by Cate Clarke
“Well, I already told you about the Weick girl—”
“Yes, Andriy. You did.”
“Well,” Andriy said for a second time, swallowing down a huge bite of scone. “It’s been three days now and still nothing.”
“Your news is to tell me that nothing has changed?” Taras put his scone down, clapping his hands together to clear the crumbs from his fingers. From the corner of his eye, Katy jumped.
Andriy chewed, thought and said, “My news is to tell you that they’re en route now.”
“En route to where? We don’t know where she is.” In the same breath, he turned to the red-haired housekeep and said, “Leave us.”
Half-pushed out of Andriy’s lap, Katy bowed her head to both of them and then hurried across the deck and back inside through the glass doors.
“Why?” Andriy lifted his hands, pouting and pointing toward his lap. “You certainly make sure all the nicest things are reserved for you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You got the house, the nice apartment, the company—”
“You got the jet.”
Andriy laughed. “Ah yeah. I got you there.”
They both took sips of their tea, clinking the ceramic against each other with a delicate cheers.
“She trusts him already,” Andriy stated. “It should be easy.”
“Theoretically,” Taras replied. “We also thought that the American bitch would be easy.”
Andriy nodded, scratching at his unshaven chin and palming back his long curly hair. “She was not easy.”
“That’s my point. I’m sure her daughter has the same difficult qualities.”
“She’s young.”
“So was she.”
The ducks sounded from below, hungry again. The wind was picking up. The reticent morning would soon turn to a tumultuous afternoon of gray clouds and angry waves. The Kushkin mansion behind them, with its red brick piled up between the glass windows, and its stone legs holding it up and above the black sea, groaned with the breeze.
“We cannot pass up this opportunity,” Taras almost-whispered, looking to his brother. He stood up from the lounger, his teacup in hand, his slippers shuffling against the stone. As he walked back toward the house, toward the doors, he saw Larysa standing on the other side of the glass, watching him. He lifted the teacup slightly to her, smiling. Taras threw the cup at the window. It burst against the glass, ceramic flying again all over the balcony, and a slight crack appearing in the glass, the jagged line running directly through the blonde housekeeper's shocked face. Just as he’d intended. He would not surround himself with the weak. It was to strengthen her morale. It was to help her survive. It was generosity.
Chapter 5
Kennedy Tennison-Weick
Wenatchee National Forest, Washington
The temperature was dropping fast. If it wasn’t already below freezing then it would be soon. Night was coming quickly, and Kennedy still hadn’t moved from the hole she’d made for water. She’d spent her day sitting, drinking and cradling her ankle, waiting for something, for anything to happen.
Every time she tried to move, pain shot through her stomach, slightly easing that in her leg and her head. She groaned as she turned from side to side.
Fire.
There was no shortage of sticks, and the stickiness of the pine’s sap gave her an advantage. That was if she could stand up.
It was the water—Kennedy was sure of it. Every element was working against her as she tried to get to her feet. When she finally did, her stomach gave a terrifying lurch, and she had to go to relieve herself for the sixth time that day. Drinking out of the ground had made her sick, but at least she was alive.
Fire. She reminded herself, the cold moving under her skin, shivering against the hard ground and the rocky hillside as she pulled up her leggings and went back to her hole for water. With shaking hands, she cleared out a patch of dirt. There wasn’t much for kindling. She gathered up what she could for dry grass and pulled out a few of her hairs to add to it, grimacing with each yank out of her head.
The motions seemed to flow through without thinking, and Kennedy had to thank Mr. Steedman again. They had pounded in fire-starting in the Eagle Scouts along with finding water. And if she didn’t start a fire the fastest and the best, the boys would put peanut butter in the bottom of her sleeping bag.
Small flames licked the edges of the kindling, catching on to her pile of sticks. Kennedy sighed, leaning back as the heat enveloped her fingers, but the shivering still hadn’t stopped. It took a long time before the fire gave off enough heat to ease the cold that had seeped under sweat-covered skin.
And as the fire grew, so did the night.
Kennedy was alone again, sitting on the edge of her cliffside, listening to the waterfall and shivering hard. Her stomach twisting and turning into knots, sick but hungry, cold but warm, pained but calm.
Only calm because she had a plan. Once her ankle was stable enough, she could jump from this cliff. There was a helicopter, and she was sure they would see her treading water in the blankness of the lake below.
The drop was far, but it wouldn’t kill her. Probably not. What other options did she have? Go back—through the channel to the thickness of the woods where the animals were as hungry as she was?
Kennedy closed her eyes.
“Send me a pic.”
The matte gray chat box appeared at the front of her mind, CrypticFruiter’s indicator flashing at the bottom of the screen as he typed.
“I wanna see what you see,” Cryptic said.
“It’s just trees.”
“I don’t care.”
“Idk if I can get service.”
“Try! Kennedy, don’t you care about my feelings? Don’t you want me to be happy?”
“Lol you’re such a drama queen.”
The picture sat in the box, three dots thinking beside it, not sending. She could just see the edge of her brother’s calf. They were already far ahead of her, not even bothering to turn around and check to see that she was following.
“Commme onnnn.”
