Terminal Vendetta (A Diana Weick Thriller Book 3)

by Cate Clarke

  It was so hot that he had to remove his leather jacket and spread it out over the back of the couch. At least in the basement, the concrete walls kept in some cool air. Meanwhile upstairs, his mom was using every bit of the electricity with the fans and her soap operas droning on in the kitchen.

  She was going to blow another fuse exactly when he really needed her not to.

  His fingers stroked against the keyboard, typing fast and impatiently, looking for the info that he needed, looking at what the Readers were up to. They had left out most of the important details like why they needed this fifty-thousand-dollar password and what they were going to use it for. So Laird would have to find that out on his own.

  He had four monitors in front of him— one encrypting information from the department Cameron Snowman had told him about, the other delving into the dark web about Zabójca, one playing porn on mute, and the last playing reruns of Seinfeld.

  It was a lot of waiting around until Laird got the confirmation call that Hoagland was out of the running.

  People were gonna judge him, working for these guys. But Laird got it. He understood why the Readers did why they did. After years of being used and abused by the US military, they were maybe one of the only groups of people that he sympathized with.

  Thank Christ he had left that funeral early or he would be burned up like Weick’s family, like the other uniformed officials, like Ratanake. There was a twinge across his chest, thinking about those that had “died for their country”—that’s what they said on the news anyway. All of those brave souls, attending a funeral, taking two hours out of their lives for a commissioned officer that they probably didn’t even remember.

  It was the third rendition of “Amazing Grace” that had got him. Laird couldn’t listen to that song one more time—Ratanake hadn’t even liked that damn song.

  Okay, sure, he was totally beat up about Ratanake’s death. He could admit that. For a long time, Laird had always thought that Ratanake would have outlived him. That way Laird could have been angry at him for the whole of his life, but everything had changed—mostly because of Wesley Tennison-Weick. Another twinge across his chest. Laird lit up the half-smoked joint balancing on the ashtray by his soiled mousepad. That kid had been the one to get him out of this farmhouse after ten years, to travel to London after hours of isolation and drinking and getting high and putting a gun in and out of his mouth. And now that kid was dead. A result of growing up in a family with too much invested in the military and secrets. And Laird was right back to what he had been. Bad habits were hard to break. Especially when grieving, if that’s what you could call what Laird was doing. Working for the Readers wasn’t great—he acknowledged that. But, he needed the money. He needed purpose.

  He took a long hit of the joint, the high that was beginning to go down skyrocketing back up.

  His sweat-covered back stuck to the ripped pleather of the office chair.

  It didn’t take long for the VBA website to reveal the profiles of the two potential women that he was going to have to get passwords from—Lillian Stone and Marianna Axtell. Both were in line for this vacant position with the Veteran Benefits Administration, with Hoagland being the number-one pick but apparently dead after an assassination by the Readers in South Korea.

  He doxxed both Stone and Axtell, getting as much information as possible on both of them to make the final process of this easier when it came time for that call. There was a part of him that wished the Readers had asked him to join them in their car or wherever their base was, because Laird’s patience was wearing thin as a forty-year-old living with his mother in a farmhouse in the middle of Nowhere, Texas.

  She brought him the occasional grilled-cheese and lukewarm beans but other than that, she was old and needed help with almost everything. And he would. He was a pretty good son. He wasn’t a very good soldier or co-worker or role model, but he was not bad at taking care of his mom.

  Both Stone and Axtell had pretty secure information. This job maybe wouldn’t be as easy as he thought it was.

  His phone buzzed with a text from Cameron Snowman.

  “Tomorrow.”

  That was all it said.

  Cameron Snowman was a guy that needed a joint. It seemed that he was always up in arms about some social injustice and not getting his way wasn’t an option. He was like his father in that way—uncomfortably persistent and brave.

  Reading up on the position, Laird found that this vacant position—the Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Benefits—in addition to being a mouthful, also was the position that managed the funds for the VBA. And then, as he sucked back on the joint again, the Readers’ goal made sense.

