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Past Never Dies

Page 20

by Cate Clarke


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  Chapter 1

  Diana Weick

  The espresso didn’t help. The perfect butter crust of the croissant didn’t do anything either, but at least she had real food in her stomach for the first time in weeks. The smell of it all almost helped—fresh coffee, baked bread, rain coming in through the propped windows. Seeing her daughter’s face, flushed and happy, was the only thing that made Diana Weick feel less stressed.

  Not relaxed. Not calm. Just less stressed than she had been over the last three days, escaping from Ukraine on a private jet that had touched down in the middle of a field of barley that they had walked thirty miles to get to.

  “Can we go to Buckingham Palace?” Kennedy asked, leaning across their plates to grab Diana’s half-eaten scone. “Or—what’s that thing called—the Ferris wheel?”

  “London Eye…” Diana muttered, looking out the window at the people walking by, umbrellas covering their faces, impossible to tell who was friend or foe. “And no. This isn’t a vacation, Kennedy.”

  Her cheeks filled with scone, Kennedy said, “Well, I think we deserve one after all that.”

  “Sure,” Diana replied. “But not here. We gotta get home.”

  “That’s going to be a while though.”

  The waitress came to their table, topping up Diana’s coffee and bringing Kennedy another Pepsi that she didn’t need.

  “Why do you say that?” Diana asked, turning her gaze back to her daughter. Her round face already slimming out from age. Her hair darkened from the dye they’d given her, but her natural light brown color lingering on some strands.

  Kennedy cleared her throat and said, “He’s not done.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “The Kushkin guy… Taras.” Kennedy took a sip of the Pepsi, wiping at the crumbs on her jacket. “Plus, he’s got Dad so…”

  “I’m not done either.”

  “Right.”

  A small smile pulled up over Diana’s face. Despite the terror of going across multiple borders to find her daughter, there was a certain maturity in her that she hadn’t had before. An understanding that was setting her up for the darkness of the outside world. Kennedy had already experienced too much darkness and horror for a thirteen-year-old, and Diana needed to cut those experiences short before she got too used to it.

  “You can go home though,” Diana stated after a moment and looked back out the window, catching the gaze of someone across the street.

  “Without you?” Kennedy asked.

  Diana nodded.

  “No way, Mom,” Kennedy said, her mouth dropping and her eyebrows coming together. “I can help you.”

  “I’ve got plenty of help,” Diana said. “Speaking of which…”

  Cocking her head to one side at the men in suits across the street, they both watched them trek across the painted lines of the crosswalk and push open the glass doors to the café.

  They looked as they’d been described by Ratanake over the phone—one tall and chubby with a thick beard, wearing a baseball cap. The other was older and shorter with thick black hair and tortoiseshell glasses.

  “Ms. Weick,” the older one said, nodding at both of them. “Kennedy.”

  “Officer,” the other one muttered in his ear.

  “Sorry. Officer Weick?”

  Diana looked between the two of them and said, “Weick is fine.”

  They pulled up two chairs to the table.

  “I’m Agent Varma,” the older one said, tucking his hair out of his face. “Secret Intelligence Service.”

  “Agent Edgerton.” His knees came up almost to the height of the table. “Your commissioned officer gave us a call.”

  “Ratanake?” Diana asked. They both nodded. “He called you from the hospital?”

  Varma and Edgerton exchanged glances.

  “He didn’t mention that he got shot three days ago?”

  “No ma’am,” Varma said. “He didn’t.”

  Tapping her fingers on the table and taking a sip of her coffee, Diana sighed. Of course, Ratanake hadn’t mentioned his current condition—shot by the son of one of his previous SEALs. He was lying in a hospital bed somewhere, doing everything he could to help Diana and Kennedy overseas, hooked up to beeping machines and being impatient with the nurses.

  “You’ve got the details for extraction?” Diana asked.

  Edgerton pulled a folder out of a messenger bag and slid it across the table. Kennedy’s large brown eyes were glued to it, contemplating something. With two fingers, Diana slid it past her coffee cup and opened it. Two plane tickets back to Seattle.

  Diana stared down at the folder, flipping through for anything else. Nothing but the tickets and a cab voucher. She raised an eyebrow and asked, “What’s this?”

  “Your extraction,” Edgerton replied.

  “I meant, extraction for my ex-husband,” Diana said, leaning forward and whispering. “Rex Tennison. You know, the American citizen that’s currently in the clutches of a Russian terrorist and human trafficking organization?”

  “Ma’am—” Varma began, placing hairy knuckles onto the lip of the table.

  “I said, Weick,” Diana snapped.

  Varma cleared his throat and said, “Right. Excuse me… Weick… I need you to consider, first and foremost, that you’re in London. You have no jurisdiction here. Secondly, you’re a SEAL, a frogman. Frogwoman?” He coughed awkwardly. “You’re not an intelligence agent.”

  Diana looked between the two of them and then to her daughter across the table. They were all staring at her, expecting horns or sharpened teeth to grow out of her person and slash them down where they stood.

  “Kennedy, can you give us a second?” Diana said. “Stay close.”

