by Heskett, Jim
Footsteps nearby made her look up to see her almost-five-year-old son wandering into the kitchen. A stuffed lamb in one hand and the other rubbing his eyes. He was in his Captain America pajamas. They were too tight, but they’d been his favorites since age two. Lydia wasn’t ready to have that fight about throwing them out. Not yet. Picking battles was a skill she had come to slowly, over several years. Never had she had more practice than since the birth of her son.
“Morning, pumpkin,” she said. “Rolls are too hot. They need a few minutes.”
He nodded and escorted his stuffed animal over to the kitchen table. He climbed up into the chair, struggling, but Lydia said nothing since he had lately refused to use a booster. Once he made it into the chair, he slumped over, head in his hands. The boy sighed and stared at the table, not speaking, bleary-eyed.
Lydia smiled. He was four going on forty.
“Is Daddy still asleep?”
“Yes, pumpkin. Juice or milk?”
“Juice. Grape — no, apple.”
“How about a please?”
The boy sighed again. “Apple, please.”
Lydia waddled over to the fridge and retrieved a juice box for him. As the door closed, her phone beeped from the pocket of her apron. She didn’t need to glance at it. Only one person would call her at this hour, and she didn’t want to check in front of her family. In her world, many items were urgent, but they were only urgent if her son and husband didn’t know the truth about her. She would take care of it when they weren’t around.
Lydia set the juice down in front of her son and gave him a peck on the cheek. He sipped his juice and kicked his legs underneath the chair.
She returned to the rolls and hoisted the icing bag. Smiling, she went to work, lacing spirals over the top. The way the icing melted against the heat of the rolls relaxed her.
She thought about the phone in her pocket, the notification on her home screen.
A moment later, Lydia changed her mind and checked her phone. She’d assumed correctly. It had turned out to be urgent, and she would have been furious with herself if she’d waited.
The text was from her cousin Roland, with a series of pictures. Photos of Ember Clarke entering and then leaving the Foothills hospital in Boulder yesterday around noon. Roland didn’t do a lot of jobs perfectly, but this one seemed to have turned out well. There was no indication Ember had any idea she was being photographed.
Lydia hummed a tune as she zoomed in on one of the pictures. Ember was a beautiful woman; fit, strong, a few years younger. She was rumored to have a hundred kills to her name, despite her short time in the DAC.
"Hey there," came a voice at the edge of the room. She slid her phone back into her pocket and smiled at her husband, leaning against the desk built into the opposite wall of the kitchen. His hair was mussed, he was wearing a dirty white t-shirt and blue boxer shorts with little snowmen all over it. The pale flesh of his potbelly protruded from the bottom of his shirt.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, his voice slow and dreamy.
“What’s that?”
“How can one man have all this sexy?”
Lydia snickered and flicked her head toward the counter. “Coffee’s almost ready, handsome.”
He swept across the room and planted a kiss on her, then he turned toward the kitchen table, with his hands as hooks, poised above to strike. He took a tentative step toward the table, giving a low rumble to catch the boy’s attention.
The boy squealed with anticipation and shied away.
Her husband stomped across the room and gave the boy a quick round of tickles, under the arms and on his tummy, until their son begged for relief. Then, her husband pulled back and gave the boy a kiss on the forehead.
“Morning, munchkin.”
“Morning, Daddy. Mommy made simmon rolls.”
“Sounds delicious,” he said as he yawned. “I’m going to check email real quick. Be back for that coffee in just a minute.”
He turned and walked away, scratching his butt as he let out another howl of a yawn. At the edge of the room, he paused and farted. Then, he pretended to take off with jet power, rushing out of the room.
The boy cackled with laughter. A dribble of juice slid down his chin.
“Is Daddy funny?” Lydia asked.
The boy nodded. “He tooted.”
“Yes. Toots are funny.”
The coffee machine beeped, drawing her eyes toward it. When she noticed the wall calendar above, a million thoughts snapped into her head at once.
