by Heskett, Jim
How long had she been out? This guy had traveled fifteen miles already.
But now she had somewhere to go. She’d have to wait for a ride to get there. But, she knew exactly where to go to get her damn stuff back, and probably where to find this purse nabber Roland, too.
Chapter Twelve
WELLNER
Wellner glanced at the collection of member tokens sitting around the table in the conference room. The tokens were a silly little ritual the Club had employed for decades. Once you passed the recruiting phase and became a full member, you received your gold token. Then, at any official DAC meeting, you had to bring your token to prove membership. And, at Review Board meetings, Club policy dictated that in order to speak, you had to set your token on the table.
So, six tokens ringed the table, from the President, Vice President, Switchboard Secretary, Historian, Chief Administrator, and Policy Sheriff. And, aside from the President and Vice President, hardly anyone else had spoken. Wellner was used to that. He was also used to debating one specific member of their government and fighting to make sure she didn’t monopolize the entire conversation as she typically tried to do.
“All I want to get across,” said Jules, the Vice President and David Wellner’s primary critic, “is that I believe it’s a mistake to let this go unchecked.”
Wellner watched new Club Historian Kunjal scribble notes. Wellner wondered why the kid didn’t use a keyboard. Handwriting seemed like an archaic practice. The Club forbade the record being kept in the cloud or on any internet-connected device, but opting for pen and paper was extra work for no benefit. A laptop and a printer would be much more efficient for recording meeting minutes. Still, Kunjal could organize his notes any way he wanted, as long as they made it to the Club archives eventually.
“Who says we will let Lydia Beauchamp go unchecked?” Wellner asked. “You want me to send a dozen assassins to her house to drag her out into the street and shoot her?”
Jules glared at him. "Yesterday, she poisoned half of the Boulder Branch. Two of them died. It's been over twenty-four hours, and there's been no official response. That is unacceptable."
"Lydia is in the middle of a contract to take out Ember Clarke. If we haul her to Denver for a Review Board meeting on her actions, we expose Lydia, and that tips the scales in Ember's favor. As the Review Board, we have a responsibility to stay neutral in the contract between Lydia's Parker Branch and Ember Clarke. And, according to the contract, Lydia has a right to her privacy unless she reveals herself to her target. That contract is sacred. I shouldn't have to remind you of that fact."
Jules didn’t appear to like this last little jab. “Then why isn’t someone else from Parker here to explain her behavior?”
“What do you think that would accomplish? What would that change today that would be any different five days from now, when the contract is over?”
Jules shook her head. “The optics, David. Maybe what you’re saying is true, but to the rest of the Branches, it looks like we’re allowing an internal attack—one on a Post Office, even—to suffer no consequences. To these people who put their lives on the line on a regular basis, one day is a long time.”
Now she was grandstanding. Wellner felt himself growing angry, so he took a breath and ran a hand through his thinning hair. Jules wanted to get his ire up. No doubt about it. She wanted him flustered and making statements for the record that she could later take out of context.
“I know about the optics. After this week, we can discipline Lydia. Not during her contract. I don’t want to keep talking in circles with you about this.”
“And if Ember takes her out preemptively?”
“Do you think that’s going to happen?”
Jules appeared to consider this as she chewed on her lip. “Doubtful. I’ve seen what Lydia can do.”
“Well, then, in the unlikely event Ember Clarke kills Lydia Beauchamp, we release a statement condemning what she did, and consider her death to be our discipline.”
“This whole debacle is symptomatic of how we let Parker run riot,” Jules said.
Wellner sighed. There were no Branch reps here today; only official elected members of the Club government. "What's that supposed to mean?"
“It’s their lack of transparency. The fact that they’re allowed to operate with a different set of rules than all the other Branches, and no one says anything about it because they have the Club archives in a damn tomb underneath their Post Office. It’s made them too powerful.”
Wellner put his hands under the table and squeezed his thighs to distract himself. He took a couple cleansing breaths before speaking again.
“What would you have me do? Should we take a vote and force Parker to be more transparent? Club law laid out specific guidelines. Nothing Parker is doing violates those guidelines. Should we change the law because it’s led to something that inconveniences us? That’s not how our founder intended for this to work.”
Jules banged her fist on the table. “You have a pipeline to God, do you?”
“Come on, Jules. That’s uncalled for. Just because this meeting isn’t open to the DAC doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want with impunity. I’m still the President.”
Jules sneered and sat back, but didn’t open her mouth. Wellner could see her working up to a rebuttal, so he picked up his token and stood. “We need a break. Take fifteen, everyone. When we come back, we have to move on. There are too many items on the agenda for us to keep wallowing on this one topic.”
Without a word, Jules and the others picked up their tokens and stood from the table. Kunjal was still scribbling as everyone else headed for the kitchen for coffee and snacks. The plastic cap of his pen jutted from his lips, bouncing back and forth as he chewed on it.
Wellner slid into the chair next to Kunjal. “Hey.”
The young man looked up and took the mangled pen cap from his teeth. “Hello, sir.”
“Do you have a moment to talk?”
