by Cate Clarke
“Shut up,” Diana said, pulling out zip ties from her pocket and binding the woman’s wrists together behind her back and then doing the same to the husband.
“You want cuffs?” Cameron asked.
“No,” Diana replied.
“We gotta take them in, soldier,” Park said, trying to stare her down, crossing his arms over his chest to make his biceps look bigger.
“Give me an hour,” Diana said. “Then you take ’em.”
“I’m not going with this—” Bobby started, and Diana cracked him over the head with her gun again. He said with his bloodied face in the carpet, “I know my rights!”
Diana bent down, throwing off his baseball cap so she could grab the back of his hair. She leaned into his ear and hissed, “You’re in no man’s land now, Bobby.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Cameron and Park exchange glances again, debating the madness in her eyes, the panic attack they’d just seen her have, and the relentless determination underneath it all.
Thankfully, the rooms were mostly soundproof. There was clearly all sorts of shady business that went down at the Pinepoint, so why wouldn’t she try to blend in with her surroundings? There were only the sighs of the FBI agents and the whimpering of the Lefferts as Diana got off of Bobby’s back to cross the room.
“Cameron,” she started. He brought his dark eyes to hers. “You gotta let me have this. No more than an hour, and I’ll have them back to you. You guys can even take the credit. Be the hero. I know your dad…he wasn’t about that. Everything he did was always for the good of the people—it wasn’t about the government or America, it was about making a better place for him and you, his family.
“This is for my family, Snowman. This is for my daughter. They took her from me, and they’re trying to do the same thing to her that they did to him. Keep her alive until they don’t need her anymore, used and abused until death seems like the best option. They make you feel like they’re doing you a favor. Your dad never broke. Don’t let them try the same thing on her. Please, Cameron. She’s only thirteen.”
Her mouth was dry by the time she finished her plea, the dehydration catching up with her. A lump in Cameron’s throat formed as he thought on her words. He would have been young when he got word of his father’s death, not much older than Wesley was now.
“Okay,” Cameron said. “One hour.”
“Cameron!” Park exclaimed. “Are you serious?”
Diana put a firm hand on his shoulder—he closed his eyes, leaning into her fingers, the sun filtering in through the blinds behind him and casting their intertwined shadows across the motel room.
“Hope to work together again, Cameron,” she said. “Thank you.”
Chapter 19
Diana Weick
Death Valley National Park, Nevada
Diana wanted to make them as uncomfortable as possible. Zip ties around anything that could be moved, sacks over their heads; she would be thanking Ratanake later for those. He’d known she’d want answers.
Park and Cameron had gotten the laptop and were taking it back to their Vegas base to get it scanned. She had to have the Lefferts back by the time the two agents returned to the motel, about three hours. More than she’d asked for. More than she wanted.
They’d done a search for Kennedy back at the motel and the adjacent gas station, but there was nothing. Not even a trace of her. They’d called the businesses across the street, asked the employees, but no one had seen her.
They passed the sign indicating that they were passing into Death Valley. She took the Mitsubishi at the flattest, most remote road she could find and drove fast and hard into the desert. It was rocky and the low car had a hard time getting traction in some spots. But Diana managed to whip the car around a nearby hill, circling it and parking it away from the eyesight of the highway.
She’d always been the driver. When she was a teenager, she’d worked the canteen stand at a small racetrack, and she’d fallen in love with the smell of gasoline and the rush of a jumpstart.
Warm grays and browns extended out around them, tangled sticks climbing up the dry hills of sand and dirt. The sun overhead spilled down onto the car and reflected the teal green into Diana’s eyes as she pulled both of the Lefferts from the backseat of the car. Laying them out at the base of the hill, Diana removed the black sacks and cut the zip ties around their wrists.
Bobby struggled against the ones on his ankles, looking around frantically, trying to figure out where they were. With one hand, Diana unhinged the MP5K from her back, holding the semi-automatic pistol at her waist, pointing it at his head.