She realized she only had six days left to complete the contract on Ember. She’d already wasted one perfectly good day of her seven on that potato salad failure at the Boulder Post Office. Her sources told her that Ember was still very much alive, while a few others from her Branch were apparently deceased. She hadn’t worried about collateral damage — she knew about the trouble recently brewing between the Branches, and she figured this would only help strengthen her Branch against Ember’s. But, she’d hoped on Ember not living out the week.
It wasn’t a complete waste, but she still counted it as a failure. Now she had to adapt, to change her plans. She’d spent a lot of time and effort planning the potato salad poisoning, and a good deal of her stock went into the recipe.
Dealing in poisons wasn’t simple — even though she had the chemistry mind for it, acquiring the ingredients and getting them in high enough doses without alerting authorities was a bear of a task. She’d built her contacts list over the course of years, but she still had to move slowly. There were plenty of acronym organizations out there watching for people just like her.
She shook her head. Lydia hadn’t wanted this contract at all. But the elder members in the Parker Branch had seen fit to assign it to her, whether she’d wanted it or not. Contracts used to be voluntary and democratic. Lately, the Parker elders had taken it upon themselves to dole them out like rations to starving people.
Lydia supposed she deserved it. She hadn't been present much in the Branch for a couple of years now. Her income streams had diversified, and she didn't see the need to complete contracts much anymore to make ends meet. Of course, she didn't want to leave the DAC completely for complicated reasons, but she barely had time for the grunt work of it anymore.
Not this week. She had six more days to kill Ember Clarke to get her standing back in the Branch. And, no matter how young or pretty or how itsy bitsy Ember’s body fat percentage was, Lydia was going to complete the contract on time and kill the bitch.
She grinned slightly, still trying to hide her expression from her son. Ember Clarke and her ilk always got under Lydia’s skin. The privileged skinny ones.
They didn’t have to spend their precious time with kids and husbands and an endless parade of preschooler birthday parties serving hot dogs and pizza because all they had to do each day was look great and live their lives.
She didn’t know Ember, but she knew her type. And while she wouldn’t have volunteered for the contract, she wasn’t at all upset by it.
Ember would die. Lydia would be more than happy to deliver that death to her.
Chapter Eight
ISABEL
Isabel Yang opened the back door and leaned out. Her height made negotiating with the compact car roof a challenge. Not to mention the fact that it was a cool-but-muggy fall day in the nation's capital, and she still hadn't quite figured out how to style her new bob haircut in this weather. It flopped around her face like a series of confused commas sprouting from her scalp.
“I hope you’ll give me five stars on the Thum app,” the rideshare driver said. “I’ll be around this area if you need another ride soon. Just tap on your ‘recent rides’ and then tap on my picture.”
Isabel smiled and said nothing as she shut the door. The driver smelled terrible and had played the music too loud, but she probably would give him five stars. She hated the thought of being the one responsible for ruining someone’s livelihood.
An
d that's why the meeting today was problematic. Two days since her last conversation with her boss Marcus Lonsdale. She didn't know for sure if the topic of conversation would be on Allison Campbell, a.k.a. Ember Clarke, but Isabel had to assume it would be. She didn't have a lot of other responsibilities at the moment, a rare lull in her workload. The plan had been to spend a couple of weeks organizing her office files, but then all this Assassins Clubs stuff had popped up last week and spoiled that dream.
She saw Marcus standing outside Tryst with two coffees in his hand. He was wearing a sharp gray suit with a blue tie and black shoes, and the total package complemented his skin tone well. He always did know how to dress.
Isabel crossed the street and he leaned his head north along the sidewalk before she got there. He didn't wait for her before he started walking, which annoyed her but didn't at all surprise her.
She picked up the pace and met him a hundred steps down. She was wearing heels today and didn’t feel like going on a neighborhood stroll, but Marcus hadn’t asked her what she wanted.