Kunjal looked surprised, but he immediately dropped his pen and paper on the desk in front of him. “Absolutely.”
Wellner tilted his head toward the door out to the hall, and Kunjal followed him. Wellner resisted the urge to look back toward the kitchen to see if Jules was watching.
Out in the hall, Wellner walked until he felt he was out of earshot of anyone from the conference room. Then, a slow breath. The silence out here felt marvelous, and he reveled in it for a few seconds. He leaned next to the door to the stairwell and gave Kunjal a broad smile. "That was tense, huh?"
“The Vice President is a very spirited woman. It is hard to keep up with her.”
Wellner nodded. "Yeah. I've noticed that about her. But how are you?"
“Good, sir.”
“We haven’t spoken in a few days.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry about that. I’ve been out at the Club archives in Parker, actually, doing research.”
“Anything interesting?”
"Oh, yes. Several interesting things. Our history is a spiderweb. I am only beginning to follow all the strands, but I want to focus on a larger project. As far as I can tell, there has been no single, comprehensive record of the Club's history, particularly focusing on the formative years. I'm making notes for such a tome. And I have begun researching 'self-publishing.' Did you know there are websites that will print and send you a professionally bound copy of your work?"
Wellner swallowed, then opened his mouth to speak.
"I am, of course, joking," Kunjal said in a sheepish whisper. "I will not be uploading this book to a public website."
Wellner frowned, then smiled. A joke, he thought. From Kunjal. I never thought that was possible. “Well, I like your thirst for knowledge. Your uncle did well picking you for this job, and you’ve hit the ground running.”
Kunjal’s cheeks flushed. “Thank you for saying so.”
“Now that I think about it, the last time we talked was actually at the dinner last week. The Review Board dinner at
Jules’ house?”
“Oh, yes sir. I am still full from the cheesecake.”
Wellner offered a quick laugh. “Yeah, excellent meal. There was one thing I wanted to ask you about that night. Something that’s been on my mind, to be honest.”
“Oh? Of course.”
“After dinner, when we went out to the patio for air, you were chatting with Jules for quite a while. The two of you were off by yourselves for five minutes, at least.”
Kunjal's eyes flicked up and to his left as if searching the ceiling for the answer. "Yes, sir. I believe that is correct."
“What were you two talking about?”
Now, the young man grew uncomfortable. “I, uh, don’t recall exactly. This and that. Mostly, she wanted to welcome me to the Club, since I don’t believe she and I had ever spoken before that evening.”
“That’s it? A welcome?”
Kunjal fidgeted. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Mostly. She asked me about my living arrangements, about my duties and how I liked them. It was her actually who implanted the seed about doing a comprehensive Club history document. Beyond that, mostly small talk.”
“Right. Small talk.”
Wellner studied him. Kunjal had zero guile to him, and Wellner had to believe the young Club Historian was telling the truth, or what he believed to be the truth.
But, Wellner knew Jules better than that. She had an agenda with this kid.
Wellner patted Kunjal on the shoulder. “Okay, son. Nothing to worry about. Let’s go back and get a doughnut before our break time is over.”
Chapter Thirteen
EMBER
Ember dabbed at the wound on her forehead with a paper towel from behind the counter at the dry cleaners. She kept checking out the front door for the car service to arrive. Time felt slow and disorganized, a hangover from the blow to her head.
While she was waiting, she poked around inside for a few minutes. On the other side of the counter, she found a door leading to a small room. It looked like an office. Her bobby pin was lost somewhere, but she hadn’t needed it. The office door was unlocked.
She hunted around inside this room no bigger than a closet for employee files, hoping to find more information on hit-and-run Roland. But, after a couple of minutes of digging through stacks of pages sitting out on a desk, she found nothing to help.
It didn't matter. She knew where he was because the blue dot on her tracker app hadn't moved in several minutes.
The Thum app beeped to inform her the driver would be here within one minute, so she dropped the bloody paper towel in the garbage and stepped out into the sun. As soon as she did, she checked the roofs of all the nearby buildings for snipers. She didn’t expect to find one, but with a hit out on her life, there was no sense in being careless.
Something told her the kind of person who would poison potato salad was not the same person who would perch on a roof in Aurora with a sniper rifle. No, in Ember’s experience, only a certain kind of assassin preferred poison. Usually, a woman, often older, and someone who valued privacy and secrecy. Not everyone likes to meet their target in the open.
But poisoners were often much deadlier and more unpredictable than those who worked with bullets.
That seeming penchant for secrecy made Ember suspect the assassin on her tail this week was from the Parker Branch, since they were the most secretive of all. But that was only an educated guess. Ember couldn't rule out the other Branches, except for Westminster, who had been assigned to her last week.
Five more weeks of someone coming to kill her. She tried not to think about the totality of it. One week at a time was the only way she could tackle this without allowing the weight of it all crush her.
The car arrived, and the driver waved. Ember slipped in the passenger seat. She faced forward, not wanting any conversation, hoping he would pick up on her signals without her having to explain it.
Still, the driver asked, “How you doing today?”
“Fine.”