“Hands up,” Diana said.
A wall of gray hair covered Willow’s face, keeled forward and facing the dirt, sobbing into it.
She repeated, “Hands up. All the way. Above your head.”
When she continued to cry, Diana stepped forward, kneeing Willow in her throat. The woman choked and gagged, slowly lifting her head to look at Diana with watery green eyes, droplets of spit hanging from her bottom lip. Diana moved the gun to her forehead and said, “Now.”
They lifted their hands to their ears.
“Higher. Above your head.”
They did so.
“You drop your hands, even once, even by accident, I shoot you. Okay?” Diana said, giving them fair warning.
Willow nodded, her arms already beginning to shake.
Bobby said, “Okay there.”
“Your contractor—” Diana started. “Taras Kushkin?”
“We didn’t deal directly with him!” Willow said immediately. Diana was glad they weren’t going to make this hard on themselves. It was clear they were too weak for this game anyway. If they would have ever made it to Taras, he would have killed them on the spot.
“Who’d you deal with?”
“His brother, Andriy,” Bobby mumbled out. His hands quivering, but still held high.
“Where is Kennedy?” Diana snapped.
“We don’t—” Willow choked again.
“We don’t know!” Bobby finished her sentence, staring over at his wife, the bottom half of his face painted red with dried blood. His large nose was also now tilted to one side, an unnatural angle running down the middle of it.
“Where was she supposed to be?” Diana asked, keeping the gun for an even amount of time between the two of them. “Huh? What was the schedule?”
“T-today,” Willow said. “We were supposed to bring her after breakfast…to that gas station right next door. We were right there! They own all of it. We were meeting a guy there, and—”
“We were supposed to hand her off and then we don’t know. Swear it!” Bobby interrupted again, his hands dropping slightly.
“Hands up, Bobby!” Diana stomped over to him, putting the gun underneath his jaw. He let out a small squeal, tilting his head back, sweat dripping off both sides of his face and meeting in the middle, at the barrel of the pistol.
His hands shot back up in the air as he added, “I swear! We don’t know where she’s going.”
“Russia, probably,” Willow interjected, and Diana rolled her eyes, taking half a step back from Bobby.
“Who was the guy? Another random like you guys?” Diana asked, gesturing to them with the gun, Willow ducking a bit when she swung it in her direction. There was no sympathy for these people. Sure, they were inexperienced and caught up in something that they didn’t know how to handle, but people were a result of their choices. They had decided to pick up a lost thirteen-year-old girl. Just as Diana had decided to pluck them out of that motel room and bring them here.
Wesley crossed through her mind for a brief moment, as she thought of the mistakes, the choices he’d made. Had she forgiven him? Almost instantly. She hadn’t even thought of it again since.
Hesitating, the gun pressed deep in her palm, Diana took another step back.
“They didn’t tell us his name,” Bobby said, swallowing, some color coming back to his face. “But they said that she
knew him! He was a friend, you know?”
“Yeah! She knew him, all right,” Willow echoed.
“How did you find her in the first place? In the woods?” Diana asked, relaxing the gun a bit further, but not her mind.
“Shoot,” Bobby said.
“That was mostly just luck,” Willow said. “We were supposed to join up with the search parties the next day, but we wanted to go check out the lake and...there she was.”
Willow’s hands dropped a bit, her face scrunching as she thought. Diana lifted the gun back up, pointing it at her chest and yelling, “Hands up!”
“Are you lying to me, Mrs. Leffert?” Diana screamed. “Hands fucking up!”
They both straightened, raising their hands as far up as they would go.
“I’m not lying!” Willow exclaimed, more sobs. The more she cried, the less convincing she got.
Diana said, “There’s more to it though.”
Why did she even consider going easy on these two? They were nothing like Wesley. They were more than just liars.
“Tell me.” Diana moved around Willow, grabbing at her stretched-out fingers with one hand and pulling them back hard.
