by Heskett, Jim
Ember: you got me there
Zach: I had a great time. The rest of my week is super busy, but I’m looking forward to date number three, hopefully early next week.
Ember: we’ll see. I don’t usually date gum thieves.
Zach: then I'll keep chewing this one and give it back next time I see you. Call you in a couple of days
Ember: you better
She smiled as she locked her phone and headed straight for the fridge to treat herself to a beer. Standing in the kitchen, she could feel the tension pressing like a too-firm massage on her shoulders.
Ember paused before the open fridge door, letting the cool air waft over her. Then she stopped short when she heard something behind her. Her eyes shot through the living room to somewhere outside her actual apartment.
It sounded like scratches coming through her front door. The doorknob, specifically.
Ember first checked the windows and saw nothing suspicious. Then, she padded over to her couch and retrieved her pistols from underneath the left cushion. With both barrels pointed at the floor, she eased in front of the door and turned her head to listen. More scratching. Someone was trying to pick the lock on her door. She hadn’t even locked it yet since coming home.
Not hard to guess who was out there.
She stowed her guns and flung back the door to see a stunned Roland out there, hunched over, trying to break into her apartment in the middle of the afternoon. There wasn’t anyone currently watching, but she couldn’t believe how obvious he was about it.
Ember grabbed him by a wrist and tugged him inside her living room. As he went flying, something spilled out of his back pocket and tumbled onto her living room carpet. A cylinder with a nozzle at one end. It rolled until it bumped into the leg of her couch.
Ember kicked the door shut and whirled to face Roland as he also hit the floor. But, in a surprise move, he bounced up to his feet in a flash. She had not expected him to be so spry. Even more surprising, he closed the distance between them faster than she could blink.
He launched a meaty fist at her face, and she planted a foot to push herself out of the way. The punch whiffed within an inch of her jaw. The next one, though, she wasn't fast enough to avoid. Roland's fist sank into her right hip.
Right on the bone, pain shot through her like an electrical charge. When she bent from the blow, another came at her face. She leaned back and missed most of it, but he still managed to land a couple of knuckles on her chin. Off-balance, she had no leverage to attack forward.
Ember dropped down a foot by bowing her knees, which re-centered her weight. Then she delivered a punch to his gut. With all the force she could muster, she carried through to knock him back.
“You’re a lot faster than I expected,” she said as she moved back, pushing the words out between labored breaths.
He couldn’t find his balance and landed on his butt. Ember didn’t wait for him to recover. She launched at him, jumping and then pressing her knees into his shoulders to force him to the floor. His head smacked against the carpet, and he looked up at her, bleary-eyed.
She gave him one more punch to the face to buy herself a few seconds. He seemed dazed, not immediately ready to fight back.
She jumped up and raced over the desk. From the top drawer, she grabbed two zip ties, then hurried back. She flipped him over, wrenched his hands behind his back, and tied him. Then, she put the other one around his ankles.
Now that he was immobilized, she stood and took a couple of steps back—chest heaving, lightheaded. The blow to her side ached. But, Roland had effectively been neutralized.
She pointed at the cylindrical canister on the carpet. “What is that? You were going to spray me?”
He shook his head and had to gasp a few breaths to speak. “It’s nothing.”
She retrieved it and knelt down next to him, shoving the nozzle in his face. “Then you won’t mind if I pump a little into your eyes?”
“No! Please don’t do that. Please don’t spray me.”
“Tell me what this is, Roland. Tell me what you were going to spray on me.”
“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know what it is. She gave it to me and told me to spray you. She said I had to hold my breath and close my eyes while I did it, or I would die too.”
Ember sat back and tossed the canister onto the carpet. “She sent you here to kill me this time.”
“No. I mean, nobody sent me.”
“It’s okay, Roland. I know about Lydia Beauchamp.”
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You know about her?”
“Yes, of course I do. You don’t come after a token-carrying member of the DAC and expect it to be easy, do you?”
“I’m so sorry. Please let me go.”
"That's the other misconception we need to clear up: you didn't really think that if you failed, I would be able to let you walk out of here like nothing happened, right?"
Another realization darkened his face, and he started to cry. It soon intensified as he shook and whimpered. Tears streamed from his eyes, and Ember didn't know if she'd seen anything more pitiful in her life. Roland wasn't a pro. He barely knew what he was doing.
“Why does she keep you around? You’re clearly not cut out for everything this line of work entails.”
Hitching breaths, his lips quivered. “She’s my cousin.”
“Ahh, okay, that makes more sense.”
“Please don’t kill me,” he said, snot bubbling out of his nose. “Please don’t. I’m sorry. I promise I won’t tell anyone about this.”
“You’ve attacked me twice now. What am I supposed to do? I can’t let you walk out of here and assume you won’t do the same thing again when Lydia yells at you for messing it up.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m so sorry.”
“The drugs in the apartment. They aren’t yours, are they?”
He shook his head. “No, they’re Lydia’s. She has to keep her stuff there so her family won’t find out about it.”