He handed her a coffee and then plucked a pack of cigarettes from his pocket once he had a hand free. “Morning, Agent Yang. Going to be one of those days, I think.”
“Morning, sir. Don’t want to sit? We could go to the park.”
He shook his head and lit a cigarette. “I know there’s rain in the air, but I don’t want to be anywhere we can be heard. Lotta feds out and about this morning.”
“Why?”
He slowed a little as he raised an eyebrow at her. “Excuse me?”
“I assume we’re talking about Ember Clarke during this meeting?” When he nodded, she continued. “Why can’t we talk about her in earshot of anyone else in the Bureau?”
He stopped short and squared up against her as he blew a cone of smoke over her head. “You want to bust my balls? Fine, Isabel. Let’s have it out. Campbell, or Ember Clarke, or whatever the hell she wants to be called… she wasn’t my mess. She wasn't your mess. But, you and I have inherited her from other people, so now, she is our mess, collectively. And this mess is gargantuan, in case you haven’t noticed. This is the kind of mess that will swallow all our time and hold us up until we can find a way to make the swelling go down. We have a dark agent running around, and we can’t tell mom and dad because we’ll get in trouble and put her in trouble, too.”
“That’s exactly my point, sir.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s our mess," Isabel said, "and it's a huge vomit-inducing sludge of a mess, but we still have to keep it quiet because that's how it was handed to us. What are we supposed to do without resources? We can only spend so much money before people are going to want to know where it came from. People don't seem to care about my presentation on gang and mafia activity in Denver. They know about the Denver Assassins Club. Your friend of the deputy director in the meeting last week? He's going to want updates."
Marcus puffed his cigarette and continued walking. "And we are going to give updates when we're ready. Not before."
“It’s only a matter of time before the DAC is connected to the name Ember Clarke, and that makes the situation untenable.”
Isabel almost caught an edge of her heel on a chunk of uneven sidewalk, but she braced her core and held her coffee aloft.
Marcus gave her a smarmy look. “You okay?”
“Fine, sir.”
“Yes. You’re right, though. Ember Clarke is a problem that will not go away on its own.”
“I’m still trying to figure out what to do about her.”
“Do you have something in mind? If you have wisdom to share with the class, Agent Yang, now is the time.”
"I might have better suggestions if I could get access to non-redacted files for her."
He made a face. “Look, I know what you’re asking, and I don’t think it’s going to be possible.”
“Why?”
“Because, Agent Yang, you don’t know Allison Campbell of legend. I do. She ruffled some feathers when she was working out of Washington. You have to believe me when I tell you that sending her on extended, out-of-state undercover endeavors made quite a few people in the Bureau happy.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with her files.”
“Some of those feathers she ruffled were people above our pay grade. People whose names you may know, but you won’t hear uttered in the halls of the Bureau.”
“Sir?”
“She had a habit of not knowing when to keep her mouth shut. Do you understand what I’m saying now?”
Isabel considered this. “I think so. I don’t know how that helps me going forward.”
“It doesn’t. Look at it like this: assume what you know now is all you will know going forward, and that won’t change. Okay, so what do you want to do? If I gave you autonomy here, what would be your next move?”
"Maybe I can fly out to Denver again and make another run at her. She was a good agent once. There has to be a tipping point to make her listen to reason, right? Regardless of whatever feathers she's ruffled or whatever, she's still a federal agent. She still has value we need to pursue. She has three years' worth of intel on the DAC stored in her head, even if she hasn't been reporting in per protocol. What I can’t wrap my brain around is why she's been so alone out there, with only a single handler looking after her. It doesn't make sense."
"Who knows why they set her up the way they did." They turned the corner, and Marcus sipped his coffee with a grimace on his face. "And, maybe if we roll out the red carpet, she sees the error of her ways and comes running home. Or, maybe if we put a little fire under her feet, then it accomplishes the same goal. I need to think on it."
