewhere else.”

  He shrugged. “No, I’ve just never really had much of it. But I wanted to impress you with my willingness to be adventurous.”

  “Let’s see what rolls you pick. Then I’ll tell you whether or not I’m impressed.”

  "Yikes, when you put it that way? Pressure's on." Zach scanned the menu. He noted the slips of paper and the little pencils and figured he would have to write down which rolls he wanted. But, he would wait for Ember to do it first.

  “How are classes?” she asked.

  "Oh, you know — same old. I'll be glad when this shit is all over, and I no longer have to pull all-nighters in the lab. Everyone told me college was going to be drunken keg parties and sorority girls and painting my face for football games. No one told me about falling asleep on top of a book in the library because I've been studying until two in the morning."

  “I think it’s keg parties for some people, but those aren’t the ones who drive nice cars and have swimming pools ten years later. Unless they’re born rich — then they get to do whatever they want.”

  He considered this. "I was not born rich, for sure. And I don't really care about being rich. I want to do something—I dunno—useful. I want to feel good about the work I'm doing, not just assembling widgets in a factory."

  “Hey, people need widgets. Widgets are good for the economy. Probably, I mean. I have no idea how the economy works.”

  “What about you? What do you do?”

  She gave him a coy grin. “What do I do about what?”

  “For work, you smartass.”

  She took a long swallow from a glass of ice water before answering. "This and that. Consulting mostly, for various firms. I don't even know how to explain it without boring you to tears. Some days, it bores me to tears, too."

  “Try me,” he said, and this made her pause a moment more. He sensed the imaginary thermometer going up a bit. Or was it going down? Should he have not pressed?

  "Companies hire me when they want to make their workforce more efficient. I go in and interview people; then, I make recommendations to the brass about how they can trim the fat and have a happier workforce. See? Your eyes are dimming already."

  He laughed, but mostly as a way to deflect his real reaction. She was lying; he knew that much. But why she was lying, he had no idea. Work was a topic that could wait for another time. He didn’t need to push harder — she obviously wanted to leave it at that.

  “And you?” she asked. “Do you have a job too, or just school?”

  “Part-time. I got recruited a little while back. I do lab work for this company on the side. It’s not a lot of hours, actually, but they pay me well. The main guy is trying to get me to do more, like take on heavier projects, but I’m not willing to do that. Not, at least, until I’m done with school.”

  “Recruited, huh? That must’ve made you feel like the prettiest girl in the room.”

  Zach nodded. "Well, at the time, I was pretty much the only girl in the room. They read a paper I wrote on viral mutation in female pigs living in warm-climate regions. I know, exciting stuff. But, they approached me about a job, and it’s mostly analyzing soil samples and stuff like that. And, occasionally, listening to a sales pitch from the company president about my potential.”

  “What does he want you to do?” she asked.

  “I can’t tell you for sure, because I don’t know. I mean, I’ve been working at this little private lab in Fort Collins for months. It’s all very grown-up and professional. There are other lab techs, but they don’t really talk to me. The boss is in town from time to time, and he likes to corner me and offer me things like comped Broncos tickets, gift cards, whatever. He’s always trying to get me to go out to dinner with him.”

  “Nothing wrong with being courted. Especially if he’s willing to show you the money, right?”

  He tilted his head back and forth. “I don’t know. It just feels like there’s something he’s not telling me. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but do you ever job hunt online? And you find a posting, and they tell you all this great stuff about why you should apply for the job, but the posting doesn’t even say the name of the company? It’s like, if it’s so great to work there, why don’t you want me to know the name of the company? What don’t you want me to find out by Googling the name of your business?”

  “You think they’re doing something shady?”

  Zach turned up his palms. “Not necessarily. I just think, in all his vagueness, there are cons he’s not mentioning along with the pros.”

  “You haven’t signed a contract or anything, have you? I mean, you could quit.”

  "No contract. Right now, I work for him a few hours a week, and the money drops into my bank account. It's a good deal. They're paying me about twice what I could make doing this same stuff for anyone else."

  “Well, if it pays for all that face paint you need for the football games, then it sounds like a good deal.”

  Again, there was something weird in her tone. Zach didn’t quite know how to read it. Am I too young for her? Am I even in her same league? But before he could fish for any more information, the server approached to take their order.

  He met Ember’s eyes one more time before they ordered. And then, for the rest of dinner, they didn’t talk about work again.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  EMBER

  After sushi, Ember had been a little worried Zach might pressure her to come to Fort Collins for a nightcap or to invite himself over to her place. No way she wanted things to move that direction so quickly, if even at all. He was cute and had a great smile, but she hadn't been upfront with him about her interest.

  She wasn’t trying to romance him, only keep an eye on him and try to keep him out of danger. The information about the extracurricular lab experiments he worked on piqued her interest. She’d tried to seem distantly interested, but she was making mental notes about every detail.

