by Cate Clarke
Chapter 30
Diana Weick
Kharkiv, Ukraine
Diana had never been one for being saved. She was far from a damsel in distress, but seeing Rex at the end of that hallway with a gun to Andriy’s head gave her a feeling that she hadn’t felt in a long time—protection.
“Put it down,” Rex said. “Or I put a bullet in his brain. You know who this is, I guess? How do you think his brother would feel about you letting him die here?”
Arthur moved side to side, looking from Diana to her ex-husband down the hall. Slowly, the gun was brought away from her face, and he stepped off of her, raising his hands. The smell of gunshots still hung in the air, an acrid haze over the building.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Arthur said, trembling, fear in his voice.
Rolling onto her shoulders and pushing herself to her feet, her body resisting every movement with hard, shooting pains, Diana put the handcuffs toward him. She said, “Take them off.”
The keys jangling against his pocket, his teeth clicking, Arthur undid the handcuffs. As soon as they were off, Diana turned and punched him square in the face, knocking him so hard that his head bashed against the doorframe behind him. He teetered and fell to his knees, his lumbering body sprawled out half in the hallway and half in the room where they'd kept her and tortured for no other reason than because Kushkin hated her. And it was clear that everyone, even huge, powerful men like Arthur, was scared of Taras Kushkin.
Stepping over his groaning body, she joined Rex at the end of the hall, grabbing one of the guns from his back.
“Well done, soldier,” she whispered. Rex smiled wide. She added, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Dragging Andriy, both holding guns to him now, they made their way through the building. Diana let Rex take the lead. But the few officers that were here weren’t willing to make a move on a Kushkin.
They made their way through a messy lobby that was filled with desks and paperwork, and as they passed Viktor, though Diana wanted to salute him, she only gave him a subtle nod, not wanting to get him into more trouble than he needed. He returned the nod, but his eyes were wide and he was picking at his fingernails.
The glass doors up ahead provided a sunny view of the streets of Kharkiv. People were passing by, not bothering to look into the windows of the police precinct, and the chaos that was unfolding inside. It was a beautiful day. No cover from rain or weather. How the hell were they going to get Andriy down the streets of Kushkin’s Kharkiv?
Diana’s eyes flashed toward the police cubbies by the front. Moving as fast as she could with her injuries, she grabbed a couple of hats and coats, draping them first over Andriy and then herself and Rex, Rex still holding a handgun in the middle of Andriy’s back. There was so much sweat dripping off of Rex’s head that when she put the hat on him, a couple of drops flung off and onto her face.
Through the streets, undercover, clutching to their guns and to their hostage, Rex led them back to his hostel, half-tossing Andriy into the room when they arrived. It was a tiny room with two bunk beds that had curtains pulled around them. Diana checked every bed—all empty. They shut the door even though there was a large sign on it that said “DO NOT SHUT DOOR.”
Finally, a moment to breathe.
She checked her injuries. She used the first-aid kit in Ratanake’s provided equipment to wrap herself up and clean up her blood and bruises. Andriy had fallen asleep slumped in one of the corners.
“What’s wrong with him?” Diana whispered.
“Drunk as a skunk,” Rex replied, grinning again, helping her tend to her wounds. “Jesus, Di. They really got you.”
His eyes analyzed her body, his gaze touching on every injury, a hurt look on his face.
He asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Are you?”
“Oh sure.” Rex leaned back on the bed. “This SEAL business isn’t so bad. Maybe I should enlist myself.”
Diana sighed. “You would never make it.”
“Saved your ass—”
“Well, a real SEAL probably would have left me there and gone after Taras himself.”
Rex thought, laughed a little and said, “Well, I got the next best thing.”
“You’re a smooth dog, Tennison,” she replied and with one great breath, lay down on the bed—just for a moment.
It was twenty minutes of that. Andriy snoring in the corner, his head collapsed into his chest. Diana spread out on the bed, Rex lying next to her—not sleeping—watching her as she lay and thinking about their next steps.
