by Heskett, Jim
And then, under that file folder sat another one. The contract for week two of the six-week trial by combat. Wellner opened it and scanned through the basic details. He read the key parts: which Branch would be sending an assassin this week, whom they had chosen to go after Ember, and all the lawyerly language involved to make it official. Good thing, too — Ember had gotten into this mess because there had been two contracts out on the same target, and she’d taken matters into her own hands.
This week was Parker’s turn, a Branch about twenty miles south of Denver. A strange Branch, they were one who had the fewest dealings with the larger body of the DAC. Secretive and even standoffish at times. Their secrecy was most likely the reason they had been chosen as the Branch to store the official Club archives detailing almost sixty years of history. It was a weird tradition, and some believed having the records with a single Branch office was reason to suspect foul play or at least favoritism, but efforts to decentralize or spread out the archives had been met with the same pushback as had efforts to ‘go paperless.’
Few were allowed to see the archives, and even then, gaining access wasn't a walk in the park—Club Historians, members of leadership, and special cases only.
Wellner held up the page detailing the assassin the Parker Branch had picked this week. An odd choice. An assassin not well-known among the DAC, but known for having an unusual style.
Wellner knew enough about the assassin to know that Ember would not have a smooth ride this week. He shuddered, thinking about some of the contracts this assassin had carried out before.
“Good luck, Ember,” Wellner muttered as he scribbled his signature. “You’ll need it this week.”
Chapter Five
EMBER
Ember walked through the automatic doors at Foothills Hospital and straight through the emergency room interior. She didn’t stop or bother to ask anyone where she should go. Neither did she ask for permission.
In her experience, hospital staff were too busy to worry about the comings and goings of people who weren’t bleeding or vomiting. Their jobs were hectic enough without having to worry about random people infiltrating to see family members. Usually, Ember would have stopped off to buy a flower bouquet to help sell the cover story, but she hadn’t had time today.
Hiding from police attention, though, was another matter entirely. Ember noted two of them in the emergency room waiting area, but they were huddled together, not looking at her.
On the second floor, Ember headed for room 206, where Fagan had told her she could find Gabe. Two more officers stood at the end of the hall, hovering somewhere around room 215. Ember kept her head down and headed toward 206 before they could see her. In the frantic activities of the day, she hadn’t considered what she would say to the cops if questioned. If Fagan had a plan, Ember didn’t yet know it.
But, she had to stop short when she almost ran into someone coming down the hall on a collision course with her. She saw the shiny shoes, the navy pants, and navy cop shirt as her eyes rose.
"Whoops," he said, smiling. The cop was holding a walkie talkie in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other, with grease marks near the bottom. Fast food or something like that, which meant he was either in a hurry to eat or in a hurry to deliver the food to his coworkers. He didn't have time to stop and chat.
"No harm done," she said, hoping to scurry away before he had a chance to get a good look at her. She knew cops well; she knew their training and how they operated. To some, everyone was a threat. To the rest, everyone was a possible victim. Either way, the public was a source of scrutiny.
His eyes looked her up and down, but she couldn't tell if he was doing it out of a rote cop habit, or if he was actually checking her out. It happened often, and while most of the time it was just harmless habitual male behavior, it was still annoying. She wasn't wearing anything particularly sexy today since she had only planned to have brunch with her coworkers, then return home to plot a line of defense against this week's trial by combat threat. Jeans and a gray hoodie that covered her mostly combed hair.
She started to move left, and the cop mirrored her movement, almost causing them to bump into each other again. Then they each tried the other way. The cop gave an awkward chuckle, and Ember tried to hide her sigh.
“Should we dance?” he asked, laughing. The line was so standard, Ember had predicted it would come out of his mouth half a second before it had.
Ember smiled while still keeping her head down. "Not unless you buy me dinner first," she said quickly as she ducked to the right to pass him. She resisted the urge to look back to see if the cop was watching her. Several steps later, she honed her ears to listen for his footsteps. She heard them moving in the opposite direction—nothing out of the ordinary.
Finally, at 206, she scurried into the room and glanced back at the cop. He was still walking away from her, down the hall, paying no attention. Ember waited until he turned into a room down the hall before considering the matter closed.
In the hospital room, she saw Fagan standing over Gabe, in a hospital gown, his eyes closed. An intubation tube protruded from his mouth. A series of machines around him produced a kaleidoscope of beeps and lights, all feeding toward Gabe. He looked peaceful, and it broke her heart to see him this way.
“Where did you leave our friend the cook?” Fagan asked. She hadn’t looked up to acknowledge Ember’s presence. Her eyes were glued on Gabe as she stood with her arms crossed and a scowl on one half of her face.
“Still swinging. I’ll go back later to find out more. You sounded urgent on the phone, so I thought he could wait for a while. I’m here for Gabe.”
Fagan frowned down at him. “He’s not as bad as I thought he was going to be. Stable, for now, at least. They’ve already pumped his stomach once, and I think they’re going to do it again. At least, I think that’s what they did to him. Nobody around here will tell us much of anything.”
