Subtle Target: Six Assassins Book 2

by Heskett, Jim

  It didn't matter. She had to push through it.

  Gabe picked up a heavy stone crawdad sitting on the front porch, eyeing the window next to the front door. He held it aloft and then looked to Ember with his eyebrows raised, awaiting confirmation.

  “Wait,” Ember said. A second later, the front door opened. Lydia’s husband was standing there, a kid’s picture book in his hands. His mouth open, eyes wide, flicking back and forth between Ember and Gabe. Behind him, at the top of the stairs, the little boy stood, clutching a stuffed llama, wearing Star Wars pajamas.

  “What in the world?” the husband said. “You’re Ember, right? What are you doing here? Who is this guy?”

  She pushed him out of the way and raced inside the house. Gabe dropped the crawdad and followed, and they both took a hard right into the office. The husband protested, but with her own labored and wheezing breaths and the pounding in her head, Ember didn’t hear a word of it.

  “What are we looking for?” Gabe asked.

  Ember didn’t answer. She started hunting around. Opening file cabinet drawers, the desk, checking behind framed pictures on the walls for cutaway sections.

  The husband appeared in the office doorway, his eyes flaring. “What the hell is going on here?”

  She ignored him at first as she dropped down to check under the desk, where a shoebox sat by itself. “Got it,” she said, lifting the shoebox and setting it on the desk. Her shaking hands hovered above it, her individual fingers aching from strain.

  She flipped open the top lid. There it was. Bricks of white clay with wires jutting out, all connected into a black box a little larger than a phone. The whole thing was a mess of multi-colored wire, and she had no idea where to start.

  “Oh, my sweet Jesus,” the husband said as he took a step into the room. “What is that?”

  “Daddy?” the little boy said, standing behind him.

  The gravity of the situation dawned on her, all of them standing within the blast radius.

  No, she thought. We need to clear this area. ASAP.

  “Get that boy out of here!” Ember shouted.

  The husband turned around and grabbed the boy by the hand, then pulled him out of the room. Ember didn’t have time to worry about where they went right now. Hopefully, the husband would figure out what the deal was and escort the boy out into the street, far away.

  “What do I do?” Ember asked.

  “Turn it over,” Gabe said. “Careful. Try not to jostle the wires until I know what they are.”

  Ember lifted the bomb out of the box and flipped it. The phone-like device had an LCD screen on the other side. There was the readout in the middle of the screen.

  A red LED counting down from 00:49.

  00:48.

  00:47.

  “Please tell me you know what to do,” she said. “Because if you don’t, we have less than a minute to get clear of this thing.”

  Gabe stammered, his head nodding vigorously as his shoulders pumped up and down. “I think I know how the person did this. It looks homemade, so the security isn’t that great.”

  “Can we turn it off?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “You think so? We need something better than that.”

  He gulped and pointed a shaking finger at the bomb. “See those wires? The red and the green?”

  Ember bent over, examining the mess of multi-colored things plugged into the device. Red and green were there, along with black, white, blue, and purple. All the wires crisscrossed back and forth over the contraption, with each wire terminating into a plugin on the device with the LCD screen.

  00:42.

  00:41.

  “Yes, I see them.”

  “The red and the green need to come out at the same time. Exactly the same time. Red is the power, and green is the failsafe. One will trigger the other unless you do them at exactly the same time.”

  “Okay. I can do this.”

  "I mean it. A fraction of a second difference and the bomb will trigger."

  Her knees felt weak. “Okay.”

  Ember held her hands over the bomb, then slowly lowered them until she had the red pinched between the fingers of her right hand, the green pinched in her left. She tried to breathe to calm her body, but her shaking hands made the wires jiggle in their sockets.

  00:35.

  00:34.

  “What are you waiting for?” Gabe said, nearly shouting.

  “Give me a damn second,” she said. Her head still buzzed. Lungs still burned. “I need to focus.”

  00:29.

  00:28.

  She sucked in a breath as deep as her charred lungs would allow, then pressed her lips together. She tightened her fingers. Flexed her arms.

  And pulled out the red and the green wires.

  00:24.

  00:24.

  … 00:24.

  The LED flashed, but it stayed at 00:24.

  Ember let go and took a step back. They both stared at it. Twenty-four seconds left, not moving, not counting down. The bomb had gone silent and inert, a hunk of deadly explosive sitting there like a lump of clay and a bunch of stereo wiring.

  Gabe’s feet kept moving until he bumped into a file cabinet. He leaned over and retched, but nothing came out. Hands on his knees, he heaved in several breaths, gasping. He stood, placing a hand over his stomach and grimacing from the pain. Poor guy.

  Ember shook out her hands, which felt like spiders were crawling all over them. Tension in her neck added a new layer to the pain throbbing in and around her head. Like a vice tightened over her skull.

  “You did it,” he said, his voice shaky.