  Sighing and pursing her lips, Kennedy stood up from the table, taking the rest of the scone with her as she went to look at the vintage greyscale photographs hung up in red frames around the café.

  “I may not be an intelligence agent,” Diana started. “But I’ve got more experience with Kushkin than your whole agency combined. And certainly, we, the SEALs and Lieutenant Ratanake, are not just going to leave Rex in the hands of that psycho. So I can fly back to Seattle, get approval through the channels over there and then come right back here to your doorstep... or we can skip to the briefing. Unless this type of thing is out of the MI6’s hands as well?”

  “No,” Edgerton spoke up. “We’re handling this.”

  “And I assume you would, or you could recruit a field expert to help with a case like this, right?” Diana asked, turning her eyes to him. “You’re looking at her.”

  “It’s more complicated than that, Weick,” Varma said. “We can’t risk several agents and thousands of dollars to get back one American man.”

  “It’s not just one.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Rank. Another SEAL. Kushkin has him too… he’s still alive.”

  Varma licked at his lips and looked away as he thought.

  Diana asked, “What can you risk?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t need to risk anything aside from me. I’ll go alone as long as I can get the proper equipment to get me in and out.”

  It was unnecessary for her to do so. She knew that. But Diana had been the one to choose Rex. She h
ad asked him to come with her to Ukraine to back her up on the mission to rescue their daughter. And of course, he’d agreed. There wasn’t anything that scared that man aside from theme parties and bearskin rugs. At least, Diana had gotten the satisfaction of seeing her ex-husband shoot Taras before getting Kennedy the hell out of Kushkin’s manor. Taras was still alive. Though that hadn’t been confirmed, she could feel it deep inside, a weight on a rope tied to the bottom of her stomach.

  “Well, if you’re really interested in working with us…” Varma said, and Diana sensed a practiced speech coming on. “We could use your skills and insight on Kushkin. But we need more back than just the recovery of Mr. Tennison.”

  “And what’s that?” Diana sipped her coffee and checked on Kennedy, who was strolling between pictures of Tower Bridge and St. Paul’s Cathedral. This was a place for tourists, and that was why Diana had chosen this spot—it was crowded. There was enough sound to cover the conversation and nobody was paying any attention to anything aside from the pictures on their phones or the shiny brochures spread out over their tables.

  “Well, you know the Kushkins have been deeply involved in the manufacturing and selling of drones. Surveillance mostly,” Edgerton took over, picking a second folder out of his bag, too prepared. Diana worried that she was becoming too predictable.

  “But more recently, after Alexander’s death, they’ve started up—ramped up, even—production of UCAVs… Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles,” Edgerton explained. “Deadly fuckers. Heavy but stealthy as hell. Unregulated and chock-full of weaponry. They’re looking to sell and they’ve got buyers. Lots of them.”

  “Saudis?” Diana asked, opening the folder and analyzing the picture of a matte gray aircraft.

  Edgerton nodded and said, “We don’t have confirmation yet. Our agent on the inside is… was—”

  “You mean Katy?” Kennedy questioned from behind his shoulder. Both of the agents jumped, and Diana stifled a laugh.

  Sighing and pointing to the chair across from her, Diana said, “I thought she was Europol.”

  Kennedy sat back down.

  “Yeah. We’ve got too many hands in the pot on this one,” Varma muttered.

  “That makes the whole thing riskier,” Diana replied.

  “It does,” Edgerton stated, ordering two more coffees to go from one of the waitresses as she came by. “We’re pretty certain, though, that there’s going to be a buy within the next couple of weeks. Can’t say where yet. But, if you’re willing to jump in on this, get us the buyer. Get us Taras. We get Rex. We’ll get you the stuff that you need.”

  Already agreeing in her head, Diana said, “Where should we stay in the meantime?”

  “We’ll get you a hotel near the office,” Varma said, nodding.

  “Taras pushed her off the stairs,” Kennedy said.

  They all turned to her. Her eyes were cast down at her boots and the crumbs scattered over the table. The gray light from outside swept over one side of her face, casting her with half a shadow. Rain tapped against the window, speeding up as the day went on instead of easing as the forecasters had said. Kennedy’s young face furrowed. Memories wisped through the air like the smell of espresso, reaching each of their noses at the same time.

  “He pushed her off,” Kennedy said again. “Over the bannister. She fell a long way… She said that she was going to take me to Paris. The gun was in my face—he was thinking about killing me first, but she spoke up. He turned it on her, shot her and tossed her off like she didn’t weigh anything… like she wasn’t worth anything.”

  Diana swallowed hard. Tears rolled off of Kennedy’s cheeks and into her lap. She shouldn’t have let her sit back down again. This was too soon, too serious and too much for her. Looking down at the folders in front of her, she picked up the airplane tickets, double-checking their date. Kennedy could leave tomorrow. But there was another part of her—as strong as the weight hanging from her stomach—that was telling her never to let Kennedy out of her sight again. Diana would not and could not lose her daughter a second time.

  Chapter 2

  Dominic Ratanake

  It was painful enough to be shot twice in the chest by Cameron Snowman. But it was even more painful to have to go through withdrawal in a hospital bed in front of an old SEAL and her son. He tried to pass off the tremors, the sweating, the vomiting as side effects of the painkillers that they were pumping him with. But he could tell that even Wesley didn’t believe him.

