by Heskett, Jim
Ember and Gabe still had the plan, the one they’d discussed yesterday. Hopefully, dropping fake intel over the bug in the condo would give him that false confidence.
Each time she looked up to the windows, she could see nothing out of the ordinary. Not a hint of someone with eyes down on them, or the telltale glint of light off a sniper scope. Cubicles, office workers, file cabinets and coffee machines. Many of the windows were obscured by the glare of the rising sun.
Each step led her closer to the middle, and each step she found nothing in her peripheral vision.
Five minutes later, she saw Gabe walking up from the south, on a path to intersect with her. He looked at her and gave a slight shrug, which made Ember’s heart sink. They were supposed to have spotted Xavier by now so they could execute the plan.
But, if they couldn’t find him up there, then this all went to hell.
What was she supposed to do now?
Chapter Thirty-Five
GABE
A few minutes earlier, Gabe had parked his car in the lot of the Home Depot at the south end of the 29th Street Mall. He made sure his .45 was securely tucked into his waistband, and his shirt pulled down low enough to hide it before he left the car. Above all, the last thing he wanted was a civilian panic.
Gabe set off on a course toward the walking mall. He navigated the parking lot in front of the department stores and restaurants to reach the mall proper. All along the way, he kept his head moving left to right, checking for danger.
He really did not like Ember's plan. There was an abundance of entrances and exits — almost no chokepoints. Hundreds of random civilians wandering about the mall, and any one of them could be among Xavier's allies.
But, he understood why she wanted it this way. Tracking Xavier to take him out hadn’t worked. The only option left was to force him out into the open and make him play the game the way Ember wanted.
Still, Gabe wished Ember would jump in her car and head out to California or Montana for a few weeks to lie low. She wouldn’t do that, though. Regardless of what she’d said about the Club sending people after her, there was an even more palpable force to recon with: her pride.
As Gabe progressed toward the middle of the walking mall, he caught sight of something interesting. To his right was a set of outdoor escalators leading down to the movie theater. A flash of a person's face on those escalators made him stop and stare. He thought he knew that person. While Gabe had not been a recruit in the Denver Assassins Club for long, he had met many people from various Branches. And he thought he knew this person. One of the Five Points assassins.
Xavier was not a member of Five Points; he was a member of the Westminster Branch. Was it a coincidence? Just someone out to catch a movie on this chilly morning?
Gabe wished he could've told Ember about it right away, but she had insisted they not talk on the phone once they’d started. It would look too suspicious, she had said. The appearance of the ruse was half of it.
Gabe tried to put the Five Points member out of his head as he checked the building to the west. Sunlight bouncing off the window glass made it too hard to see anything. He focused on the windows, looking for a hole cut out of the glass with the nose of a sniper rifle poking out. Due to the reflections and angles, he knew there would be no chance of actually seeing Xavier in the window. The old sniper was too smart for that. If he were hunkered down up against one of those windows, he would be camouflaged.
But, Gabe didn't see anything out of the ordinary. And, he had to be careful not to look directly up toward the building too often.
What would they do if they couldn't find Xavier? Make another pass? Gabe checked his phone. Twenty-four minutes left on the timer.
Just past the central point of the walking mall, Gabe spotted Ember. She kept on walking with a slight limp and tilted her head a little at him, a questioning look on her face. Gabe met her eyes and gave her a grave shake of the head. She frowned. Gabe took this to mean she hadn't spotted Xavier, either.
They were running out of time. They were running out of options.
Chapter Thirty-Six
XAVIER
Xavier opened the door to the private office, number 405. Fourth floor. He was shocked at how easy it had been to reserve office space, and only one day in advance. Not to mention the fact that he had been able to make a reservation without a credit card, and had promised to pay in cash. As easy as could be. With what he intended to do in here, secrecy and anonymity would prove valuable allies.
This little office room was meant for three or four people, with a handful of desks and a couple of file cabinets. Carpeting, whiteboards, and complimentary cables piled on one desk completed the amenities. The previous tenant had left marker scribbling on a whiteboard. Notes about horizontal scalability and market penetration made him smile. How easy would it have been for Xavier to drift into a job like that after discharge from the military? If he’d had to put on a monkey suit every day, commute to someplace like Boulder, and sit in endless project meetings, he probably would have eaten his sidearm by now.
Xavier didn’t care about any of that stuff. The detritus and markings meant nothing to him. He only needed this office for the windows.
He checked his watch. If all went well, he would put a bullet in Ember in the next fifteen or twenty minutes. Staying beyond that would be pushing his luck. Yes, he still had tomorrow. But, Ember was so slippery, he didn’t want to leave it until the last day. She had found him once before. If she located his RV at the north end of town and came for him, he might not get another narrow escape.
It had to be today. Right now. All or nothing.
He set the case on top of the desk and removed one item. The circular glass cutter with an integrated suction cup. He licked his finger, wet the rubber interior of the cup, and then pressed it against the glass. A metal stick with measurements on the side protruded out, leading to a cutter head. He removed the safety cap from the cutter head and set the distance to four inches diameter. He only needed a small cutout to accomplish his task.