  Ember stood up straight and blew out a breath, then she ran a hand through her hair. “I did it. Now, let’s go think of something to tell this guy and his son about why we’re here.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  EMBER

  Day Seven

  They were in fake graves. Sarah and Hank were buried at the cemetery a little north of Boulder. Generic headstones that didn’t list their real names, rather, a coded name system only members of the Denver Assassins Club would recognize. Sarah had been buried as Elizabeth Lanscomb, and Hank under the headstone marked Robert Partridge.

  But Ember knew the names of her Branch mates in the earth below her. Two that had been victims of the poisoning at the Boulder Post Office six days ago. At least, she knew the names they had used within the DAC. For all Ember knew, Elizabeth and Robert might well be their birth names, or something close to it. No one in the Club knew Ember’s real name. The name she had been called up until three years ago when she’d first accepted this undercover assignment to infiltrate the Club.

  No one knew the real her. Not Gabe, not Fagan, not even President Wellner.

  Gray clouds shifted in the sky above her head. Some as dark as charcoal, some almost white. The air smelled of impending snow. Ember had been here through three winters, long enough to know when the season was on the verge of changing.

  Footsteps shuffled behind her, and Ember craned her neck to see Fagan coming to a stop. Ember was sitting in the grass, and Fagan stopped behind her. Bundled up in a pea coat, with a baseball cap pulled low over her forehead. Ember noted the cap had been tilted at a slight angle to throw shade on the burned side of Fagan's face.

  “When I was about twenty,” Fagan said, “I got a job waiting tables at a restaurant. My first grownup job. That’s how I thought of it at the time, I suppose. Anyway, on my first day, I was terribly nervous. The shift leader was taking me around my section, telling me how I was supposed to prepare the tables for the lunch rush. He explained how to restock the sugar and creamer and such things, then he said something I’ll never forget. He told me I had to ‘marry’ the ketchups. It’s where you take one and put it on the other, upside down, and wait until…”

  Fagan held up her hands, demonstrating one bottle on top of another.

  “I get it,” Ember said, trying to smile so she didn’t sound bitchy. “
Two bottles, not enough ketchup for both. Got it.”

  “Anyway, for some reason, I thought that was hilarious. ‘Marry’ the ketchups. I don’t know why, but I giggled about it all day long. And I went from being nervous to having maybe the best day of my life there at the restaurant. I got the nickname of 'The Giggler' and it stuck.”

  “Cute.”

  “I didn’t know it then, but having a social inroad with everyone made me popular, something I was unaccustomed to experiencing. Such a silly thing, I know.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because they say your life flashes before your eyes when you die. Instead of that, I’d like to live in that moment for a few seconds. That moment he first said ‘marry the ketchups’ and I couldn’t stop laughing. I want to stay there for a while, and really appreciate it this time.”

  Fagan dropped to a knee, grunting as she lowered herself, then she put a hand on Ember’s shoulder. “You did right by them.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes, you did. Lydia Beauchamp is dead, and you live another day.”

  Ember sighed through her nose and took a piece of gum from the pack in her purse. As she chewed, she inhaled, and the wintergreen in the gum made her mouth so cold her teeth hurt.

  "There was this guy who worked for Lydia," Ember said. "His name was Roland. He had a speech impediment, and he was a little slow. Fierce as hell, though. He came at me twice. All my training told me to take him out so he wouldn't be a threat."

  “But you couldn’t do it.”

  "No, I couldn't do it. In the end, it didn't matter. Lydia wasn't happy with him, and she sent a couple of other guys to take him out. At least, I think it was them. I had a chance to kill them, too, in the alley behind my condo, but I only disabled them. And Roland ended up dead. If I'd killed them, maybe Roland would still be alive."

  Fagan shrugged. “And, if you had, maybe Roland would have figured out a way to take you out, and you wouldn’t be here right now.”

  “Maybe.”

  Fagan shifted her legs forward and sat next to Ember. She let out a slow groan as her body descended. “There’s a cost to all this. I can’t argue with that.”

  “Westminster, and now Parker. Two weeks in, two assassins taken out before they could get me.” She pointed at the two gravestones. “But it’s not just about me, is it?”

  “No, but it’s enough about you that you need to stay at the top of your game. You can’t wallow in depression about the collateral damage. There are four more.”

  “Four more,” Ember mused.

  “I’m starting to think you can do this.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, boss lady.”

  “How are your lungs?”

  “Burns a little, but I’m a lot better than yesterday. I can take a full breath without coughing.”

  Fagan narrowed her one good eye at Ember. “You should go see a doctor.”

  “Maybe I will, in four weeks. Before then, I’m not sure if it matters much.”

  Fagan grunted as she rose to her feet. “I’ll leave you be. But, come by the Post Office later. There are some who want to change the way we hire contractors, so something like the brunch poisoning can’t ever happen again. You’re still a member of the Branch in good standing, so I think you should be a part of that discussion.”

  “Okay. I’ll come by when I’m done here.”

  Ember listened to Fagan shuffle away and let her eyes unfocus on the grassy spot between the two headstones. A breeze like the fingertips of ghosts tickled the back of her neck, and she pulled her coat closer.

  Two assassins down. Four more to go.