Several things happened at once. Andriy woke up yelling and groaning. Both Diana and Rex bounded out of the bed, grabbing at their guns and pointing them at his head. A naked woman stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her head, and she screamed at the sight of them.
“Leave,” Diana said to the woman, turning the gun on her and tossing her the backpack from the top bunk. Immediately, she unfurled the towel from her hair, wrapped it around her body and skittered out of the room.
“Oh god,” Andriy muttered. “My head.”
Using that, Diana whapped him on the temple with the butt of her gun.
“You awake?” she asked.
“Ow.” He struggled against the zip ties. “Does it not look like I am awake?”
His boots slammed against the carpet, flailing out in a tantrum.
“Where’s Kennedy?” Rex asked from behind her, peeking over her shoulder. Andriy looked at him, seemingly having a moment of sober realization. He tried to get to his feet, slipping several times against the floor.
“You son of a bitch!” he growled. “My wife—”
Diana stuck the barrel of the gun against his forehead.
“Stop.”
While holding it to his head, she looked back at Rex with her eyebrows raised, mouthing, “Wife?”
A pink hue spread across his sweat-covered cheeks, and he shrugged.
“You know where she is,” Andriy spat. “What’s stopping you from going there right now, Diana?”
His accent was thick but easy to understand—it was obvious that he’d spent a lot of time speaking and negotiating in English.
“You are,” she said. “I gotta decide what to do with you first.”
“Ah. It’s not your other friend then…”
“Other friend?”
A smirk across his face, he said, “Nelson.”
The gun dropped slightly.
“Rank?” Diana said, unable to hide the slight squeak in her voice. “He’s dead.”
“Well, if not for my brother’s generosity he would be…”
Diana reeled backwards.
Rank was alive. It had been ten years. For ten years he’d been a prisoner in Kushkin’s territory, and they hadn’t even known he was alive. Her heart pounded. Her wounds ached with every heavy beat of it. The gun dropped all the way to her leg, Diana stumbling back into Rex. He wrapped his hands around her shoulders.
“Diana?” he asked. And then in a whisper, “He’s just trying to get in your head.”
“You bastard!” she screamed, and she was on top of him, beating in his face with the butt of the gun, blood spurting out from his nose and lip. Tossing the gun away, she continued with her fists, pummeling them into his narrow eyes, his stubbled chin and every bit of him that made him look like his father.
After several cries of protest from Rex, she slowed her fists, still overtop of Andriy, emptying out her anger onto him.
“If you’re lying to me—” she managed between heavy breaths. Sweat dripped off her neck and landed on his coat.
Andriy spat out some blood and a tooth and asked, “What reason would I have to lie?”
“T-to prevent me from getting to Kennedy.”
“Prevent you? My god, you are a fool,” he laughed, every major area of his face bleeding except for his eyes. “He wants you to go get Kennedy. That is the reason you’re here! But I’m letting you know that
there’s another option… You don’t have to go straight there. You could try and save dear Nelson first. God knows, he needs it. Looking at him depresses me in the same way it does to look at you.”
Diana gave him another punch, colliding her fist with his nose and bashing the back of his head against the wall behind him. She turned away, Rex putting a light hand on her shoulder, tagging in and crouching down in front of him.
“And you lead us to where he is?” Rex asked. “And we let you go in exchange?”
“It seems fair to me.” Andriy coughed out more blood, but without letting the beating stop his mouth from running. “You will never find him without me.”
Rex looked over his shoulder at Diana, who was pacing back and forth between the bunk beds. He asked, “Does Taras know you’re offering this?”
“Of course not,” Andriy said. “He would never let that man go.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know,” he groaned. “Perhaps, he loves him. When I tell you this is your only chance to save him, I am telling you the absolute truth. I swear on my father—”
“Don’t!” Diana exclaimed, throwing a pointed finger. “Don’t talk about your piece of shit father right now.”