  The first time, it had been about destruction, about sending a message. This time, it was about getting what was due to them, to all of them—emptying out the veteran pension.

  “Fuck,” Laird muttered as he ashed off the joint and began to write a letter.

  Yes, he had agreed to do this job, but they weren’t going to stifle his freedoms just because they thought every soldier shared their same viewpoints. And he wasn’t going to roll over and suck Zabójca’s dick like Cameron Snowman had. He had to at least share what was happening with, maybe, the only soldier he still trusted.

  Picking up the joint by bending down and wrapping his mouth around the tip, Laird’s hands furiously scratched at the pad of paper in front of him. Still not taking his fingers off the page, he took another inhale and exhale, the smoke hanging in the air of the basement until it caught into the circulation of the furnace behind him, carrying the dank smell throughout the ancient house. It was going to take longer this way, but he knew there were more people like him, more people that could get into anything sent through the internet.

  He stuffed the letter into an envelope and bounded up the stairs.

  Planting a quick kiss on his mom’s cheek as he whizzed past the kitchen, Laird hopped out through the side door, stepping over another one of his tripwire traps. It was so fucking hot. Every bit of him was sweating even though he was only in loose gray sweatpants. His clammy palms were softening the edges of the envelope as he walked along the long driveway to the road.

  When he got to the mailbox, he leaned the envelope against the metal sides of it, scribbling Diana Weick’s Seattle address on the front. And there was a certain weight lifted off of him when he jammed it inside. The guilt wasn’t quite as heavy. But maybe, that was just because he was too high to really recognize what he’d agreed to. His bloodshot eyes made their way to the sun, high in the clear sky above him. The heat as tireless as the high, as the guilt and as the Readers.

  Chapter 13

  Taras Kushkin

  Dawson City, Yukon

  There was too much pain. He had been shot several times over the last few months but this one hurt the most. They’d taken the sniper shot at him from a long distance, and the bullet had wedged itself alongside the wound of his previous shot from Diana Weick. His body and his mind could withstand a lot. Over the years, he had survived through countless traumas much worse than the pain of a bullet, but this one… it was in his whole body, travelling up and down his arms, pounding in his chest.

  He didn’t have much time.

  So he would do his best to take down Zabójca with him, but he’d known his shot had missed almost as soon as it left the barrel. He’d seen Weick behind him in the distance, standing on the other side of the trees, lining up the shot with the same sniper rifle that had shot him down as the “distraction.” It had been a ridiculous notion anyway—to have Taras as a distraction. It had bought them a few more minutes but at the cost of his life. At least they could celebrate that they would survive this.

  They hadn’t trusted him. He hadn’t been a priority. Not that he’d expected them to bow to him as they could have, but he’d hoped they at least would have tried to keep him alive with some minimal effort. But he could feel it draining like petrol being emptied from a canister—his life. Rex’s life. Both of them, dyin
g.

  The grass was in his mouth, pooling in his gums alongside the blood.

  He flipped over onto his back as Weick rushed over to him.

  “Is he dead?” Taras asked.

  Weick looked down at him, blonde hair falling over her face as she checked his wounds.

  “Quiet,” she said, opening up his jacket to stare at his stomach. By her face, he knew the situation was dire. By the palms of her hands, immediately covered with red, he knew it was over. Everything he had worked for.

  Behind him, he heard the struggling sounds of footsteps and then scattering down the mountainside. Weick’s eyes flashing up and watching an escaping Zabójca. She maneuvered herself around Taras, putting her back at his side as the safe house exploded.

  Everything in his vision, Weick’s grimacing expression and the blue sky behind her, slowly filled with clouds of smoke. She began to wrap things around him, put pressure on his wounds. Heat suddenly pushing from all sides.

  Taras reached up, clutching a hand to her wrist.

  “Stop,” he said. “Go after Zabójca.”