“Hang on. It’s not sending. Patience, young grasshopper.”
“Higher ground, bb.”
Kennedy turned on her heel, hustling back up to the vista point with the bench that overlooked the lake. She didn’t remember if the picture had sent. But she did wonder what Cryptic’s next message had been—did he care that she’d been gone for three days at the very least? They had been chatting on Discord for more than a year. She was sure he would have at least noticed. That was more than she could say for her own family. Yeah, her mom was likely looking for her, but it was just a reaction to her being lost, not because she really wanted to find her.
Nobody cared about Kennedy. Not enough to turn around and check over their shoulder.
She’d been flip-flopping between blaming herself and blaming her family. The accusations made her stomach sicker than it already was—as soon as the thoughts were out, they spiraled inside her head. Kennedy knew she was driving herself crazy, losing herself not only in these woods but in her head. What else was there to do?
She counted the stars. She counted the shadowy branches of pine, the fire spreading its heat over her toes as she curled up around it. She counted the time between the cramps in her stomach. She counted the hours, the minutes, the seconds. Time relentlessly passed, no matter who she thought to blame.
Chapter 6
Diana Weick
Seattle, Washington
The computer screen stared, reflecting her sunken face in its screen. Diana saw the effects of her lack of sleep even in the darkened reflection, bags stretching under her brown eyes, the ends of her short blonde hair tangling into balls of frizz. The lines etched on the sides of her mouth and across her forehead so much more obvious after three days of being awake.
She was in Kennedy’s room—the laptop open in front of her but locked. Diana wondered why she’d ever let them have passwords of
their own.
The room was a mess; clothes strewn everywhere, posters haphazardly hung on the walls with sticky tack that left blue streaks on the drywall. Way too many half-finished candles giving off a strong smell of cinnamon, apples and lavender combined with unwashed laundry. Not all of the mess was because of Kennedy. As soon as Diana had gotten home after the first night, she had torn the room apart looking for anything that could tell her something about her daughter’s whereabouts. So far, nothing. Except for maybe—the locked laptop.
Diana had never been very good with computers. Though she’d picked up some technology skills in BUD/S training, hacking was certainly beyond her skillset. Russia, ten years ago, breaking into one of Kushkin’s many compounds—Laird had taken down their whole security system with the tap of a couple of keys. After that, it’d been up to Diana, Rank and Snowman to infiltrate and put a bullet in Alexander Kushkin’s head. Kicking in those steel doors, tactical gear shuffling against their bodies, sweat dripping behind them, leaving a trail along the tile.
The laptop went to sleep again because she hadn’t moved the mouse. She furiously brushed at the keypad. It came to life again, the little line blinking in the middle of the screen, encouraging her to make another guess. But she’d already tried two and didn’t want to get locked out permanently.
First, she’d tried TylerJoseph because of the Twenty-One Pilots posters on the wall—Diana had to look up the singer’s name on her phone. On her second attempt, she tried UmbrellaAcademy because she remembered Kennedy watching through that show on more than one occasion, taking up all the space on the living room couch, wrapped up in a pile of blankets.
The frustration teetered on the tips of her fingers, wanting to try her own name, but knowing deep down that there was no way that was Kennedy’s password.
Her phone rang, buzzing against the vinyl desk. It was almost two o’clock in the morning, and the phone screen lit up the bottom half of Diana’s unwashed face. She waited for it to ring again, “unknown” appearing across it.
“Hello?” She answered, rubbing at her eyes with her other hand.
“Diana Weick?”
“Who’s this?”
“I know where your daughter is.”
Diana slammed the laptop shut in front of her and got to her feet, turning around the room in a frantic circle.
“Who is this?” Diana repeated, pausing after each word.
“Ten thousand dollars,” the voice said, not as low and gravelly as she would expect from an ominous phone call like this. Immediately—Rank used to call it her “elephant sense” because apparently he’d read somewhere that elephants could sense natural disasters—Diana knew something was off. “Bring ten thousand dollars to the train tracks under Magnolia Bridge.”
“Or what? Even if I come to the bridge she’ll still be lost,” Diana snapped, threatening them to threaten her.
“We’ve got information,” the voice mumbled. There was a muttering on the other end, more voices. “You have one hour.”
The phone clicked, and the line was silent.
Shoving the phone into the back of her jeans and exploding out of Kennedy’s room, she ran down the hall and then downstairs to the gun cabinet. Realizing she forgot the keys, Diana bounded back up the stairs, snatching the tiny keys from the kitchen and then running back down again. As she stuck the keys into the steel cabinet, she heard a shuffling from behind her.
She hadn’t even noticed Wesley sitting on the downstairs couch playing video games.
“Mom?” he asked, looking at her from the other side of the couch. The lock on the gun cabinet clicked and she opened it.
“You should be asleep,” Diana said, reaching in for the weapons.
“So should you.”
Diana peered over her shoulder, grabbing the rifle and the handgun without even looking. Wesley hopped over the back of the couch and raised his arms in the air. “What the fuck, Mom?”
“Language—”
“Where are you going with that?” Wesley swallowed hard and waved his hands at the guns.