  Ratanake was thankful for the painkillers because they did at least help degrade the intensity of the alcohol withdrawal. Obviously, they also helped with the gunshot pain, but that was all secondary to the embarrassment.

  “Okay,” Wesley sighed as he came into the private room. “They didn’t have the chocolate pudding so I got you the Jell-O.”

  Diana’s son placed a small plastic cup on the cream-colored tray in front of Ratanake and sat down in the armchair with a Jell-O cup for himself tucked in his palm. The news droned quietly on the TV, mounted in the corner of the room.

  “It’s lime,” Ratanake said, eyeing the glossy green cup.

  Wesley looked down at his own cup—strawberry.

  “You want this one?” Wesley asked.

  Ratanake stared, blinking twice.

  Pulling his head back and forward, Wesley sighed hard and said, “Fine.”

  The strawberry Jell-o reminded Ratanake of a few things—the other times he’d been in the hospital and the hot summers of the Louisiana bayou. Wesley was useful in bringing him out of his memories. It had been a mutual, back-and-forth type of care over these last few days. Both of Wesley’s parents were overseas, one of their fates completely unknown, possibly dead. The recently turned eighteen-year-old sat in the corner doing his homework while Ratanake yelled at his contacts over the phone. Wesley brought him smuggled snacks and showed him memes on his phone that he didn’t get. There was a nurse that Wesley liked to stare at when she bent over in front of him. Meanwhile, Ratanake only thought of Wesley’s mother.

  Diana—safe for now. Kennedy—safe as she’d ever been in her mother’s hands.

  Ratanake had always been a fast healer, but the wounds she’d left in him had never been able to stitch themselves up. Booze helped to fill in the gaps. Painkillers helped him forget.

  “They still haven’t found him, right?” Wesley asked after a few moments.

  “Who?” Ratanake swallowed down the rest of the Jell-O.

  “Snowman,” Wesley said.

  The sun was bright through the windows, cutting through the whiteness of the room with thin shadows from the hospital equipment.

  “He’s more clever than they gave him credit for,” Ratanake muttered. “You shouldn’t be thinking about that kinda stuff. You’re heading back to Seattle tomorrow.”

  “Okay, but… what if I didn’t?” he asked, standing up from his chair, his lanky body crossing the tiles.

  “Wesley…”

  “Sir,” Wesley snapped, standing up straight. “I’ll enlist if I have to. I want to help.”

  Trying to prop himself up but only getting halfway, Ratanake sighed and looked the boy up and down. He said, “Both you and your sister are lucky to have inherited your mother’s bravery.”

  “Fortune always favors the brave,” Wesley replied, nodding.

  A soft chuckle escaped from Ratanake’s lips as he thought about the times he’d heard Diana say the same thing—in BUD/S training, before the first Kushkin expedition, next to him in bed.

  “What exactly am I going to do with you in London then?” Ratanake asked. The boy needed a chance. He’d already proved himself way more useful than he’d expected, and Ratanake did feel indebted to him—Wesley had saved his life.

  With raised eyebrows and a slight smirk, Wesley said, “Sign me up with the MI6?”

  Another laugh between the two of them and then a somber realization that there wasn’t much of anything either of them could do. Even if the two of them were to get to London, th
ere was no way that Diana would allow Wesley to tag along on anything remotely dangerous.

  “It’d be good for you to see your mom…” Ratanake said. “For all of you guys to be together again.”

  The sun cut into Wesley’s eyes as he turned himself toward the window. He cast his gaze down and his fingers twitched against his jeans. His chest raised as he took a deep breath, readying to say something else, but the sound of heavy boots cut them both off.

  “Good morning, ladies,” the man said from the doorway. His long brown leather coat brushed against his calves and his laced-up boots as he stepped inside. Messy blond hair fell over sunken eyes and a face that was covered in stubble, black smudges from god-knows-what and shrapnel scars. He pushed sunglasses up onto his head and grinned at the two of them, the sun catching on his white teeth.

  “Laird,” Ratanake murmured, laying himself back down against the pillow. “I thought we weren’t going to see you again after yesterday.”

  Nehemias Laird took his coat off and laid it across the chair that Wesley had been sitting on. The chains on his pants jangled as he put his hands deep into his pockets.

  “I thought you’d need some company,” Laird said, Texan accent coming through “Good thing young Weick is here to care for ya. Besides… I told you I needed some time to think about your offer.”

  “That is not what you said at all,” Wesley scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “I believe your exact words were ‘Go fuck yourself, you bureaucratic cog,’” Ratanake added.

  Laird laughed. His shirt had two buttons undone at the top, revealing wispy hairs on his chest and more scars. If he’d looked this way when he’d walked into the BUD/S training a decade ago, Ratanake would have put him through the wringer.

  “Did I?” Laird asked, putting a finger to his chin and scratching at his unshaven neck. “I don’t remember that. I was off-my-gourd stoned.”

  Sighing and rolling his eyes, Ratanake turned his face against the pillow. “So what? Now you want to come with us to London?”

 

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