  She looked down at him, brown eyes searching him, fiddling with his wounds. With one labored breath, he closed his eyes for a moment, slowing his heart, trying to show her that there was nothing left for him here on this earth. That it was his time.

  “He is dying too,” Taras croaked.

  “Zabójca?” Weick asked, looking over her shoulder. Almost hopping up to go after him but fighting with herself over Taras’s life. Even after all he had done to her; she still was struggling with remorse. She didn’t want to leave him for dead this time as she’d done in the desert—her perception of him had changed. Those feelings complemented each other, hers and his.

  He no longer wanted revenge on Weick. Perhaps, it had been the burning of the manor, or the interactions with horny strangers that had seen him as someone normal and not as the son of an international terrorist. Perhaps, it had been Matthieu, offering him safe passage to Canada as a favor without any reciprocity other than a kiss on the cheek. Or perhaps, it had been Weick herself. She had let him onto her side, not trusted him but protected him as one of her own for however short an amount of time it was.

  Taras shook his head.

  “Rex,” he managed. “You must save him.”

  “He’s already dead, Taras,” Diana said, tears pushing out the sides of her face as she looked down at him and over her shoulder again.

  Taras shook his head, honey-brown hair brushing against the grass.

  “There is a suitcase.” The blood in his mouth was too much, and he had to turn his head to let it dribble out through his lips. “It’s in the trunk of the car. You must take it. It will explain.”

  “About Rex?”

  Taras shook his head again. The pain seared up his neck and into his head, a fog pressing over his mind.

  “No but… yes,” Taras said. “You will see. It—” he coughed. “—it has everything. It is old… my father’s. But we must know our past… to know our future.”

  “We can change the future, Taras,” Weick said. “You’re not going to die here.”

  She tried to lift him up, put him over her shoulders, but his body collapsed in like he was made of ash, silver bits of smolder caving in to his center. He let out a cry of pain, more blood escaping from his mouth as she tried to take him down the mountain but slipped, sending them both tumbling down, a mess of blood, mud and assurance that this was the end.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the house burning. And suddenly, it was the manor burning. It was everything he’d built and destroyed, searing in front of his eyes. But this fire would not release his ghosts—this one would release the next stage of the Readers' plan.

  All of that revenge, all of his anger at the Readers, would go unappeased.

  He grabbed at Weick’s forearm, her skin so warm under the cool suffrage of his fingers.

  “You must kill that man,” Taras said. “Kill her too.”

  “Who?”

  “All of them. Kill them all, Weick,” Taras spat, blood flying out from his mouth and spattering across her arm. “But start with me.”

  He moved his fingers down her forearm to her wrist, moving her hand to his throat.

  “Sever the connection.”

  Clamping his hand down on hers, not allowing her to budge from under his grip, Taras laid his head down. The grass and mud under his body that seemed to be dropping a degree of temperature every second. The blue sky overhead, touching everything with clear sunlight. The heat of the nearby fire trying to capture what little warmth he had left.

  Weick brought a dagger to him with her other hand, still holding her palm against his throat. The tip of the blade was against his temple, trembling in her grip.

  “Would you like me to insult you to make this easier?” he murmured.

  Weick gave a broken laugh.

  “You will always be the American bitch,” Taras said, closing his eyes. “But thank you… Weick. Thank you for killing my father. Do not fear the karakurt.”

  Chapter 14

  Diana Weick

  Dawson City, Yukon

  Diana plunged the dagger into his head. The grip around her hand loosened. His body went still, red seeping out from underneath and onto the grass, slowly draining down the mountainside to the backyard of the safe house that was in flames.

  She leaned over Taras’s body for a moment, resting her forehead down on his torso, his blood smeared onto her face. Blubbering into his clothes. She hadn’t cried like this over Ratanake. With Wesley and Rex, it had been an overwhelming anger. But Taras. This one was painful in so many different ways. He’d been trying to change. He’d been trying to be better, to play for the right side. No matter how subjective that was. And he was young. Too young for all of this, brought up in it and a product of his environment. Death didn’t wipe away the things he had done or the struggles he’d put her through, but that pull of pity was there again, yanking at the bottom of her stomach like a hand clutched around her insides.