Clapping both of his hands on his knees and standing up, Rex met Diana in the middle of the room, leaning in close to her so they could whisper.
“What do we do? I think he’s telling the truth.” Rex put his back to Andriy, acting as a barrier between them.
“We can’t let Kennedy go for Rank,” Diana said. “We came for Kennedy.”
“We could split up—”
“Bad idea,” she hissed. “He might be telling the truth, but he’s trying to get us to waste time. Their Kennedy plan is delayed. Probably because he got himself caught. We have to get to the manor now. Get a jump on them. Bring him with us for an exchange.”
“We just walk in?”
“You walk in.”
“You just said we weren’t going to split up.”
“We’re not,” she replied, thinking out loud. “I’ll get a Draeger from Ratanake’s contact…dive in from the coast side, come in from the rear…the balcony. Get a jump on them for once. The only thing is the E and E…”
Rex furrowed his eyebrows and asked, “Draeger? E and E?”
“Draeger is a closed-circuit diving rebreather.”
Rex’s eyebrows came closer together, scrunching across his whole forehead.
Diana sighed and said, “It doesn’t make any bubbles when you dive.”
“Gotcha.”
“E and E is Escape and evade—”
“You SEALs have way too much jargon.”
“We need a way out,” Diana explained, ignoring his interruption. “Flashbangs in that bag? Smoke bombs?”
Rex nodded.
“Good. That will have to do. I’ll call it into Ratanake and see if he can do anything for us from the air.”
“You’ll leave your friend to die then?” Andriy interjected. Unsure if he’d heard everything or just pieces, Diana crossed the room to stand in front of him, picking up the gun she’d tossed earlier.
“I did once already,” she said, swallowing back the guilt with a guttural catch in her throat. “At the feet of your father. I’m not going to let history repeat itself with my daughter. Rank was a SEAL, a well-trained frogman. Kennedy is thirteen years old—stuck in the middle of Taras’s sick form of payback. Let’s see how you like being in that position, Andriy.”
Chapter 31
Kennedy Tennison-Weick
Kherson Oblast, Ukraine
It was the biggest house she’d ever been in. It couldn’t even really be called a house. It was—like Mrs. Babich said—a manor. After Alek dropped them off, there was some more yelling, negotiating and swearing. The man even pulled his gun, the one he’d used to shoot Jeremy, and pointed it in their faces, demanding things that Kennedy couldn’t understand. Mrs. Babich rushed her inside, and she was thankful for her warm hands on her back as she moved her through marble hallways and up a spiral staircase.
There were so many people moving between the windows, carrying cables, weapons, or food and tea on ceramic trays, but every one of them stopped to greet her and Mrs. Babich. Bowing their heads and slight smiles on their faces because they’d been expecting her. That was obvious. The manor was buzzing with Kennedy’s arrival. She was important and that terrified her.
Mrs. Babich brought her into a room that was decorated with white and gold—a canopy bed, Victorian furniture and thick velvet curtains.
“Your room,” she said, but didn’t slow down, leading her into an attached bathroom that was bigger than Kennedy’s bedroom in Seattle. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
It wasn’t only Mrs. Babich, but a gaggle of women that helped Kennedy to bathe, dress and make her up. She felt like a lamb going to slaughter, ensuring she was in the best shape possible only to cut her up for meat. Looking at herself in the mirror, even further from the hand mirror in the plane, she didn’t look like Kennedy Tennison-Weick. It was a funhouse version of herself that looked like neither of her parents, but instead looked like she could fit right in with the women of the manor. Her dark curls had been straightened and brushed out so that they fell around her shoulders. They dressed her in a simple chiffon dress that tickled the skin of her pale thighs as they rushed past her, giggling and fawning over everything they’d done.
Mrs. Babich whispered to them and all of them left except for one, a red-haired woman with large eyes. Her name was Katy, one of the easier names of the bunch when Mrs. Babich had run down the line introducing all of them. After all of the women had left, Katy checked around the corner before exiting the bathroom and sitting on the bed, patting the mattress beside her.