“Did she send you here to kill me because she doesn’t want to do it herself?”
“Yes. They made her take on your contract for the trial by combat. She didn’t want to do it. She’s only in the Club to make contacts for her drug thing. She doesn’t care about killing people.”
“That’s funny, since she poisoned and killed two people from my Branch only a few days ago. We talked about this already, remember?”
“Lydia will do whatever she has to do so they won’t kick her out of the Club. She needs those contacts. So, she has to do it to stay, for now, until she’s built up her network. But she’s not into the whole thing.”
“I’m not sure if you know her as well as you think you do, Roland. What’s she going to do next?”
“I don’t understand.”
"She sent you here to kill me. That isn't going to work out, and there are only three days left for her to do it. So, what will she do next?"
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
Ember glanced at the canister, sitting on the carpet. She should kill Roland. He deserved it. If she let him go, Lydia would probably send him after her again. There wasn’t anything to gain from letting him go and following him this time.
But, she couldn’t kill this simple man. She couldn’t do it.
Ember stood and took her Halo knife out of her purse. She also retrieved a roll of duct tape from the kitchen junk drawer, plus one more zip tie.
When Roland saw these, his breathing sped up. But, before he could protest, Ember slapped a piece over his mouth. She rolled him over onto his back and cut the zip ties on his hands. Then, back onto his stomach, and she attached one zip tie to his left wrist, securing it to his belt loop. She allowed his right arm to stay free, but she held it tight so he couldn’t fight back.
“Roland, I’m not going to kill you. But, I can’t have you coming after me anymore, so this is how it’s going to be. I don’t want to do this, but the alternative is slitting your thr
oat, so I hope you can see it from my side.”
She grabbed his wrist and jerked it up to his back, then pulled it away from his body. With a little more pressure, the bone snapped. Like popping a balloon.
He wailed underneath her, writhing and trying to escape the anguish. Ember folded her knife and took a step back, sighing down at the man on the floor. Harming Roland wouldn’t stop Lydia. She would only send somebody else next. Probably someone a lot smarter and a lot more capable.
Ember had to go to the source and end it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
LYDIA
Lydia had put her son to bed moments before. With her husband suffering from a cold, she had to do most of the work. Not her strong suit. He was usually the one who read the bedtime stories and supervised toothbrushing time, but since he couldn’t get through ten seconds without coughing, she had done the honors tonight.
And now, with her husband gone off to bed early himself, Lydia had the house alone to think. Her husband had taken the heavy-duty cold medicine and had fallen asleep ten minutes later.
Hopefully, there wouldn’t be any bedtime false starts from the young one. He seemed to stay up later and later, talking to himself or sitting on the floor and staring at his Batman nightlight. But, he wasn’t sleeping any later in the mornings. She usually worried about that. There were all sorts of mommy-blogs out there extolling the virtues of ten hours of sleep per night for preschoolers.
As a mom, there were countless things she could obsess over.
But tonight she had other things to worry about. Things unrelated to her family. She hadn’t heard from cousin Roland in hours. She wasn’t sure if the big meeting scheduled for two days from now with a certain powerful Denver businessman would still happen.
And, she still had Ember Clarke to contend with. Assuming Roland hadn’t taken care of her. His extended silence suggested that was the case. Despite his faults, he was usually good about checking in when he was supposed to.
Lydia had no illusions about who would win in a head to head match of Ember versus Roland. If Roland had any hope of winning against her, he would have to do everything right. Doing everything right was not a commonly used tool in his toolbelt.
Maybe Lydia had been a fool to expect her hired help to take care of this for her. Roland was much better at simple tasks. She’d never sent him to take out a trained killer before.
Lydia descended the stairs and entered the kitchen to pour herself a glass of white Zinfandel. She lingered in front of the fridge and considered taking one of her husband’s beers instead, but decided to go with the wine, after all. Wine was more in line with her diet, which she was still viewing as a possibility to start this week.
She poured a glass and drank half of it in one gulp, standing in front of the kitchen island with one hand resting on her cutting board. Half a glass did not immediately settle her troubled mind, so she drank the rest in a second swallow and poured herself another. She held the glass up and sniffed it.
Lydia looked back toward the stairs. Her husband coughed a few times, but nothing came from her son’s room.
For several years now, she had felt like a professional juggler. She had juggled her tenuous membership in the Assassins Club, juggled her primary occupation as a provider of sedatives for Parker and south Denver, and she juggled a fake career as a real estate agent. The ultimate goal was to retire from most of those gigs, but they weren’t quite fleshed out yet. So far, she’d managed it all without letting any of the jobs spill too far into her home life. She had never felt close to putting her family in jeopardy.
Until now.
With this contract to kill Ember Clarke forced upon her, many things in her life felt uncertain. And Lydia hated feeling uncertain.
Her pocket jingled, and she took out her phone to see Roland's number on the screen. She sighed in relief as she answered the call.
"I've been waiting for hours to hear from you. What took you so long?"
“Hi, Lydia.”
She could tell right away there was something wrong, by the dreamy quality to his voice. Like he was half-asleep or high. “What happened?”