Ember crouched next to the hospital bed and studied Gabe’s face. Beads of sweat shined on his forehead under the overhead lighting. His eyes were closed, his lids flashing as his eyes moved underneath them. If he was dreaming, Ember doubted it was a pleasant dream.
“How many are here?”
“There was a lot of chaos in the room after you left,” Fagan said, “so I don’t have complete counts. But, I think about a dozen were affected. Ten with no effect at all, and three or four had slight stomach cramps. There are six or seven in the hospital right now, and two died at the Post Office.”
“What? Two dead?” She felt the beginnings of a major headache coming on. The kind acetaminophen wouldn’t do much to fight.
Fagan nodded. “Sarah and Hank both died while someone was carrying them to a car for transport. It was ugly, Ember. I’m glad you weren’t there to see it.”
Sarah and Hank. Shit. “This is crazy,” she said.
“Crazy that someone would hit us at our Post Office? Yes, it is. But you know why this happened. There was nothing random or unplanned about this at all.”
At first, Ember felt personally attacked, as if Fagan was blaming her for the deaths, but then she realized who she was talking to. Fagan was matter-of-fact, and obviously it wasn’t Ember who had poisoned everyone. Sure, she blamed herself for it in a way, but she also knew that the person to be held responsible was still out there somewhere.
She stood and ran a hand through her black hair. “I know. It’s me. This is the first attempt on me in the second week of my trial by combat. But, this has to be against the rules, right? You can’t attack a Branch like that. The Club rules are pretty clear about violence in a Post Office, and this seems like it qualifies.”
“I don’t know,” Fagan said. “I’ve never seen anything like this happening before. With the cook dead, it makes it hard to prove this was related to your trial by combat. They could easily say he worked alone.”
Ember noted two navy blue uniforms passing outside the room. She flicked her head at the door after they’d passe
d. “What do we do about them?”
“I’ll take care of them. So far, no one has seemed like they’re treating it as a criminal matter. You go back and learn what you can about our cook.”
Ember took Gabe's hand and gave it a squeeze. She opened her mouth to whisper words of encouragement but then decided against it. He wouldn't hear anything right now.
As Ember walked toward the door, Fagan cleared her throat. "Be on your toes, Ember. Someone's gunning for you now, and that person is willing to go to extreme measures. If you're at risk, then we're all at risk."
Chapter Six
EMBER
The assassin sat out in front of the Louisville house. Ember had been gone for an hour to drive to Boulder and back to visit Gabe in the hospital. He hadn't been as grave as Fagan had feared, but his outcome was still uncertain. Fagan had promised to text as soon as he woke.
In the last hour, the outdoor makeup of the neighborhood had changed little. She kept checking for anyone suspicious of her. Sooner or later, the police would be here, and this house would become a crime scene.
Ember spent at least ten minutes watching the house before making her move. “Okay, Shane,” she said to her car’s dashboard, “let’s see how you’re doing in there.”
With her pistols stowed, Ember crossed the street under the afternoon sun. She had a baseball cap pulled low, and her hair tucked up underneath the back of the hat. She had already decided to call the police on her way out, and she'd rather not have the neighbors recount seeing a white woman with long black hair snooping around the house. But, there wasn't a substantial cause for concern. Witness statements were unreliable, and unless people know they're supposed to be looking for something, they pay little attention. Even if six people told police they had seen a strange car, they would probably all six report different makes and models. Certainly not a license plate.
Voluminous gray clouds covered the sky. She pulled her hoodie up as a chill descended, and she stuck her hands in her pockets. When she approached the fence, she took one last look around. She only saw one person outside. A heavyset woman was checking her mailbox, her eyes down.
Ember jumped the fence and made her way into the back of the house again via the sliding glass door. She was careful to wipe down her fingerprints from the glass and the door handle. Now that she thought about it, she had latex gloves in the trunk of her car she could have easily brought along. But, with all the chaos of the day, she wasn’t thinking straight.
Not thinking straight would get her killed. Or cause her to make a serious mistake.
She closed her eyes and breathed a few times to settle her nerves. Then, she stepped through the kitchen. Once in the living room, Ember groaned when she noticed the one thing missing.
Shane was no longer there. The rope had been removed from around the rafters. Indentations in the wood were the only evidence it had been there, and the "suicide note" left on the nearby table had also been removed.
Interesting. So, whoever had paid or coerced Shane into poisoning the Boulder Branch had killed him with the intention of making it look like a suicide. Then that person had changed their mind, for some reason.
Or maybe, they had been given a new and impulsive set of marching orders by some other person, the one actually behind all this.
“Why?” Ember mused out loud. “Did you get scared the cops would see through it? Or, did you know I was here? Are you in panic mode, not thinking this through?”
That gave her a sense of hope, thinking the killer might not have a solid plan. Still, she was a few steps behind this person. Ember had no patience for being a few steps behind.