“I don’t know, okay! All right, I don’t,” Willow said. “But, there’s some type of tracking they got here… It’s way more advanced than you’d think. They knew where she was almost as soon as she was lost.”
“So what? GPS?” Diana asked.
“Higher tech,” Bobby said, pulling her attention to him. “Who knows? They might know where we are, right now. This desert isn’t as secret as you think.”
Looking around, checking over both of her shoulders and then up at the great blue sky, Diana shook her head. There were no clouds. It was clear and hot and terrible. She missed the daily rain of Seattle. Did Kushkin have tabs on them right now? Watching them from above, sweating and squirming in the mess he’d created. Maybe, he was sitting in the same security room where she’d shot his father.
“Fuck,” Diana said. Then she said it again, yelled it into the wide open sky. She went to the Mitsubishi and began kicking at the tires of the car, her toes sore and inflamed after several minutes of smashing her sneaker against the metal rim.
“She—” Bobby started.
Diana whipped around. Both of their hands were still up, learning from their past mistakes.
“She’s getting on a plane. Okay?” Bobby said. “We don’t know where she’s going, but we know for sure she’s going to an airport.”
“Yup. That’s right!” Willow added like it was something she’d forgotten. “Definitely an airport. Andriy said something about a flight.”
If they took Kennedy out of the country, Diana would be forced to re-enlist fully to get the proper international resources to get her back. She was already halfway through that door anyway. The equipment on the bed. The pictures in the office. Ratanake already had her hooked on Taras Kushkin.
Opening the trunk of the car and taking out two fresh zip ties, Diana re-tied the Lefferts’ hands. She tossed them back into the backseat of the car, re-shouldering the gun against her back. They were always one step ahead. Kushkin had every tread on these stairs planned out, carefully placed just out of Diana’s reach. If Kennedy was about to get on a plane, they had to move now. They had to shut down every nearby airport, stop her from getting over the border, and in order to do that, Diana needed backup.
She wished for Rank, for Snowman, even for Laird, but all she had were these nitwits in her backseat, a couple of newbie FBI agents, and her old lieutenant that was borderline in love with her.
Contemplating as she drove back and out of Death Valley, Diana shook her head, staring out at the road. She needed the backup to her backup. The last person she would usually pick to help her with anything, and the only person so far who had actually proved helpful.
Chapter 20
Kennedy Tennison-Weick
Flight No. 396
They were already in the air, clouds passing by the window of the plane in sheets of white. First class. Compared to the one other time that Kennedy had flown in her life, the seats were comfortable and the flight attendants were friendly. But the free apple juice and headphones did nothing for the fear that Kennedy was feeling.
He was there, waiting for her.
Cryptic. Jeremy.
They were friends. They’d been friends for almost a year. Yet, he’d kidnapped her from a gas station and forced her onto a plane. It was clear Cryptic was working for someone powerful and violent. All of those months of talking about school and parents, all of it washed away. The only friend she’d ever had, that she’d ever felt close to—gone, replaced by the nineteen-year-old terrorist next to her.
She cried, leaning into the airplane window, fogging it up with small clouds of condensation. There were no other options. Kennedy couldn’t even scream or signal for help because they had everything and she had nothing. Cryptic had shown her in the parking lot, as she’d reeled back to yell out, a tablet—on the screen, it was her house in Seattle. Wesley and Dad were out on the driveway, playing street hockey, Dad scoring several times and celebrating with absolutely no shame. Despite it being terrifying, it was also relieving to see them. She missed them. Even Wesley.
Cryptic told her the entire house was laced with explosives and if she screamed or tried to run, that they would blow the whole thing sky high. It would be easier on her and on her family if she came willingly.
“Another juice, sweetie?” the flight attendant asked.
Kennedy didn’t even look at her. She kept her eyes out the window, away from Cryptic.
“She’s fine,” he said. Out of the corner of her eye, the flight attendant bowed her head and walked away. “You’re going to need to eat something. Trust me.”
