Unstable Target: Six Assassins Book 3

by Heskett, Jim

  The neighborhood seemed the same. Cars swarmed around the Starbucks and the gas station. The industrial area nearby now hummed with business hours activity. But the bar looked exactly as it had when she had left it last night.

  With gloves on this time, she opened the door and swung her guns around the interior. Everything was unchanged from last night. But, Ember made a sweep around the ground floor of the bar anyway, checking the bathrooms and the back office and anywhere else she could think of to find anything out of order. Any possible clue Quinn might have left behind.

  Sighing, Ember checked her phone. No new messages from Zach. She'd been worried about him since parting yesterday because he had seemed unsettled. She felt confident it had something to do with his lab job and the people he worked for, but she hadn't wanted to press him about it. Zach was a big boy; he could speak up if he needed something.

  With light feet, Ember padded up the stairs to the second floor and set her jaw when she saw the blank spot on the floor where the machine had been. The torture contraption and the woman from inside it were gone. Maybe the cops had been here.

  All that was left was a small sizzle mark on the space nearby. The tables and chairs in the surrounding area were still pushed back, out of the way. But there was no solid sign anything had ever been in their place, except for that burn scar. It wasn’t definitive proof of anything, but it did stand out.

  Ember knelt and looked at the space. That machine had to have been heavy. At least a hundred pounds, probably more than that. Assuming it had casters on the bottom, Quinn could maybe have rolled it over to the stairs, but then how would he have gotten it down and around the halfway turn in the stairs?

  Ember traced the path it most likely had been moved from here to there. A clear line existed between the middle of the room and the stairs down, with tables and chairs pushed out of the way. She eased down the stairs until she noticed the dent marking the wall at the point where the stairs turned. Squinting, she examined it up close.

  “Hmm,” she said. “Maybe you did do this by yourself.”

  It would have been a pain in the ass to move that thing down the stairs and out into the back of a truck or moving van, but she guessed it was possible to do by one person — she was confident Quinn was working alone. People like Quinn didn’t usually take on partners. She had a hard time imagining him teaming up with someone to pull this whole thing off.

  The more impressive feat was that he’d gotten it upstairs by himself. Perhaps he’d erected it up here, moving the pieces in one by one, then welded it in place. It made sense, as this place surely had been abandoned for some time. It was possible Quinn had built it long ago even, knowing that he’d have the opportunity to use it at some point in the future.

  Ember returned back up the stairs and again examined the sizzle mark on the floor. The way that woman had died gave Ember a continuous low rumble of nausea. She hadn’t wanted Gabe to see it, but there had been no way around it. While she’d wanted to keep the emotion within her while they worked, she also knew it was crucial to not tamp it down and keep it there forever. It would come out, whether she wanted it to or not.

  The best option she'd found was to let it out in small, controllable spurts. Either that or it would explode everywhere, and she'd become nothing more than a sopping and sad mess on the floor.

  So she’d been able to stay focused, but that didn’t mean she was unaffected — far from it. Ember kept picturing her face and the terror in her eyes in her last moments on earth. No one should have to go out like that. No dignity. No peace.

  Ember was going to find Quinn Voeller and stop him from doing this to anyone else, ever again.

  She continued her examination of the now-empty space as she worked on keeping her subconscious in check. “What the hell does free shipping mean, Quinn?”

  Chapter Nine

  QUINN

  Quinn Voeller closed the front door and peeked through the curtain by the side window. A chunk of hair slipped out of his ponytail, and he pushed out his lower lip to blow it out of his face. He wished it was all long enough to fit into the hair tie, but the long pieces near his scalp line kept breaking and creating stray strands. It was annoying, but he hated how he looked with short hair and would never go back to it.

  His eyes tracked the car. They delivered the mail entirely too early in the day in this neighborhood.

  Quinn hadn't received any mail, of course, because there was nothing in this house tying it to him. Nothing in his name at all, he let nothing personally link him to any domicile he might rest his head at night. But he watched other people receiving mail. Some of them even left their houses to greet the mail carrier on their front lawns, smiling and chatting and waving as they returned to their houses after, clutching handfuls of bills and junk mailers.

  The mailman was black, with shorts and a jacket, and a thick wool beanie over his head. Quinn understood the beanie. Wool that thick could hide all sorts of things in it. If the mailman was smart, he would have a layer of thin metal—possibly aluminum—lining the inside of it. Being outside all day long, he would be exposed to all sorts of things. Influences. Coercive factors. Aluminum wouldn’t completely rule out interference, but it would help.

  However, Quinn didn’t believe for one second that this guy wasn’t one of them.

  Enough so that Quinn would never speak to the man. He wouldn’t even let the mailman lay eyes upon him. Every single day in this neighborhood, watching and cataloging.

  Even worse was the delivery drivers in those brown trucks, the ones skulking up and down the neighborhood roads all hours of the day and night. Their complete lack of consistent time schedule bothered Quinn more than the mail delivery vehicles. The chaos of it felt wholly disordered.

