Terminal Vendetta (A Diana Weick Thriller Book 3)

by Cate Clarke

  “What is this?” her mom said, probably struggling with talking on the phone and looking at a picture message at the same time.

  “It’s from that guy… the one you used to work with,” Kennedy said. “I think it’s important.”

  “You just opened it up, hey?”

  “Well…” Kennedy clutched the back of her office chair. “Is it important?”

  “Yeah. It is.” Her mom covered the receiver again, more muttered secrets. “Laird always finds a way to stay involved.”

  “He was talking about the guys that blew up the funeral, right?”

  Ignoring Kennedy’s question, her mom said, “Kennedy, you’ve got to do me a favor.”

  “Anything, Mom.”

  And Kennedy meant that. She also needed to feel involved somehow.

  “Burn that letter. Get rid of it, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  More muttering.

  “Mom?” Kennedy asked.

  “Yeah, honey?”

  There was a short silence as Kennedy took a deep breath in and out of her nose, fighting back the welling in her throat and pushing down the knots in her stomach.

  “I miss you.” Kennedy wiped at the sides of her eyes, sitting down on the edge of her bed. The blankets pooled under her one hand, squeezing the comforter that she and Mom had bought together last year at Ikea. Back when Mom was in between fighting off terrorists and was training meatheads at the gym instead. Kennedy didn’t miss that. But she missed the mom she could spend time with. She missed her brother. She missed her father.

  Kennedy was absolutely alone.

  “Oh, Kennedy,” her mom cooed, her voice changing as if she had stepped somewhere more private. “I miss you too, more than you could ever know. Things here… they aren’t good. I’m doing my best but there are a lot of unknowns right now. You sending this letter helps so much, okay? You did exactly what you should have done. I’m going to be home soon, and we’re going to be a family again. Whatever that means for us.”

  “I miss Wes and Dad too,” Kennedy said quietly, thinking this may be one of the only times she felt safe and vulnerable enough to say it out loud.

  “Me too,” Mom replied and sighed into the phone. “Are you back at school now?”

  “Christina took me back a couple of days ago.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Terrible.”

  “Do your best,” Mom said. “You keep your head down. No fear. Understood?”

  “No fear.”

  “I love you, Kennedy.”

  “I love you too.”

  “Burn the letter.”

  “Understood.”

  Chapter 17

  Diana Weick

  Dawson City, Yukon

  As soon as Diana was off the phone with Kennedy, she sat down on the edge of the motel bed to look at the picture of the letter. Her eyes scanned quickly across the screen, Amber pacing in front of her, waiting for her to pass it to him.

  “So they wanted Hoagland out of the picture…” Amber said as she passed the phone to him and he read through Laird’s letter. “Because they couldn’t get through his security. But these other candidates, Axtell and Stone, would give them the opportunity to get into the Veteran Benefits Administration…”

  “But why?” Diana asked.

  “Call Laird?” Amber suggested.

  “Shit,” Diana muttered.

  Laird was trying to cover his ass by disclosing the information that he had, but this disclosure didn’t change the things he’d done and was doing for the Readers. They were paying him off. Diana had been to that farm in Texas years ago and it had been run-down then—she couldn't imagine how it looked now. He did need the money. Still, there were different ways to approach this than teaming up with Cameron Snowman and Zabójca.

  The letter was simple—it really only said what Laird was doing for the Readers, but not the why. It needed to be wiped. Nobody needed to know how far deep Laird was in this and that he’d told Diana exactly what he was up to.

  She had to look up the number. The internet was slow in Dawson City, and she had to sort through so many old SEAL files saved on her phone to find any information about Laird. The last time they’d talked on the phone had been before the original Kushkin mission, more than ten years ago.

  “I was hoping you’d call,” Laird said as soon as he picked up the phone.

  “You sent a letter to my daughter,” Diana snapped.

  “Oh…” Laird popped his lips together. “Well, I figured you were at home. It’s not my fault you’re never where you live.”

  “It’s not my fault either,” Diana replied. “You know whose fault it is.”

  “Readers?”

  Diana said nothing but she caught Amber’s gaze, rolling her eyes.

  “Well, at least you got it,” Laird stated. “There were some things I didn’t want to include in there. Also, my hand started to cramp so…”

  “Why, Laird?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you working with them?”

  “For the money.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. What could I say, Diana?”

  “No. You could have said no.”