“If you don’t want to chat, that’s cool with me. Grab a water bottle from the back seat if you want one, or help yourself to a phone charger in the glove compartment. Thanks for choosing Thum for your rideshare needs.”
She nodded and didn’t say anything, eyes forward.
“You okay? You’re bleeding.”
“Fine. Just drive, please.”
He zipped his lips and pressed on the gas pedal. For the next several minutes, he kept his word and didn't bother her with pointless small talk. He did, however, glance at her bloody forehead a few times. Ember supposed she couldn't blame him. Probably not every day did this guy pick up a passenger who was actively bleeding, yet not headed for the hospital.
They embarked on their way to a neighborhood west of LoDo in Denver. Nowhere near the suburb of Parker, but that didn’t mean anything. While the Branches had their roots in specific geographical regions around Denver, members weren’t required to live within the suburbs or neighborhoods bearing their name. Like a lot of the Club practices, tradition weighed heavily into how things operated on a daily basis.
Ember stared ahead during the drive, wincing against the sunny afternoon. Her sunglasses had been in her stolen purse along with her guns and her favorite knife. Nothing made her feel more naked than to venture out into the world unarmed.
Twenty minutes later, they stopped in front of an apartment complex. The driver gave her a spiel about how to rate him in the app, and Ember nodded but didn't hear a word he said. He seemed nice enough, so she kept her snarky replies to herself.
She left the car and made a lap around the apartment complex, looking for the best way in. It was a tall building, at least eight stories. Glass exterior, with brick on the ground floor and mirrors framing many of the corners. With the afternoon sun sinking, the glare made studying the building a challenge.
Ember contemplated walking in the front door but decided against it. She could see the elevator from the lobby, and there was a keypad next to it. She could wait for someone going up and hitch a ride like a teenager standing outside a liquor store begging adults to buy them a six-pack, but she didn’t want to do that.
Ember found a solid alternate option on her next pass around the building. A back door had been propped open with a little block of wood, leading into a coin-operated laundry room. A dank and claustrophobic box stinking of bleach.
As she waited outside the laundry room to make sure it was safe, she squinted up at the windows, noting which were open and which hid behind closed drapes. She saw a pair of eyes sneaking out between a set of almost-closed curtains on the third floor. The eyes disappeared, and the curtains closed in a hurry. Seemed like a safe bet—a good place to start, at least.
“Hello, Roland,” Ember said to no one.
She raced toward the laundry room and whipped the interior door open. Judging by the size of the building, there would be two staircases up, at the west and east end. The elevator was off-limits, but if he were in a hurry, Roland wouldn't use it anyway. She had to pick a stairwell, and she guessed on the west one. Fists clenched, she opened the door and stuck her head in. She didn't hear shoes stomping down the steps. So, she ran back toward the east stairwell and tried that. Nothing there, either. Which one to pick?
Maybe her attacker had holed up inside the apartment. He had her guns and possibly other weapons. She wished she had time to travel a couple of miles south of here to raid a known Boulder Branch weapons stash, but better to stay close to her target.
Even unarmed, she thought she needed to go in now. She had a feeling the guy wouldn’t be there if she delayed her pursuit for even seconds.
Ember hustled up the stairs to the third floor. She marched down the hall toward apartment 314, which seemed like the one corresponding to the window where she’d seen the disappearing act in the curtains.
She listened with an ear against the door but couldn’t hear anything. A quick study of the lock told her it wouldn’t be a challenge. Her sole bobby pin was sitt
ing on the ground outside the dry cleaners, so she reared back and thrust a foot against the doorknob with all her might. It cracked but didn’t break, so she kicked it four more times until it finally splintered and gave way.
Ember jumped back away from the door, a couple of feet to her right. When no bullets came, she leaned around and checked inside the apartment. No one there in the living room. By all accounts, the apartment seemed quiet and empty.
Fists raised, Ember entered the apartment. A modest place, maybe one bedroom, with a central living room with an open door to the bedroom, and a walkway to the kitchen on the other side.
She heard nothing but the sound of her own labored breathing. She had chosen the wrong stairwell, after all. An impulse told her to run back down the stairs to hunt for her attacker, but she was too lightheaded. The blow to her head and the exertion after had left her drained. Ember didn’t know if she would survive a one-on-one confrontation against someone who had bested her once already today.
Still, she ducked back out into the hallway and took a look around. Nothing stood out as unusual. After a few seconds of listening to the hall, she returned back inside.
And there, sitting on the counter, was her purse.
She checked it and found almost everything as it had been before it had been stolen. The only thing missing was the eighty-seven dollars in cash she had kept in the wallet. Could this have been nothing but a simple robbery?
Somehow, she doubted it.
With a pistol now in her waistband, Ember hunted around the apartment. She found little to interest her. No telltale invoices stuck to the fridge. Nothing personally identifying at all, actually. The bedroom, bathroom, and closets were all clear.
A desk pushed up against a wall in the living room had three drawers, two of them locked. A locked drawer was always a good sign you were on the right track.
She used a kitchen knife to break them both open. In one, she found a roll of cash. Ember plucked out four twenty dollar bills to replace what had been stolen from her, then dropped the rest of the money back into the drawer.