  And so, whenever Quinn stayed in this house, he kept a shotgun by the front door and his eyes on the brown trucks and the mail carriers as their cars and trucks drove up and down the street. He waited and watched and made himself ready to act if it came to that.

  The shells were currently in his pocket, but if the mailman decided to stop in front of this house, Quinn would load them into the twelve-gauge. He preferred not to keep the shotgun loaded at all times, because of the accident that had happened in Colorado Springs a few years ago. Better to be on the edge of readiness and avoid making careless choices out of fear. Quinn was smarter than that. He was more careful than that. Or, at least, he had been since Colorado Springs.

  “Be quiet,” Quinn said through gritted teeth toward the whispers coming from the kitchen. A moment later, he realized there was no one there.

  He sighed as the mailman drove away, then he checked the sky one last time. A surprisingly blue-sky afternoon, since it had smelled like snow all morning. Maybe the smell was something else.

  Quinn had also had his eye on a set of contrails slicing the blue for the last hour. That was entirely too long for innocent clouds of plane-made steam to sit in the air. Good thing he didn’t have to go outside again today. Did he? He would have to check his day planner.

  Quinn set the shotgun shells on the end table next to the door and checked the deadbolt. Everything seemed secure, so he returned his thoughts to his two remaining prizes in the basement. For some reason, his scalp itched. He took a detour to the bathroom so he could massage a little hand lotion into his hair to ease the itch, and he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His face looked rough and tired. He didn’t remember looking this way two or three short years ago. Had there been something added to his food to change his appearance, perhaps? Maybe it was only the weird lighting in this bathroom.

  He hated this house. Good thing he was leaving it soon.

  Quinn stepped out of the bathroom and headed for the basement door. He hesitated outside of it, clearing his throat several times. A few breaths to calm himself. Opening this door always made him rush with excitement, but he hated for them to see it. He always wanted to present an even and calm exterior to prevent them from becoming too excited. If they
escalated, then he would escalate, then someone would end up hurt. There was no need for that. The last couple of days had been exciting enough already—lots of changes so far, and more to come.

  Big things. New things. A whole world of possibility.

  His back and shoulders ached from all the activity at Night Owl. That cage had been a beast to move around.

  Quinn opened the door and entered the darkened stairwell. The stink down here attacked his nostrils immediately, but he fought the urge to retch. After a few seconds, his stomach calmed, and he could walk again—one foot over the other as he descended the creaky stairs.

  The string for the bulb hovered in front of his face, and he yanked it downward to add light below. The glow flooded the slim stairwell, then pushed out into the subterranean area under the house.

  He could hear their murmurs as soon as the light turned on. “Daddy’s here,” he said, pushing out the words in a sing-song voice. He lingered on his last few steps down, letting them take in his body in a slow reveal. Quinn loved the drama of it all. The presentation was half the fun.

  He landed a foot on the cold basement floor. There were Alpha and Beta, attached to their individual stations. Both so young, so pretty, so subservient. They were each secured to different load-bearing poles in the mostly-empty basement. Hands and ankles handcuffed, duct tape over their mouths.

  “I’ve been gone too long,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. I will take you to the bathroom one at a time, but it also seems like you two could use a bath. That will have to wait.”

  Quinn took a few steps toward Alpha, and she shied away from him. Her eyes flicked over to the blank area near the west end of the room. "You're probably wondering where Gamma is. She's no longer with us, I'm afraid. But, not to worry, another one will be joining us soon. I think we'll call her Delta. She will only be a short-term project, but you can have a few days with her. She's feisty. Full of fire."

  The girls both spoke, but the words were lost against the duct tape. He used to let them talk but didn't like the horrible things that came out of their mouths. So now, the duct tape only came off at mealtimes, or if there was a need to interact with them.

  "Also, I have more bad news. We're going to have to move soon, so I don't expect that it will be too pleasant. For me. You'll both be asleep, so you're welcome for that."

  Tears streamed down Alpha’s face. Still, she looked beautiful. So young, so pretty, so helpless. His number one, his first, the one he cared for above all others.

  He withdrew a syringe from his back pocket and removed the cap. “Now, who wants to take a trip to the little girls’ room first?”

  Chapter Ten

  EMBER

  She pulled back the door to the gym in the Boulder Branch Post Office. The smell of sweat leaped into her nostrils like fajitas sizzling on a grill. A dozen men and women were inside, practicing martial arts on mats, working punching bags, lifting weights. Bars clanked. People grunted. A small speaker from somewhere played early 2000s rap-rock. That wouldn’t have been Ember’s first choice for workout music, but it wasn’t terrible. At the Highlands and Golden Branches, they had state of the art sound systems and gyms decked out with mirrors and rows upon rows of pristine exercise equipment. Boulder was more like a sweaty boxing gym under a set of train tracks. Maybe it wasn’t that bad, but it felt like that to Ember sometimes.

  The woman she was looking for was in the back. Fagan was in blue sweats, going hard at a punching bag, free-handed. The burned half of her face pulsed red with exertion. Teeth gritted, nostrils flaring as she let loose.