"I went to her apartment like you said. But, I didn't get to use the stuff you gave me."
“Sounds like she’s still alive. That’s a problem.”
"I know. We fought, and she beat me, and she broke my arm. She broke my arm, Lydia.”
She thought she heard him sniffle a bit. “Are you at the hospital right now?”
“They gave me stuff for the pain. I’m sleepy. Really sleepy. But I knew I needed to call you and tell you. I messed up. I know I did.”
Lydia flexed her jaw and took deep breaths when she felt her heart rate speed up. “She let you live, though.”
“Yeah. She was going to spray me with the canister you gave me, but she changed her mind and let me go.”
“What did you tell her?”
He hesitated, and a chill ran up her spine. Roland knew way too much. All at once, the potential damage Roland could do to her, her business, and her family all settled as a snap of realization on her. She had been so careful with other areas of her business. Bringing this simpleton so close to her affairs had been a terrible mistake, and Lydia could see it so plainly now.
“Roland, what did you tell her? Does she know my name?”
"Yeah, I mean… I had to tell her. She already knew, so I didn't see the point in lying. I'm so sorry."
Lydia glanced back at the stairs. If Ember knew who she was, then she could easily find out this address. Ember was a cold-blooded assassin. She would roll in here and kill her husband and son without a second thought.
Ember Clarke might kill her family. The weight of the words pressed on Lydia’s head like a vice grip.
She couldn't let that happen. Being here, mere feet away from the people she cared about the most, had put their lives in danger. She had to get out of here. She had to stay away from her family.
Or, maybe she could convince her husband to take their son up into the mountains? She could arrange for a cabin in Granby or Winterpark or somewhere like that.
No, it wouldn’t work. Not with him being under the weather. He wouldn’t want to go anywhere, so the best Lydia could do would be to draw the attention away from them.
Also, what to do about Roland? A killer like Ember would only let him live if she had a plan to use him somehow. That meant he was tainted.
“Which hospital are you at?” she asked Roland.
“I’m at the one in Boulder by the mountains. The one near downtown.”
“Okay, cuz. Sit tight. I’m going to have someone come by and pick you up, okay? Don’t worry about it. I’m going to take care of everything.”
“...I’m sorry.”
“I know you are. And all of this is my fault, not yours. I know you were doing your best. You focus on getting better, okay? We’ll worry about the rest of it later.”
She ended the call and set her phone down on the counter. The lock screen wallpaper showed a picture of her with her husband and son. The three of them at Royal Gorge in Cañon City, all smiles. Lydia couldn’t let Ember harm them.
And, in order to stop that from happening, Lydia knew she might have to take care of them herself. And she knew exactly what to do.
Could she really do such a thing? Maybe, if it would spare them from Ember’s wrath. It was an awful, horrible, gut-wrenching thing to consider, but she had to keep it as an option.
But first, Roland.
Lydia made another phone call to a friend. She drummed her fingers on the stem of the wineglass as she waited for him to answer the call.
“It’s me,” she said when he finally did. “I need you to go pick up Roland at BCH in Boulder.”
“What’s this all about?” asked the gravelly voice on the other end of the phone call.
“He messed up again.”
“Not much of a surprise there. I’ve been telling you for months to cut him.”
"I know it w
as bound to happen. He's pretty good at some things, not so good at others."
“How serious of a mess-up are we talking about here? What you want me to do with him?”
“Pick him up and take care of him. And make sure no one can ever find his body.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
EMBER
Day Five
She knocked on the door to Fagan’s small house in North Boulder. Her mentor opened the door immediately. Of course, Fagan would have seen Ember approach the house. There was no sneaking up on an old assassin. To reach Fagan’s age, you had to be the best of the best.
“Good morning, November.”
“Morning, boss lady. Tea ready?”
"Poured it ten seconds ago." Fagan stood aside and let Ember in. Ember noted Fagan's burn scars on the one side of her face were shiny, looking recently moisturized. She probably had an ointment to apply to her face and scalp on a regular basis.
Ember couldn’t imagine living with horrible burns like that. If it bothered Fagan, she never said a word about it. One more way she was old-school. That generation didn’t complain. Ember was technically a millennial — depending on which website was reporting the age gap — but she always felt that Fagan was in some ways a kindred spirit.
Fagan escorted her to the kitchen, where two mugs of steaming tea sat on the table. Small table, two placemats, salt and pepper shakers sitting on an unfolded napkin at the center.
“What do we have today?” Ember asked.
"It's called Clementine Sunrise. I think you'll like it. I'll get you milk or creamer if you want, but just know that I'll judge you if you don't drink it plain."
"Oh, wow, no pressure or anything…"
"This is an excellent tea. It should be experienced the proper way."
They slid into their seats, and Ember lifted the mug under her face, letting the heat warm her. Too hot to drink yet. Fagan had no problem slurping hers, and she lifted a napkin to her lips to dab the dribble after each sip. Her lids dimmed, and she smiled as she swallowed the first taste.