The anger bubbled in her throat. She said, “Trust you? Cryptic, how in the hell could I ever trust you? You even lied about your age. Who are you?”
“It’s Jeremy, Kennedy,” he said, furrowing his eyebrows, her glare glued onto the space between his eyes. “I don’t know, okay? They’ve got me too. I’m doing what I need to…to stay alive.”
“Hope it’s worth it,” Kennedy snapped. Turning back to the window, shaking her head, she wished for headphones. She wanted to drown herself in music, distract herself from the horror that her life was turning out to be. Trapped in a metal box, flying over the ocean, wondering if she would ever see her family again.
“It wasn’t all fake,” Jeremy said after an hour of silence between the two of them. “I really care about you, Kennedy. Don’t you get it? That’s why they got me in the first place, because you trusted me… Not that it ended up mattering anyway, considering how it ended up going down at the gas station.”
She turned her eyes to him, feeling the tiredness weighing on her, each gaze heavier than the last. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the original plan was me to not pull that gun on you at all…” Jeremy said. “I’ve never used a gun before. They…he…gave it to me. They’ve got a crazy amount of power, Kennedy.” He leaned in and whispered, “They’ve got people everywhere.”
“I mean, yeah.” Kennedy fiddled with the seat belt around her waist. “You’re right here.”
“Right. I guess I’m his people now.”
It was hard for Kennedy to turn off her feelings for Jeremy. She did feel bad for him in some ways, and at one point, she thought she’d loved him. Wesley had told her—it was stupid and dangerous to fall in love with a stranger on the internet, especially being her age, but she did anyway. Those feelings were gone now. Squashed. But there was still a little bit of room for sympathy.
“It would have made it easier if you’d hadn’t tried to run away—”
“Oh! My bad!”
“Shh!”
Kennedy snapped her mouth shut, pulling her lips into a tight line and looking out the window. One good thing that the Lefferts had left her with was the hoodie. She was able to pull it up and over her head and surround herself i
n darkness for much of the flight as Jeremy dribbled on about anime like he hadn’t just kidnapped her and taken her on an unknown international flight.
He talked about all the things that could have happened. College, mostly. As well as the other people in their Discord group, going on and on about how different things could have been.
Kennedy put the free headphones in and pretended to watch a movie. Jeremy kept going.
But he wasn’t able to grab her attention again until he said, “Now that is a terrifying man.”
“Who?” she asked and took one of the buds out.
“Baddest of bad guys.”
“Who?”
“The Russian guy…” Jeremy said. “Kushkin.”
“What’s he like?”
Squirming in his seat and picking at free peanuts on his tray, he sighed and said, “Well, you know what he wants, right? I mean, why you’re here... I wasn’t sure but I knew it had to have something to do with her.”
“With my mom, you mean?” Kennedy asked, taking the other earbud out.
Jeremy nodded. “You know what she did?”
Kennedy shook her head, trying to think back to a time when her mom had ever shared any details about her time in the Navy. It was rarely talked about in the Weick household. Kennedy often forgot that her mom had even served until she saw pictures of her in uniform, her stoic glare somehow more serious than it was now. Dad had always been more willing to talk about his time in Afghanistan, but they’d always made a clear distinction between his experience and hers.
“What did she do?”
“Well, I looked into it a bit afterwards…lots of classified stuff. I had to search through the dark web,” Jeremy said, straightening up like he was proud of his ability to find anything through a Google search. “Kushkin—the dad, not the kid that’s active now—was an investor in a major technology company that developed some of the first prototypes of drones. It paid off big time for him and after he had some money behind him…he started investing in shadier business. Drugs, hookers and eventually human trafficking. He became the guy. They pick up girls in the States and in Canada or sometimes Asia, bring them overseas and he places them throughout Europe, delivering them to his clients. It’s basically a huge data mining corporation. The reason they’re able to operate so efficiently is because of their huge reach, and their ability to track every single thing about every single girl. You want a blonde with big tits? They’ve got her on the ledger.”