  Besides, he was almost a decade younger than her. That might be too much.

  But, fortunately, he was a perfect gentleman and didn't even force a kiss on her. They hugged outside the restaurant in North Boulder, and he said he had to get back home for early classes the next morning. But, he did say he'd call again soon, and Ember had no doubt about that. She returned to her car, feeling good about the evening.

  Mostly.

  She had to wonder if agreeing to a date with Zach and the walkway flirtation with neighbor Layne was an attempt to self-sabotage, or, at the least, to distract herself from the trial by combat. Contemplating the end of her existence sometime in the next six weeks was not much fun. While her work had always been dangerous, it had never been deadly to this extent before. She was usually the one threatening others’ lives, and now the tables had turned.

  Not to mention the visit
from Isabel Yang this afternoon. Ember had tried to put that meeting aside, but she could tell it had distracted her at dinner. She didn't know if Zach had noticed it or not. It had been the first time she'd heard the name "Allison" in quite a while when the word had come out of Isabel's mouth. Allison Campbell. The name her parents had given her and had stuck with her for the first twenty-something years of her life.

  Allison had been other people before Ember Clarke. She had been undercover before, going back to age twenty-five. But never for this long. Never this deep. Never had she thought of herself by her undercover name while on the job before.

  Maybe she should have told Isabel about the black spot trial by combat. It was certainly a valid excuse for why she couldn’t organize weekly calls with her handler. But, Ember had to admit, there was a strong part of her that didn’t want to tell Isabel about it. Part of her felt Isabel wouldn’t understand. Isabel barely knew Ember. She hadn’t put in the years to develop that asset-and-handler relationship Ember had known with her previous FBI contact before he had passed away.

  If Ember acted like a good little agent and exposed what she knew about the Club, could she stand there while Fagan and Gabe were escorted away in handcuffs?

  Ember shook her head to clear out the cobwebs. Tonight, she had other things to worry about, like the grizzled ex-vet stalking her with designs to snuff her out. And, as such, she dropped back by her condo to check the tracking app on the laptop. The cord was still there, dangling from the living room light fixture. The telltale items she had left out to ensure she could tell if her home had been invaded were unmolested.

  When she woke the computer, she saw the red circle had narrowed to less than a one-block radius. In Boulder, as a matter of fact, somewhere near 6th and Mapleton, a little northwest of downtown. So, he was hiding nearby. A couple of miles away, in one of the oldest neighborhoods in town.

  “Got you,” she whispered.

  Ember collected her guns and a few other necessary items, changed clothes, and left the condo.

  * * *

  It took ten minutes to reach that area of town butting up against the foothills. Near the hospital, a few blocks away from the sushi restaurant where she'd eaten a couple of hours before.

  When she spied the house, she knew for sure she’d found the right place. A small thing, no more than a thousand square feet. A little brick one-story with white shutters and a porch swing. But, what made her sure was the man sitting on the porch swing. He was a grunt. A bodyguard. Thick-necked and wearing a heavy coat suggesting he’d intended to spend most of the night sitting on the porch.

  His hands were in his pockets, and she couldn’t tell if he was gripping something, but she had to assume he had a pistol in at least one of his hands.

  The first thing Ember did was to make sure she had parked far enough away. Next, she examined potential routes to reach the house. An approach to the back would make the most sense, but she didn't know a good way to go that would keep her out of visual reach of the bodyguard on the front porch.

  She decided to approach him from the side and take him out that way. Then, she could figure out where Xavier was and enter the house on her own terms.

  Ember screwed the noise suppressors onto her Enforcers, but she would only use them as a last resort. She stowed her pistols and instead palmed her knife. All the while, studying the eyes of the man on the porch. He hadn’t moved in at least a minute.

  She crossed a wide grass embankment to the sidewalk. At night, in her black jeans and a dark hoodie, she didn't worry about being seen. The bulletproof material under her hoodie made a little too much noise when she moved, but she didn't need to concern herself with that yet.

  Knife in hand, she skirted along the sidewalk. The bodyguard did not look in her direction. She couldn't even tell if his eyes were open. He gave no indication he’d seen her.

  When she neared within a hundred feet of the house, she paused, kneeling. The bodyguard's eyes were open, but he was staring at a fixed point across the street. Looked like a tree waving slightly in the calm, evening breeze. He was either deep in concentration or bored silly. Either one worked to her advantage.

  Ember readied her knife and approached the porch. A wooden railing surrounded it. She studied it for a few seconds, trying to predict where it would be creaky and give her away, then she placed a hand on it and vaulted herself up.

  It hadn’t looked terribly old, but she had miscalculated. As soon as her hands applied pressure on the top of the railing, the bodyguard heard her approach. He turned, eyes wide. His hand tensed inside his jacket pocket.

