Subtle Target: Six Assassins Book 2 Read online

  Subtle Target

  Six Assassins Book 2

  Jim Heskett

  Nick Thacker

  Disclaimer

  The Six Assassins hexalogy needs to be read in order. If you have not read PRIMARY TARGET, please start there.

  Enjoy!

  Contents

  Disclaimer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Notes for “A History of the Denver Assassins Club”

  Get the Next Book Now

  A NOTE TO READERS

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Chapter One

  EMBER

  Week Two - Day One

  Ember Clarke accepted a paper plate from the assassin in the green apron standing in front of her. His name was Lucas, but he went by “Laser.” Ember thought it was a dumb nickname — like most self-assigned nicknames — but Laser was a nice enough guy, and she could never really bring herself to make fun of someone in her own Branch. Lucas could be Laser if he wanted to.

  And no matter what his name was, Laser was a dead shot with a bow. An unusual weapon choice for a member of the DAC. But, he made it work. Members of the Denver Assassins Club had been trained, either through prior experience in the military or intelligence community, or they had been recruited and trained in their own Branch. Members of the DAC were typically capable of completing a hit using any number of tools or weapons, but that didn’t mean most of them hadn’t chosen a preferred style or instrument. Laser, for his part, liked the stealth and confusion of bow and arrow, and it made for terribly difficult coroner examinations.

  Ember held the paper plate as she stood in a line of twenty Branch members for the monthly Branch Brunch — another nickname she wasn't thrilled about, but she had to admit it was too perfect to change. Every Branch member present in the area attended. Some members of the Boulder Branch of the Denver Assassins Club were in Naples or Bogotá or Detroit. But all those not on a faraway contract were invited. Brunch was a tradition not to be missed.

  Every Branch had its own thing. The Richie Riches at the Golden Branch even had a softball league with only two teams. However, they somehow still managed to draw crowds of civilians who had no idea they were watching contract killers play ball against one another in a public park. The Highlands Branch did some kind of Little Olympics thing like potato sack races and pole vaulting, complete with ribbons for the winners. Those assholes in the Five Points Branch played paintball once a month.

  Ember was okay with brunch as their chosen group activity — it was low-key, simple, and required no additional athleticism. It didn't fix her watch's insatiable demand she walk ten thousand steps every day, but not much could be done about that. Take off the watch, perhaps.

  She had sandwiched in line between her mentor Fagan and her recruit, Gabe. Another reason she liked brunch: some Branches didn’t allow recruits who hadn’t yet earned their tokens to take place in monthly events, but Boulder wasn’t like that.

  Gabe was a handsome specimen of human who was almost too good-looking to fit in amongst the rest of them. He shuffled along in front and he dipped a large ladle spoon into a bowl of something white and mushy and far too runny.

  “What is that?” Ember asked. “I mean, what’s it supposed to be?”

  Gabe dropped a helping onto his paper plate and shrugged. “Potato salad. I think?”

  “Potato salad is yellow. This is not.”

  He frowned at her. “It looks fine to me.”

  Fagan, bringing up the rear of their trio, nodded. “I have to side with Ember on this one. Potato salad should be yellow. And not that runny. It looks more like soup than it should.”

  “Yeah,” Ember said, “that’s a hard pass for me.”

  Gabe shrugged and set the ladle back into the bowl. The three of them moved on, with Ember and Fagan skipping out on the potato salad. Ember filled out the rest of her plate with a couple of tortilla chips, a spoonful of fruit, green beans, and a dab of pulled pork. She’d already had a light breakfast at her condo this morning, so she was mostly here for the atmosphere.

  Ember glanced at her watch as she moved her plate from one hand to the other. To make up for a slow day yesterday, she needed to hit at least twelve thousand steps. Not impossible, but a tall order.

  They carried their plates to one of three long banquet tables in the middle of the gym. This room at the Boulder Branch Post Office was usually reserved for training and covered in mats, stinking of sweat. But, once a month, a few Branch volunteers cleaned it up, somehow de-stinkified it, and made it look enough like a dining hall. This was as close to a fancy black-tie as the Branch could get. Ember appreciated that, but it was the camaraderie and family feel to it that she truly enjoyed.

  Being an assassin was a stressful job. There were few perks aside from the money and the freedom to set your own hours. Brunch was a small comfort in the chaos of their everyday existence. Plus, there was always a ton of food left over, and Ember could usually stock her fridge with enough to press snooze on grocery shopping for at least a week.

  They ate in silence for a couple of minutes, but Fagan stared off through the window at the rising morning sun. At least, that's where Ember assumed she was looking. With her one dead eye, it was hard sometimes to gauge her gaze.