Xavier moved the cutter head around the suction cup, carving out a perfect circle in the glass. Once all the way around, he pulled the implement back, removing the glass. A whiff of cold air entered the room.
Then, he donned a black baseball cap and black jacket, the next items from the case. He put both of these on, zipping up the jacket and pulling the cap low. If he had thought to bring some, he could have smeared black shoe polish on his cheeks. But, maybe not necessary. Also, if he had to make a hasty getaway, the shoe polish would make him stand out, for sure. He hadn’t forgotten the awkward lesson of walking out of Ember’s condo with the latex gloves still on his hands.
Finally, he retrieved his AX308 sniper rifle. After scooting a nearby desk in front of the window and positioning a trash can below him for his Skoal spit, he took up position, kneeling in front of the desk. He would have preferred to go prone on the floor, but then he wouldn’t have been able to see over the buildings on the west side of the 29th Street Mall and into the foot traffic below.
He knew what they were trying to do. Ember had laid out her entire plan while talking to her recruit Gabe on the phone in her car, not knowing she was bugged the whole time. They would split up and walk the mall, trying to locate him. But, with the morning sun bouncing off these windows, no way would they see him.
Then, they would meet in the middle, and Gabe would disappear somehow while she went off on her own. Their plan was to have Gabe circle back and sneak up on Xavier. Such a basic plan, Xavier could hardly believe she’d even suggested it. But, that was her desperation talking.
All Xavier had to do was keep track of Ember, then pull the trigger as soon as he could find her alone. Hopefully, near the center of the mall. His current choice of ammo wouldn't allow him a long-range shot. But, there was virtually no wind, and he had faith the AX308 would get the bullet all the way to its target.
Then, he would pack up and leave before young Gabe got he
re. If he could even find the place, and that was a long shot. Or, maybe he would snipe Gabe while he had a chance, to prevent any future repercussions. The Club frowned upon killing members of other Branches without a contract permitting it, but there were rare exceptions granted if you could prove you were worried about imminent retaliation. Xavier didn't have any problem with setting his token on the table before the Review Board to explain his case.
Or, he could let the young man come to him, and then Xavier could kidnap him. That would work, too.
Xavier took the caps off either end of the scope and settled in, adjusting the windage and elevation to find the perfect focus.
Now, to locate his two targets and lead them to their slaughter.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
ZACH
Zach Bennett arranged the Petri dishes before him from largest to smallest. Then, he arranged them in alphabetical order of the contents. He wasn't the type to count ceiling tiles or give himself exactly eleven swipes of deodorant under each arm, but this morning, ordering items on his workstation helped. He was massively hungover. Last night, he and his roommate Alec had gone on an evening hike and then had drinks at Yeti. Many drinks. They'd been on a course to close the bar down, despite Zach knowing he had to be up for his scheduled work shift.
And, they might have stayed until last call, had Alec not met a couple of cute Sociology majors and left with one of them. Zach had a feeling he could have left with the other one if he'd wanted. She was a stunning Filipino girl who had a deeply sexy accent. But, while chatting with her, Zach kept picturing Ember. He kept thinking about how much he'd enjoyed their back and forth banter at dinner in Boulder. How much fun he was having making up silly sushi roll names and texting them to her. He imagined how she would giggle at his ridiculous sushi creations.
The girl at the bar was cute and flirty, but her drunken ramblings gave Zach second thoughts. In the span of a single minute, the girl bought one stranger a drink at the bar, then she angrily got in the face of another, for no reason Zach could see.
So, he did not leave the bar with the Sociology major, and had instead shaken her hand and left by himself after Alec took off with the other girl.
He'd gone to sleep thinking about Ember, and just before he conked out, a strange thought occurred to him: How random it had seemed that Ember had been in Fort Collins the other day when they'd met. She hadn't said why she was in Fort Collins. It's not as if it was a quick drive from Boulder. Couple that with the fact that she still hadn't given a satisfactory explanation about what she did for a living… and Zach had a lot of questions.
But not so many questions that he didn't dream about her last night, which he did. A blurry and incoherent dream about them playing miniature golf together, except instead of golf clubs, they used baseball bats. And every time Zach hit a ball, it exploded into hundreds of pieces all over the mini-golf course. Ember laughed, but Zach kept getting frustrated.
This morning, while eating a Pop-Tart and chugging water to cure his hangover, the first Sociology major had slinked out of Alec's room and flashed him a timid wave. The girl had seemed surprised her friend had not come home with Zach. He could only shrug and advise her to have a nice day.
And now, an hour later, he was at the lab, analyzing soil samples. Mixing them with various compounds and recording the results. Grunt work, but not too boring.
The lab was in the back of a small nondescript building a couple miles north of Fort Collins. He and a few other lab technicians worked on their own projects, all overseen by one man. Thomas Milligan. He was a charismatic fortyish white man who—for some reason—Zach had trouble looking in the eye. Thomas had the kind of stare that made him feel uncomfortable, even when he had a bright and charming smile on his face. Zach thought maybe their age difference had something to do with it. That seemed a likely explanation.