She turned around the room, looking for anything out of place. But, her previous visit here had been rushed and frantic. She hadn’t paid close enough attention to the details. Once again, she made a pass through all the rooms and couldn’t find a thing. Everything about this scenario felt sloppy and unprepared.
The whole thing seemed off somehow.
In the living room, she studied the carpet underfoot for stress. She used a technique she’d learned long ago, something completely unrelated to killing or hunting.
Her father had taught her the trick — when outside, focus on a single square foot of earth, as carefully and intently as possible, for a minute or more. After a while, after the brain stops trying to make sense of what it's seeing and stops trying to fill in the blanks of empty dirt, you start to recognize little things. Small, almost microscopic things. Bugs and ants, crawling around a miniature world, plants and infant blades of grass that simply hadn't existed a moment before.
It was a fun thing to do out in the woods when there was literally nothing else going on, but she had found that it was also a useful technique for examining a crime scene.
It took a minute of staring, of deep focus, but then she saw it. Telltale signs of individual carpet strands working to return to their prestressed straight-up state. It was subtle, but once she saw a few of the strands the larger pattern took shape.
Someone had dragged the body. Not through the front door, obviously. Not in the middle of the day, when there were people out washing their cars and mowing their lawns for the last time before the season’s snowy days commenced.
She hunted for scuff marks on the kitchen floor and found nothing. Crouching, Ember stared at the tile. She tried to recall her earlier days working as a field agent at the FBI. She used to handle real cases like this, prior to her undercover work.
A few years ago, on one of her first cases, Ember—back then going by her given name, Allison Campbell—had investigated a cross-state kidnapping. She remembered the scuff marks on the kitchen’s linoleum flooring. The scuff marks had led her to the backyard, where the corner of a gas station receipt stuck on the splintered wood of the deck had eventually led them to the kidnapper, two states over. A tiny clue leading to a big arrest.
No such luck here today.
Ember stood and rolled her shoulders, and she wandered around the kitchen, pacing to burn off energy. “You gotta give me something,” she said as she used a hand towel to open drawers and cabinets. Only ordinary kitchen utensils and supplies looked back at her from these places.
Then, her eyes landed on the fridge. There were a few magnets holding up pictures of Shane. Mostly in various hiking spots around Colorado. A couple showed him and a woman together. That could be the proverbial “Jenny” who had left him, if there were any grains of truth in the fake suicide note. Ember considered finding this woman, but that seemed like a long and pointless road to drive.
But there was one thing on the fridge door that caught her attention: a piece of paper folded into thirds, barely hanging on, a magnet in one corner. Why would Shane stick a folded piece of paper on the fridge? To her, that meant this was a "to-do" item—something not intended as a display piece for the refrigerator.
Ember snatched the paper and unfolded the top third. A full-page invoice from Goodson Dry Cleaners in Aurora, a Denver suburb. Aurora was nowhere near Louisville.
Ember unfolded the bottom third and found the address for the Boulder Post Office, scribbled there in pencil. Since the suicide note had been typed, she couldn’t compare it to this handwriting to check for a match. But, she had a strong feeling Shane himself had written this. Someone had called him to tell him where to find the potato salad to poison, and Shane had hastily scribbled it on this piece of paper.
Which begged the question: why this piece of paper?
“Okay,” Ember whispered. “Now, we’re getting somewhere.”
Chapter Seven
LYDIA
Day Two
Lydia Beauchamp slipped on the crawfish-style oven mitts before she bent over. She had a pair of silicone ones that worked better and were more comfortable, but these were a gift from her husband. Even though he was still asleep upstairs, she wanted to show her appreciation for the gift. Besides, he was sleeping a little later than usual this morning, so she expected him at any moment.
She
pulled the tray of cinnamon rolls out of the oven and set them on the decorative potholder on top of the kitchen island. It was made of silicone, but it still contained a picture of a crawfish. Lydia had dozens of tacky items like this in her house. She sighed as she thought about it, pushing away the slight annoyance. When people know you're into a thing, you get gifts related to that thing. You become associated with that thing. Your identity becomes "lover of that type of thing," and you become one of the easiest people to buy gifts for. Uncreative people get you the same gifts, time and time again.
Apparently, she was friends with a lot of uncreative people.
She couldn’t remember the first “crawfish item” she’d been gifted, or really how it had all happened, but before she knew it, Lydia had a house full.
Sure, there was a reason for it. She used to catch crawdads with her father all along the BC Spillway by Lake Pontchartrain. Some of her favorite memories of New Orleans. Her family and friends knew this about her; that was likely the reason she’d become “the lady who liked crawfish stuff” in their minds.
The cinnamon roll smell wafted into her nostrils, and she gritted her teeth. The diet was supposed to start this morning, but she hadn't held out high hopes for that. Lydia was wearing a loose-fitting shirt, but the apron squeezed her midsection and showed off the bulges of extra chunkiness along her sides and middle.
Lydia sighed as she picked up the icing bag. Oh well. The diet could start tomorrow, and she would be extra good to make up for the belated start. These cinnamon rolls smelled amazing. She had to have one. Maybe two.