  “You okay, boss?” Ember asked.

  Fagan nodded. “Just thinking.”

  “Uh-oh. That can’t be good.”

  Fagan smiled and took one more bite of her green beans and then set her fork down. She used a napkin to dab the right side of her face since the burned flesh made clean eating a challenge.

  When she stood, Ember asked, “What are you doing?”

  Fagan nodded at the podium on one side of the room. “I’m going to give the speech this month. Don’t look so surprised. I didn’t know either, until about thirty minutes ago.”

  Before Ember could comment, her mentor strutted up the podium and tapped the microphone a few times. A yipping bark of feedback made everyone in the room cover their ears, so Fagan leaned back until it subsided.

  “Good morning,” she said into the mic. “You all know me, so I’ll skip the introductions.”

  "Thank God!" someone called out from the table to her right. When Fagan scowled with the non-mutilated side of her face, the guy waved a hand in her direction. "Kidding, Fagan. You know we love you. I yield the remainder of my time..."

  A round of applause went around the room until Fagan held up her hands and pushed them toward the floor, quieting them. Hard to read her expression since she always looked stern.

  “It’
s a good turnout this month. Better than last month, for sure.” She paused to clear her throat and pat her lips with the napkin. “What we do here is not just about the communal security we all have. It’s also about the community itself.”

  Ember checked the room’s temperature. A few stared, but most kept quiet and worked on their plates of food. They were respectfully quiet, at least.

  "And that," Fagan said, "is why we do this. Thirty years ago, I was teaching school in Iowa. Fourth grade. Some days, I think my current job is less stressful. But, I wouldn't trade anything in the world to be here with you people, right now. It's not a straight line from one end to the other. I've seen some shit. I've seen the DAC itself teetering on the brink. I've seen wars for control of Branches. I've seen recruits kill their mentors over an unkind look. But the best of us have always outweighed the worst."

  Fagan paused to lift the napkin to her mouth and dab some leaky saliva. “It’s a strange time for us in the Boulder Branch. For all of us in the DAC.”

  Ember felt a wave of heat pass through her cheeks when Fagan turned her good eye toward her.

  “One of our members is under attack. Ember Clarke has been given a black spot trial by combat. Six consecutive weeks of contracts against her with no relief.”

  “One down already,” Ember said, and a few people in the room clapped. All the eyes were on her now, which made her self-conscious. Now she wished she’d put on makeup and done something with her hair. Half the people in the room were wearing sweatpants, so it hadn’t seemed necessary until this moment.

  Fagan nodded. "She needs our support. She needs our resources. The Review Board's decision to punish her doesn't change any of that. It's far from over. Today begins the second week of her six-week sentence, so she needs us more than ever."

  Next to Ember, Gabe leaned over and groaned.

  She glanced at him. Hands over his stomach, his face had turned into a grimace of anguish. It had happened so suddenly; she had to pause a moment to collect herself.

  “Are you —”

  He groaned again, louder this time. She thought she heard a few other groans from others around the table. Had Fagan just said something funny? She looked around, confused.

  Gabe’s shoulders began pumping up and down as he breathed through gritted teeth. His eyes were shut tight.

  Ember leaned close and whispered. “Gabe? You okay?”

  “My stomach,” he said, his brow dotted with sweat. “Feels like knives. I don’t know what’s going on, but it only started a minute ago.”

  His face turned red, and the muscles on his neck strained. Gabe opened his eyes, bloodshot and full of tears, as his labored breaths grew harsher and harsher. He slid toward the edge of his chair, poised to fall to the floor.

  Ember tried reaching out to him to help him stay in his seat, but then she looked around and noticed half the room in a similar state. Sweating, moaning, all those afflicted with some sort of stomach pain. There were a few who looked fine, as startled as she was. Many stood and took the sick by the arm, trying to get them to their feet.

  At the podium, Fagan stopped talking, her mouth open and her head flicking left and right across the crowd.

  Ember stood up as Gabe closed his eyes in pain and slid further down into his chair. He took quick breaths, grunting, his tongue hanging out.

  She checked around the room, trying to figure out what was happening. A few met her eyes, seemingly as confused and frantic as she knew she appeared.

  Then she saw it. On their plates — the ones in pain — they'd all scooped a ladleful of potato salad. Everyone who still seemed to be okay had taken none of it. Ember couldn't be a hundred percent sure those two facts were linked, but it seemed like the most reasonable option.

  She did the math in her head, trying to search for any other answer, any alternative explanation. But she realized it had to be true.