He stopped and held up his coffee, using it to gesture at Isabel. “But, until I make a decision, you keep all of this between us. Messes smaller than this have killed careers before. I’m not going to let that happen to me, and you should consider your own future with the FBI. Am I clear?”
Isabel gripped her coffee so hard the lid almost popped off, but she caught herself and forced her hand to relax. “Absolutely clear, sir.”
Chapter Nine
EMBER
Ember sat in her car outside Goodson Dry Cleaners in Aurora. She held the invoice she'd taken from the dead cook's house in her hand. It was a full, typed page on letterhead, with the name and address of the dry cleaner at the top. A list of cleaned items with prices, and someone—presumably the cook—had scribbled the address of the Boulder Post Office at the bottom.
Somehow, the cook had weaseled his way into working at the Post Office. He'd gotten the address from his boss, then had written it down on this piece of paper. Ember had to assume he had been at this dry cleaners when this had all gone down. Dropped off the potato salad-poison mixture, driven here, hid in the back somewhere.
Right after killing at least two people and gravely injuring several more. Ember tried not to think about it. She needed to keep a level head. Casualties were part of life in the DAC, all the time. Contracts went wrong, and sometimes members never came back from Nairobi or Frankfurt or wherever. She usually wasn't in the same room with them when it happened, so it was easier for the emotional detachment to keep her objective. Not the case today. She'd seen it all, seen it happen.
It had happened to Charlie. It had nearly happened to Gabe.
She balled her fists and forced the anger down to squish it. Not that she and anger weren’t good buddies, but it would have to wait. She needed her objectivity now; she needed to be in her right mind.
Ember folded the paper and stuck it in her pocket. She stashed her pistols in her purse and hitched it over her shoulder as she put her hand on the door handle—a few breaths to settle her nerves. But, before she could leave, her phone buzzed, and she unlocked it to find a new text from Zach Bennett.
Zach: you up?
Ember: yes, because I’m a grownup with daytime things to do
Zach: ouch
Ember: jk. What are you doing?
Zach: headed to the lab. I was late yesterday, so I have to make up today
Ember: I hope you learned a valuable lesson from your tardiness
Zach: Heh. You’d think so, wouldn’t you?
Ember: Yep. I gotta go, have to deal with something. We can chat later
Zach: Sure thing. Take it easy
She smiled down at the exchange in her message app, then shoved her phone back into her purse. Zach was casual yet persistent, and she liked that about him. But, so far, he seemed unwilling to pull the trigger on asking for a second date. If he weren't interested, he wouldn't keep the lines of communication open, would he?
Ember shrugged to herself as she opened the car door. Maybe Zach wanted more, maybe not. Hard to say what went on inside men’s minds. Sometimes, asking them didn’t improve the situation much, either.
A chill descended, and she zipped up her jacket as she crossed the street and took a second to peek into the building before entering. Glass front doors, a counter about ten feet in. A short and stocky white man stood behind the counter, tapping on a tablet. He was unassuming with cropped brown hair and the wrinkles of someone about her age. He also had arms like tree trunks and a thick neck leading to his smallish head.
There were chairs on either side of the room, butted up against the walls. A hinge in the top of the counter allowed entry to the other side and the back room. Based on the size of the one-story building, the back room seemed to comprise the bulk of it. It made sense since they had to keep all the clothes and cleaning machinery back there—lots of secret space to store things.
Ember entered, and the counter guy lifted his face to her and smiled. "Morning. Can I help you?"
Ember sashayed up to the counter and batted her eyes a few times. A cheap trick, but it usually worked for her. “Good morning. How are you today?” A quick glance down at his name tag informed her his name was Roland.
“I’m pretty good. You here to pick up?”
She noticed he had a slight speech impediment, and he spoke with a slow and deliberate rhythm. "No, actually, I'm looking for Shane. Is he in today?"