  “Diana.” A voice from behind her, Amber’s deep London accent. “He’s getting away.”

  She sprung to her feet, grabbing the silenced pistol from Taras’s cold hands, and took off. Amber ran alongside her.

  “Did Hoagland make it?”

  They circled around the fiery building, glass and wood flown nearly a hundred feet from where it once stood. The few neighboring cabins were stirring with people, looking out their windows, scrutinizing what the hell was going on in their usual isolated valley.

  “Stubborn old bastard,” Amber muttered, huffing and pumping his arms, pointing to the path by the lake where Zabójca was running.

  He’d left David behind. Despite the shot that he’d taken at Diana from behind, she was sure that if they left him for much longer he would bleed out as Taras had.

  “I got him in just on time,” Amber said. “The girl too.”

  And just as he said so, an old pudgy man with very short gray hair in nothing more than loose boxer shorts came into view. He was sitting on the front lawn of the safe house, his legs spread out in front of him and a woman sitting next to him, leaning her head against his shoulder.

  “Get under cover!” Diana screamed at them, and they both jumped. “Now!”

  Zabójca still had the GS-777. The two on the lawn were in shock, but there was no time for panic. One turn from the terrorist up ahead, and they would all be dead.

  Their shoes kicked up stones as they skidded along the edge of the lake, following Zabójca around the water until he began to move back up into the mountains. There was a high-pitched humming behind them. At first, Diana thought that maybe David wasn’t as hurt as she thought and had managed to pick up another gun to bear down on them. But it wasn’t David—just another familiar enemy.

  The combat drone, the UCAV, flew over their hands, the water rippling from its speed and force. Zabójca’s escape plan, the assurance factor.

  Amber turned over his shoul
der and Diana did the same, Hoagland and the woman behind them, leaning on each other and crossing through the lawn to the next house.

  “Just on time,” Amber whispered. “You saved them.”

  And just as he did, the UCAV made a deft 180-degree turn, missiles hanging out the bottom and whizzing over both of their heads. One hit the base of the front lawn; the other hit the foundation of the safe house. More explosions. More fire and smoke.

  Hoagland and the woman sprinted out of its range, ducking behind the neighbor’s house.

  They continued after Zabójca but he’d widened the distance between them, his bald head just a beige spot against the black stone pathway that weaved in and out of this community. Diana brought the sniper rifle up to her shoulder, crouching down and adjusting the scope to get a shot. The UCAV landed on the path.

  “Somebody’s gotta be piloting it,” Diana said to Amber as she lined up the crosshairs and took a shot. She saw it first, heard it second—the ping off the UCAV’s wing.

  “He could be anywhere,” Amber said, crouching down next to her, staying out of the way.

  “Check the houses,” Diana stated, not taking her eyes off the scope.

  Zabójca climbed onto the UCAV, keeping his body on the opposite side of the matte-gray body of the plane. It wasn’t meant for passengers but if he could hold on long enough to get him over the mountains that was all he needed. Diana took another shot, aiming for Zabójca's fingers.

  That one hit.

  A spray of red spurted up into the air as Zabójca scrambled with his other hand, managing to get a grip with one arm. He tucked the bleeding hand into his coat as the UCAV took off into the air. It was too fast. Zabójca, only a blur on its back.

  The sniper rifle dropped. Diana shook her head.

  “Fuck!” she screamed into the air.

  Behind her, piles and piles of flames and black smoke rose into the clear day between the rocky sides of the low mountains. Amber was running from house to house, gun in front of him, checking for the drone pilot, but Asher could very well be miles away, operating from a tablet. These UCAVs were the type of technology that Diana hated. It took out every bit of warfare and replaced it with a computer screen. No matter how good of a shot she was or how hard she punched, she could never outdo or outrun a machine like that.