Uncomfortable in her new appearance, Kennedy yanked down at her dress as she walked across the carpet and sat down next to her.
“Kennedy.” Katy folded her hands in her lap. “I’m so happy and so sad to see you here.”
Her English was definitely the best of the bunch. She hardly had an accent. The dress pooling in her lap, Kennedy let her legs dangle down, not knowing how to respond.
“My name is Juliette,” she whispered.
“I thought—”
“Let me speak first. I’ll tell you everything.”
Kennedy nodded.
“My name is Juliette. I work for Europol. I’ve been undercover in the Kushkin manor for six months. I’ve been in contact with your mother’s superior officer, and he’s told me everything about your situation. Taras talks about it all the time anyway so it’s not hard to keep track of his plan, especially when he underestimates you—which he does with all women. As you probably know, he plans to use you as bait…to lure your mother here and then kill her. After which he plans to sell you off to a high-paying client he has in Roma. But, he is sick with revenge—I expect that he’ll make many mistakes when your mother gets here. And she is coming, Kennedy. She is already in Ukraine with us. Today is the day. Your father is here too, and together, they’ve managed to capture Andriy, Taras’s brother. They plan to use him for an exchange. But Taras will not make this trade, I’m sure of it. Your mother is very smart and capable. I’m going to help her in from the sea, from the balcony, while your father tries to negotiate Andriy’s life. Finally, we will have an advantage. Once she’s inside, I’m going to take you, okay? We are going to go together. I have agents on standby for extraction. I will take you to Paris for the time being, and then we will get you home.”
Searching Katy’s face for honesty, Kennedy didn’t know what to do. She wanted to trust her. Mom had told her to trust no one.
“Do you have a badge?” Kennedy asked.
Katy gave a light laugh. “Not on me. Very smart of you to ask. You are your mother’s daughter.”
“You said my dad’s here too?”
Katy nodded.
They had all come to save her. She had never thought of herself as being worth this much. Why had
n’t they taken Wesley instead? He was probably an easier target considering how stupid he was sometimes. But she knew why. It was because she was a girl. Maybe, Taras had waited this long because he was waiting for her mom to have a grown daughter. Though Kennedy hadn’t even met him yet, she knew he was a sicko. Total creep.
“So what do I need to do then?” Kennedy asked.
“Do what he says for now,” Katy said. “It’s going to be scary. He’s scary. I need you to trust me. Is that something you can do, Kennedy?”
Hesitating, chewing on her bottom lip, Kennedy tried to think about what her mom would do. She had gotten her through the forest, the Lefferts, watching Jeremy get shot in the head. What if this was just someone else trying to steal her? They’d taken the hoodie with her hand mirror, her one possible advantage, so she didn’t have anything to protect herself if Katy tried to take her either way.
But before Kennedy could make her decision, the door opened.
Both of them hopped to their feet and turned to a skinny man with a long face and pointed nose. Honey brown hair that was pushed out of his face with gel.
He was covered in blood.
“Taras—” Katy began, but he stomped forward, a rage in his eyes and across his face.
He clamped cold hands onto Kennedy’s shoulders. The smell of fire came off of him like a strong cologne. Taking a moment to stare at her, analyze everything about her. Unsatisfied with his inspection, he wiped his hand across his face, picking up the blood with his palm and then wiped it on her, starting at her lips and then going down her neck to her chest, staining the collar of the dress.
“Taras—” Katy tried again. Without taking his eyes off of Kennedy, he slapped Katy with the back of his hand, and she went down to the ground, shocked, hand clutched over her mouth.
Taras yanked on Kennedy, pulling her out of the room at first by her shoulders but then grabbing her elbows because it was easier to drag her that way. Kennedy tripped over the simple leather slippers that they’d put her in because they were a size too big. He didn’t wait for her. Just dragging, not even looking back.