Fortunately, Thomas was rarely at the lab. Zach and the other techs came in, logged into a workstation for timesheets, and then went about their business. Few of the other techs there were interested in conversation, so Zach kept to himself. He didn't even know most of their names. That was okay with him because they were all old. At least thirty-five, and some of them even older than that. When they did want to chat, it was usually about work-related things. Zach would not find an opportunity to recount his bar exploits to anyone here this morning.
He always did his work, logged the results of his experiments, and received direct deposits to his bank account on a weekly basis. The checks came from FIREDRAKE BIOCHEMICAL, the name on Thomas Milligan’s business card when they’d met. A night Zach would not forget.
That one strange night, when Zach had been in the lab on campus working late, Thomas had shown up accompanied by a burly and silent driver to recruit Zach to come work at Firedrake. With a broad smile, Thomas had pitched him on the idea and welcomed him to the Firedrake family.
Except, nowhere else had Zach seen the name Firedrake. It wasn't on the login workstation, and it wasn't on any of his submitted reports. There were a variety of names on various documents and software programs, some of them strangely foreign-sounding.
Anyway, Zach didn’t care much about the company name. He didn’t care about not being friends with his part-time coworkers. He needed the money, and the work—while sometimes tedious—did hold his interest most days.
This morning, Thomas was in an office at the far end of the main lab room, typing away on a laptop. Zach had tried to stay out of his way. They’d exchanged hellos when Zach had arrived, but that was the only conversation so far.
In the three months they’d known each other, Thomas had invited him out to dinner a few times, and Zach had declined each offer. He didn’t get the sense Thomas was hitting on him, but, whatever the dinners were for, Zach didn’t want to know. Thomas and his plastic smile creeped Zach out. He was the boss, so if he wanted Zach to attend a dinner that badly, Zach figured he could simply require him to. He wasn’t about to oblige the boss for fun.
"Hey," a voice said, and Zach lifted his gaze from his microscope to see a nearby blur. He blinked a few times for his depth vision to come back, and he saw an older woman in a white lab coat at her workstation. She was facing him: black woman, horn-rimmed glasses, and braids atop her head. A sprinkling of moles and freckles lined her nose.
“Hello,” Zach said, realizing his throat hurt.
“I hope I’m not bothering you. Do you have any saline solution I can borrow?”
He nodded at the bottle sitting to his left, and the woman smiled. She crossed the short distance between them and stuck out a hand. “I’m Wanda Franzen.”
“Zach. Zach Bennett.”
“I’ve seen you around, Zach. They keep us so busy here, we don’t have much time to chat, do we?”
“Yeah, that’s true. What are you working on?”
Wanda lifted the bottle of saline and clutched it to her chest. She leaned forward and lowered her voice. "I'm actually not supposed to talk about that. We're all a big soup here, you know? Some of us chicken, some of us vegetables." Her eyes flitted toward Thomas Milligan's closed door. "And then there's the broth."
He didn’t know if he understood the analogy, but he nodded and smiled anyway. “I like chicken.”
Wanda laughed. “So do I, young man. So do I. Word is, you’re the new hotshot who’s going to put us all to shame. I know you’ve been here for months already, but gossip doesn’t get around all that fast.”
Zach wasn’t sure how to take that. It sounded like a compliment, mixed with a little competitive sniping, perhaps? Unlike his roommate Alec, who would loudly shit-talk until he ran out of things to say, it seemed different here. The competition happened in whispers and innuendo. Maybe this was what all grownup jobs were like. He didn’t know, since he’d only worked in a restaurant and a clothing store before this.
So, he shrugged and said nothing.
Wanda’s face changed. “Oh, honey, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. We’re all excit
ed about what you can do.”
“What is it I can do?”
She lifted the saline and nodded her thanks without answering his question, then turned back around toward her workstation. Zach stared for a few seconds. Head pounding, throat hurting, he glanced at the clock on the wall, wishing the numbers would move faster.
He cleared his throat and readjusted his lab coat. Back to work.
A sound broke the silence. The door at the far end of the room opened, and a brick house of a man with stubbly black hair and sunglasses stepped into the lab. He took a hard right and pivoted into Thomas’ office. They spoke for a few seconds, then the man reversed his course and hurried toward the exit. And, as he did, the left flap of his jacket opened for a brief moment, and Zach saw a pistol in a shoulder holster there.
Zach looked over to Thomas, who stood and then shut the door to his office.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
XAVIER
Xavier's sniper scope crawled over the crowd. He spotted men, women, and children, some wandering and some moving with purpose. They carried bags of clothes, fancy new tablets from the Apple store, bags of popcorn left over from the movie theater. What sounded like a bluegrass band played on the sidewalk, and a small crew had gathered around to listen to them play. But there weren't massive crowds as there would have been on a holiday.
He knew Ember would do everything she could to blend in. But, he also expected to find her in bulky clothing, secured inside a bulletproof vest. So, he slowed the path of the sniper scope any time he saw a puffy jacket or someone with more layers than the mildly chilly morning required. He didn’t mind the vest; Xavier would have no problem scoring a headshot.