  They'd been poisoned.

  Chapter Two

  EMBER

  Ember stood in the Boulder Post Office gymnasium amid more than twenty of her colleagues. At least half of them were doubled over, groaning in pain. A few were on the floor, turning green: poison, no doubt about it. The symptoms had come on fast, with little advance warning. Whoever had done this had been smart about it. That person would know everyone would generally begin eating at the same time, so no one would know to avoid the potato salad.

  Some in the room were fine, with no signs of ill effect. The potato salad wasn't for everyone, apparently. Ember's mentor Fagan was one of them. The older lady stood at the front; shock registered on the good half of her face. Fagan rushed out from behind the podium, toward Ember.

  “Poison?” Fagan asked.

  “The potato salad,” Ember said, nodding. “Has to be. It’s the only connection that makes any sense.”

  By now, most of the un-poisoned Branch members were running around, trying to care for the sick. A few were on phones. Calling in the police or medical personnel could present a sticky situation. They couldn't exactly say they were having the monthly brunch for a division of a club for contract killers, and someone had poisoned their potatoes. But, there would have to be a unified story—no time to create one at the moment, though. The reasons and justifications would have to wait for a moment of safety and clarity.

  “Okay,” Fagan said. “We need to move.”

  Branches didn’t have leaders. Or, they weren’t supposed to. Most Branches did have a quiet chain of command who would take over in an emergency or offer the final say on difficult decisions. In some, the Branch Historian wielded power. In others, tenure determined respect. Boulder claimed to have no such secret leadership. But, Fagan was now the most senior Branch member here. If she decided to take charge, no one would argue with her. Especially with Charlie gone.

  “I’ll organize things,” she said as she grabbed Ember by the arm. “The kitchen staff is still here, and they might know something. Don’t let anyone leave. Go!”

  Fagan gave Ember a little shove toward the door, and Ember took off. She didn’t have her twin Enforcer pistols due to the Post Office’s rules about guns on the premises, but she did have her Halo knife. Technically, that wasn’t allowed either, but no one would make a fuss about a little blade.

  She plucked it from her back pocket as she sprinted toward the far end of the gym. She resisted the urge to palm the blade and have it ready because with adrenaline coursing through her veins, she feared she might be tempted to stab the first person who looked at her the wrong way.

  Out the doors, then she took a hard right down a long hall. She passed empty training and meeting rooms as she raced toward the kitchen. Her shoes thumped on the floor, and the sound reverberated off the walls. The edges of her vision dotted. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt panic like this.

  If I don’t get there in time…

  Whoever had done this could be long gone by now, and it could mean the deaths of many of her Branch.

  Including Gabe.

  At the end of the hall, Ember smashed at the swinging door that led back into the kitchen. It flung open. The space was not as large as a restaurant kitchen, but still more substantial than a domestic one. Stainless steel appliances, non-slip cork pads over the floors, sprinklers hanging from hoses, and a massive vent hood over the wide griddle. Heat from the recently used oven wafted into Ember's eyes, and she had to blink a few times to focus.

  A half-dozen men and women were dressed in white, staring in awe at this intruder who'd blasted into their domain. Ember had come in like a speeding rocket. Everyone in the room had been in the middle of some task like washing dishes or cutting vegetables as music blared from a boombox plugged into the wall. But now, they seemed frozen, waiting for her to explain herself. Unlike most of the rest of the people who worked in this building, these people weren't trained assassins. They were hired kitchen staff on the payroll of the fake shell company the Branch maintained. They had prepared brunch for the staff of the building as they always had,
no reason to interfere with the trained killers making speeches in the other room.

  “Ma’am?” asked one of them, a short and skinny guy holding a vegetable chopper over a bucket. His eyes were glued to the knife clutched in her palm. “Can I... help you?”

  “Who here made the potato salad?”

  A few of them looked around, checking with each other. General looks of confusion filled their faces. Like anyone who walked into a DAC Post Office, the kitchen crew had been vetted and made to understand that their work here required discretion. While the kitchen staff weren't members of the Branch, they all had been required to sign documents indicating some sort of collateral, like pictures of their spouses and children. The Club hadn't survived for fifty-five years by taking chances on the civilian world finding out about them.

  “Shane made it,” said a woman. “The new guy. He’s…” she turned around, then frowned. “He was just here. Maybe went out for a smoke break? Anyone seen him?”

  A chorus of shrugs went around the room.

  “I haven’t seen him since we served,” said the vegetable-chopping man. He squinted over at the dish pit behind them, where plates and bowls were stacked up. “I thought he was back on dishes.”