“It’s just a precaution. I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” she said. “Don’t leave the house. Don’t answer the door.”
“Mom.” His face dropping into a scowl, Wesley took a step forward, a black controller tucked in his palm. “You need to sleep and—and shower…and you’re being crazy!”
Not stopping, Diana brushed past her son and went up the stairs. He bounded after her, his lanky body almost tripping several times on the carpeted steps.
“Mom,” he called again as Diana moved to put on her coat. “I’ve been reading some stuff online. It could be a prank call, you know? They’re just trying to get your money.”
“How’d you know it was a call?” Diana flicked up the collar on her jacket, stuffing the guns into a duffel bag she kept by the door.
Wesley mumbled something and shifted his weight from foot to foot. He said, “I just figured it was.”
Raising a sharp eyebrow up, she stared at her son.
“You tell me if you find out anything, Wes,” Diana said, taking a step toward him, her boots inching off the door mat. “Anything at all.”
“Yeah, I would—” Wesley ran his fingers through his hair. “I will, I mean.”
“Where’s that wood bat?” Diana asked. “The one you used to take down to the park?”
“In the garage…”
It was an addiction. Diana was at least self-aware as she left her son standing by the front door, staring after her with a concerned gaze. The old habits were seeping back into her as if she’d never left the Navy at all. The one-track mind. The goal over everything else. Find Kennedy. If she stopped to think, if she stopped to shower, to sleep, to breathe, she was losing moments that could be spent looking for her daughter. It was a bomb, counting down, one red number at a time, her sweating overtop of it, Laird and Rank screaming at her to cut the wire.
Every moment counted.
Chapter 7
Diana Weick
Seattle, Washington
A train slowly passed, wheels grinding against the iron tracks. It was coal car after coal car, made of wavy red steel and covered in black graffiti. The car was off but the radio was still on, waiting for Diana to open the door and get out so it could rest. When the last coal car went by, she could watch them again.
Twenty minutes ago, she’d seen them—standing on the other side of the tracks, passing a joint between dirty fingernails and watching the road for approaching vehicles. They were young. Older than Wesley but barely. Three boys so desperate for money they’d called Diana Weick and lied to her about information relating to her missing daughter. Though Diana wasn’t certain, she could tell that whatever information these three Gen Z fuckers did have certainly wasn’t worth ten thousand dollars, let alone her time and effort to visit a seedy abutment in the middle of the night. At the very least, they were brave.
Reaching into the backseat, she wrapped her hand around the bat and kicked her way out of the car. At the sound of the door, they noticed her, all stiffening and one of them dropping the joint to the ground, squishing it with the toe of his sneaker.
One of them jutted out his chin and pointed at the bat, and they all moved into some kind of Powerpuff Girls fighting stance, their hands behind their backs. They had guns. Diana moved across the tracks, the bat dinging against each rail track as she walked.
“You got the money?” one of them called as she stepped over the last track and was ten feet from where they stood. They weren’t even wearing masks—fresh-faced and way too confident.
“Tell me what you know,” Diana said.
“Give us the money first.” Another one stepped forward.
They all had the same floppy haircut except for one with a fade. One of them was wearing an open-collared shirt, another one a graphic tee. Their sneakers, all brand name, squeaked against the concrete as they began to form a semicircle around her. These weren’t Sand Point kids. These were kids tha
t had never been told no—boys that had always gotten everything off their Christmas list.
“You know that’s not how a trade works,” Diana said. There was an alleyway behind them, minimally lit. On either side, there were the concrete bases of parking garages to tall brick apartment buildings that stretched up into the Seattle cityscape above.
“Dude, she doesn’t have the money,” one of them whispered.
“Empty your pockets!” another yelled.
Diana complied, flipping the empty pockets of her windbreaker out.
“Do you know anything at all?” Diana asked, looking what appeared to be the leader in the eyes. Black hair swooped over his forehead, olive forearm flexing and pulsing as it wrapped around something behind him. Diana scrutinized every muscle, every movement.
“Give us the money, bitch!”
They reached for their guns, and Diana crouched, swinging hard with the bat, cracking it against the leader’s knees. He fell to the concrete, his body hitting the pavement with a heavy slap. With the smell of coal in her nose and a hard exhale, she turned, swung and hit the one to her left in the same spot. Two down on the ground, writhing in pain.
“Put it down!”
The pressing of a gun to the back of her head.
“Drop the bat!” he screamed, pushing harder with the barrel.
“Drop the gun before you do something you truly regret,” Diana said. The other two were already crawling away with their hands, dragging themselves along the ground, streaking their hands with god-knows-what that made up this trainyard.
“Drop it!”
Diana ducked. The gun went off, the bullet whizzing over her shoulder and by her ear. An immediate high-pitched ringing filled her head as she whipped herself around on her knees. She jabbed the bat into his stomach and he keeled forwards like he was about to vomit. The bat swung up and under his jaw, cracking it, blood and two teeth spurting out of his mouth. He dropped to the ground, his hand catching the blood trickling out from between his lips.
“You’re crazy,” he coughed out.
“You—” Diana pointed at them all with her bat. “Called me.”