  She needed to deal with him quietly, but there was no time. Ember raised the hand with her knife and used a foot on the railing to push herself toward the porch swing. He was trying to turn, free himself of the porch swing, and draw his gun, all at the same time.

  She got to him first and jabbed the knife into his neck. A gurgling sound came as it slipped into the flesh below his chin. He tried to stand, but Ember pushed down with her free hand, trying to keep him rooted to the porch swing. The chain connecting the swing to the porch roof jangled and shook back and forth.

  She used all her might to keep him down, but he was too strong. He stood and then threw her off. Ember slammed into the railing, making the wood rattle. The bodyguard lumbered to his feet. He still had one hand in his jacket pocket, but the other was free. Ember noted his pistol had fallen to the porch.

  His one hand was covered in blood. He pulled his other hand out of his pocket, but he held no gun there. Both his hands went to his neck, and he plucked the blade from his flesh. It fell from his slippery hands and clattered to the porch.

  By this time, he was heaving breaths, trying to suck oxygen as his lungs were filling up with blood. A curtain of red coated his neck and his upper chest. His breaths hitched, and he took one step before slamming down onto a knee. The force made the wooden porch bow. He completed his fall and went silent as his body relaxed.

  Ember gritted her teeth and looked in the house’s window as she leaned forward to retrieve her knife. If Xavier was in there, he must've heard all of this. No more time for a stealthy approach.

  A stone gargoyle sat on the edge of the porch railing, and Ember grabbed it with one hand. Roaring, she threw the gargoyle through the window. The glass shattered and spread out in an arc. She shielded her eyes from the spray and then leaped in through the window.

  Her body pulled into a ball to roll and somersault along the hardwood floor. Little bits of glass scraped the back of her hoodie, but she didn’t feel any cuts. She popped up, disoriented, trying to get her bearings. The room was dark. Living room. She could see a light on to her right. Kitchen, probably. But, before she could turn in that direction, a gunshot cracked the air.

  She felt the whiff of air and a sensation like fire ripping along her right thigh. She yelped and looked down to see a line of exposed flesh on her jeans. Frayed black denim a half-inch wide. She'd been shot. The bullet had only grazed her, though. Adrenaline masked the pain, but the slash filled up with blood in an instant.

  She saw Xavier’s silhouette for a brief second in the doorway of the living room and then disappeared. Ember held tight to her knife and raced after him. The wound on her thigh now pulsed, but it wouldn't stop her. Working her legs as hard as she could, she dodged furniture to chase him.

  But, by the time she reached the kitchen, the back door was already slamming shut. She raced after it and opened it to find nothing out here — a thicket of trees in the neighborhood in the collection of houses.

  Xavier was gone.

  And now, he would realize that she’d discovered the bug in her condo and had used it to track him down.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  WELLNER

  DAC President David Wellner sat back in his chair and patted his belly. The steak had been excellent, not to mention the cheesecake dessert. Maybe too excellent. He reached onto the table and lifted his glass of cognac, then swirled it and gave it a
good sniff.

  Across the table, all the members of the Assassins Club government finished their desserts and sampled their drinks. The newest member, Club Historian Kunjal Anand, seemed the only one out of place. He didn’t yet know how to play the political game, and that was as expected. Wellner appreciated the young man’s lack of guile. A refreshing quality among the people he associated with on a regular basis. Kunjal had said approximately thirty words all evening, all of them direct answers to questions. All of them straightforward.

  Wellner hoped the young man would keep that sense of sincerity. There weren’t many role models in the DAC government who could act that way. Wellner wouldn’t consider himself to be any better than others involved in their petty squabbles and controversies, though.

  Jules Dunard, the vice president, pushed a plate of cheesecake away from her. She nodded at the full plate of chocolate mousse sitting in front of Kunjal. “Not hungry?”

  Kunjal blew out his cheeks like a trumpet player and shook his head. “Thank you, Ms. Dunard. It’s been a lovely meal. But, I can’t eat another bite.”

  “Pity,” Jules said in her smarmy and erudite tone. Then, she looked at Wellner. “And you, David? I see you fared quite a bit better with the challenge of your meal. How was your cheesecake?”

  “Delicious,” he said. “As always, you’ve outdone yourself, Jules.”

  He got the sense Jules didn’t like it that he referred to her by her first name. Everyone else said Ms. Dunard, but Wellner didn’t have to. Being the damn president should come with at least a few perks, after all.

  “David and I had a chance to visit the new Golden courtyard renovation,” Jules announced to the room.

  These monthly Club government dinners were not supposed to allow discussions about official Club business. They were supposed to be a way for the members of the Review Board to get to know each other. A way for them to escape work for a little while.