  She ceased punching and lifted a hand toward Ember. Her mentor beckoned the younger assassin close with the flick of a finger.

  Ember navigated between people doing crunches and one guy jumping from the floor to a stack of boxes over and over again.

  “Hey,” Ember said, “doesn’t that hurt your hands?”

  Panting, drenched in sweat, Fagan shook her head as she snatched a water bottle from the floor and guzzled.

  “I just don’t want you to have a stroke or anything. You know, at your age.”

  Fagan narrowed her one good eye and pointed a finger. “Watch it, kid. I could still kick your ass.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  Fagan tilted her head toward an unoccupied corner of the gym, and they shuffled off to have a little privacy. They waited for a nearby recruit to shuffle off so they could speak freely.

  “Gabe found out anything yet?” Fagan asked.

  “He says he’s getting close. I don’t know if I have time to wait around for him, though. The note I found said two days. If that meant forty-eight hours, then we’re halfway through. But, I don’t think I have another choice besides waiting. I can’t find any addresses for him through regular channels.”

  “You got a team to accompany you when he does find out the location?”

  “I do. Got at least four, maybe one or two more. I don't want to take a team so big he'll see us coming."

  “That’s smart.” Fagan eyed Ember, her chapped lips parted. “Seeing what you saw… the girl who got killed… you doing okay with it?”

  Ember shrugged. "Not really. I mean, to be honest, I've seen worse, but this is no cakewalk. I'm trying not to talk about it, to put on a brave face for Gabe."

  “You know that cliché in the movies about the morgue guy eating a sandwich while he examines a dead body? It’s bullshit. You never get used to the blood and guts.”

  “I believe it,” Ember said.

  “I heard an interesting story about Quinn from someone at Highlands Branch.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  "He had a contract in the UK last year. There was a software company based in London that was having a friendly little war with one of their competitors. They both made productivity software, like checklists or to-do apps or something like that. I don't understand how that phone stuff works."

  Ember smirked. “You’re adorable. Continue.”

  “The hiring party made clear to Quinn that it was a no-kill contract. He was to fly in, then pay a visit to this software competitor’s house to put a little fear into him. Slash the paintings in his living room, leave all his kitchen knives arranged to spell out a threatening word… stuff like that.”

  “I’m guessing it didn’t go as planned?”

  "That's the thing. Quinn did everything how he was supposed to, down to the letter. But, then, he left the scene of the contract and went down to a pub in a nearby village, and he got into a fight with a local. He gutted the local like a fish, in the alley behind the pub. Then, he went to that local's house and killed the man’s girlfriend. He left pieces of her all over the place. It looked like he took his time with her.”

  “That’s horrific.”

  “He got arrested, of course. But, he talked to his lawyer back here, and he threatened to expose his real reason for being in London if they didn’t get him out of it. The Branch got involved, the software guy who hired him got involved.”

  “And that worked?”

  Fagan shrugged. “Apparently. He’s still a free man, walking around Denver. There’s no official record of it in the Highlands Branch archives. He was never brought before the Review Board about it, even though he broke at least a half-dozen Club laws.”

  “I’m really beginning to see how uneven the Club’s sense of justice is. Swift and mighty, or blind and dumb. And you never know which one you’re going to get. But, it’s obvious that men tend to get the benefit-of-the-doubt version.”

  “That is how it seems to happen, yes. But you look like something else is on your mind.”

  “Yes,” Ember said. “Couple things, actually. I still haven’t been able to learn anything about the history of the black spot. I was thinking of going out to the Parker Club archives this week and poking around in the basement. Can you make some phone calls and make sure they’ll let me in? I mean, I did kill one of their members a few days ago.”

  “Sure, no problem. I can
take care of that for you.”

  “Much appreciated, boss lady.”

  “What’s the other thing?”

  Ember sighed and took a few seconds to put her thoughts in order. “When I was up at four this morning, not sleeping, I was thinking about what started all this. My trial by combat and the black spot.”

  Fagan nodded. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, actually. I didn’t want to bring it up unless you were in the right headspace to talk about it.”

  “Oh? Go ahead. You first.”

  "The chain of events seems all normal," Fagan said. "I've been over it in my head a dozen times. The contract request comes into the main switchboard. Then, it gets funneled to the Branch message board. All of this is by the book. It comes to me, and I passed on it because I thought it was more your style."

  “Yep.”

  Fagan sipped her water. “You go to Rocky Mountain National Park to kill Rodney Palmer, the shithead rapist who needed to die. But, Niles from Five Points shows up before you can, claiming he has a contract for the same kill.”

  “Which is not supposed to happen if the chain of command is working.”

  "Right. My first thought was that the two contracts came in at the same time—a dual request. But, I talked to the switchboard operators on duty that week at the home office in Denver. They showed me the logs. There was only one request, and only one transfer, to Boulder. They never sent anything about that contract to Five Points."

  Ember turned up her palms. “But, he knew about it somehow.”

  “Gabe hacked into a message board, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe Niles hacked into the Boulder message board and found out about your contract, then decided to steal it, and he faked his paperwork somehow.”