  As she closed her eyes and let her tired lungs fill with air, the first snowflakes of the season touched down on her forehead.

  Notes for “A History of the Denver Assassins Club”

  Part 2 of 6

  By Kunjal Anand

  The man known as Unger had moved to the Denver area with hopes of building an organization. He wanted this organization to be known as “The Guild.” There would be a hierarchy and a points system where hard work and loyalty ruled above all. The rewards and the camaraderie would become so enticing that there would be no need for in-fighting and power struggles.

  Unger had a dream of assassins coming together to form an association where they could be free to operate their businesses. He wanted to find the perfect balance of autonomy, cooperation, and systematic oversight. This had never been done before, but he believed in his ability to succeed. He believed in the power of his own charisma.

  Unger wrote in his journals that the primary threat to assassins was not from law enforcement or the government but from themselves. He wrote underground papers on the subject that were passed around in the community as secret documents. While he pretended that this virality was not of his own doing, there are other writings at the time suggesting that he would pose as fake people, placing phone calls to various members to help spread the word. This is all conjecture, however.

  One way or another, his essays and manifestos began to gain traction in the community. Soon, everyone in the Denver area “assassins game” knew his name. Not everyone agreed with his ideas about unionizing, but many came to understand the value of being stronger together. With pooled resources, they could maintain secrecy. With specialization among the ranks, they could ensure a monopoly. He preached autonomy, loyalty, cooperation, and oversight by a governing board. The locals liked his ideas. At least, in theory, they liked his ideas.

  Unger struggled for years to make his dream come true. There were many false starts. As he did in Boston, he would form a group of four or five like-minded peers, getting them to sign pledges and agree to recruit others to the cause. Like a religious leader, he encouraged the members of these small groups to bring in others who could be trusted, especially those with influence.

  But then infighting and disagreements over procedure would make the group disband. Many of these early attempts ended in deaths. Over and over, each seed failed to grow into the guild he envisioned.

  Years passed. Unger began to doubt if he would ever achieve his dream.

  * * *

  TWO DOWN, FOUR MORE TO GO.

  TO BE CONTINUED IN PART THREE…

  Get the next book, UNSTABLE TARGET to continue the hunt today!

  A NOTE TO READERS

  Want to know to get books by Jim Heskett for free and learn more about Ember’s neighbor Layne Parrish?

  Take a gander at the Layne Parrish thriller novella Museum Attack.

  It’s Die Hard in a Denver Art Museum.

  Museum Attack is not for sale anywhere, but you can get it FOR FREE at

  www.jimheskett.com/readergroup.

  READY TO KEEP GOING?

  He’s a paranoid lunatic with shackles in his back room. Will she join his collection, or will she destroy the chains?

  Ember Clarke hasn’t had a second to rest since it all started. In week three of a six-week trial by combat, the third assassin informs her he stockpiles hostages like baseball cards.

  And, just so Ember knows he’s serious, this deranged psycho kills one of them in front of her...

  Even though she’s a hardened contract killer, Ember does not abide the deaths of innocents. A toxic game of cat and mouse with the kidnapper leads Ember to the brink of destruction.

  Can she catch the killer and free the hostages, or will she become this madman’s next collector’s item?

  Buy Unstable Target to save the hostages today!

  Jim

  For the soccer moms (or, in Colorado, “yoga moms”). You’re the real heroes. Please don’t poison us.

  Nick

  For Jim.

  All material copyright 2020 by Jim Heskett and Nick Thacker. No part of this work may be reproduced without permission.

  Published by Bad Tooth Books, an imprint of Turtleshell Press

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  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  JIM HESKETT

  Jim Heskett was born in the wilds of Oklahoma, raised by a pack of wolves with a station wagon and a membership card to the local public swimming pool. Just like the man in the John Denver song, he moved to Colorado in the summer of his 27th year and never looked back. Aside from an extended break traveling the world, he hasn't let the Flatirons mountains out of his sight.

  He fell in love with writing at the age of fourteen with a copy of Stephen King's The Shining. Poetry became his first outlet for teen angst, then later some terrible screenplays, and eventually short and long fiction. In between, he worked a few careers that never quite tickled his creative toes, and hasn't ever forgotten about Stephen King. You can find him currently huddled over a laptop in an undisclosed location in Colorado, dreaming up ways to kill beloved characters.

  Jim believes the huckleberry is the king of berries and refuses to be persuaded in any other direction.

  Jim Heskett writes kick-ass spy thrillers, but he also writes post-apocalyptic fiction under the pen name J.E. Heskett.

  If you’d like to ask a question or just to say hi, stop by www.jimheskett.com and fill out the contact form.

  NICK THACKER

  Nick Thacker is a thriller author from Texas who lives in Colorado and Hawaii, because Colorado has mountains, microbreweries, and fantastic weather, and Hawaii also has mountains, microbreweries, and fantastic weather. In his free time, he enjoys reading in a hammock on the beach, skiing, drinking whiskey, and hanging out with his beautiful wife, tortoise, two dogs, and two daughters.