  “You don’t get it,” Laird replied, an exasperated breath making its way through the phone. “You never really got it. Your experience in the SEALs was completely different than mine. I was just another one of the substandard trainees. You were good… great. Best of the best was how Ratanake put it. You became a fucking celebrity just because you have a pussy. Sorry, but it’s true. Ratanake loved you. Literally, loved you. Your military is not my military. You were able to find a job, get married and have kids. Don’t you think I would have wanted that too, Weick? But I was so fucked in the head after Russia that I couldn’t do anything but come home and think. It was the thinking that really did me in, too. I spent all that time being eaten alive by my own guilt only for it to turn out that Rank had Robert Hanssen’d and joined the newest, freshest bad guys. Kushkin was small fry compared to what the Readers want to do. I mean, we all saw it at the funeral.”

  “Yet, you still agreed to work with them?”

  “Again… for the money, Weick,” Laird said. “Judge me all you want. I don’t give a shit. It’s not like I signed an NDA. I’ll give you and your government pals all the information you want.”

  “I’m not working with the government…” Diana said, pulling her gaze and herself away from Amber, turning toward the wall.

  “Oh,” Laird said, actual surprise in his voice. “Who are you working for then?”

  “Me, Laird.”

  “I like that.” Laird laughed. “Me too.”

  Diana said, “You’ve always worked for yourself.”

  There was another pause, both of them processing the back and forth of all that had happened. A certain kinship still existed between the two of them, the only two remaining members of their SEAL team, the only two who had ever truly known Dominic Ratanake.

  “Kushkin is dead,” Diana stated, surprising herself this time.

  “Taras?”

  “Yes. Zabójca got him too.”

  “Well, good riddance,” Laird murmured, his drawl coming through. “Ain’t that good for you?”

  She didn’t need to tell him everything. She didn’t need to tell him that Taras had sensed a change in the antagonists just as Diana had.

  “You gotta tell me, Laird,” Diana said, skipping over the end of Taras’s story. “What are they trying to do with the VBA?”

  “Empty it out,” Laird replied. “I mean this is an assumption but based on the responsibilities of the Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Benefits, in addition to being a fucking mouthful, they deal with all of the funds. They authorize pensions.”

  “They want to empty out the veteran pension fund? That’s gotta be millions, if not billions of dollars,” Diana said.

  Behind her, she heard Amber stop his pacing, listening in on the conversati
on.

  “Billions, yeah,” Laird replied. “But I don’t know what they’re planning to do with it. If I knew, I’d tell ya.... Write you another letter.”

  “Don’t write me another letter.”

  “I’m kidding, Weick.”

  They both laughed but just a little and for a short amount of time, no room and no time for kinship. Besides, Diana couldn’t approve of what Laird was doing, and he was going to do it with her approval or not.

  The two of them followed Hoagland’s vehicle across the border. After all this time and travel, there was something comforting about being on American soil even if it was Alaska. That was where the comfort ended. There was a lot of stress in seeing the uniformed officers shove Hoagland into the backseat and drive him away in an armored car. These were soldiers and federal agents that weren’t going to take lightly to Diana and Amber’s informal interference. Amber had been surprisingly quiet about the MI6 connection, swearing that he was operating under Voss and not for the agency that she headed. That’s what he told Diana. He told the soldiers something entirely different, that he and Diana were a team working together as independents. She’d forgotten how good of a liar he was.

  There was no direct road from Dawson City so they had to double back and make a twelve-hour drive to the city of Tok, Alaska. The mountains here were huge, intimidating piles of stone and snow. The town was even smaller than that of Dawson City, really not much aside from a bank, a gas station and a business called “Tok’s Paws” that provided equipment for dog sleds and also rented out cabins.

  “There’s only two rooms,” one of the soldiers muttered to her partner as they opened the door for Hoagland followed by Diana and Amber.

  “We can rent our own,” Diana said.

  “Nope,” the soldier said. “You’re staying with us, Officer Weick.”

  “What was your name again?” she asked, turning to her, the smell of the cabin hitting them all—cedar and smoke and fish.

  “Captain Axtell, ma’am.”

  Amber and Diana both stopped, exchanging glances. With a large sigh, Amber sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Marianna Axtell?” Diana asked.

  “That’s right.” She nodded; her black hair was slicked back into a low bun, hazel eyes flashing between them. “I know you too. Greatly admired you when I was young, ma’am.”

  “You’re still young,” Diana said, looking her up and down. Axtell was likely no older than thirty—her skin was virtually wrinkle-less, only a bit of age showing on the sides of her perpetual scowl. “So you were sent here to babysit me?”

  “No, ma’am,” Axtell replied. “Myself and Captain Romano are here to protect and transport Major General Hoagland.”

  They didn’t have to discuss it any further. Protecting Hoagland meant that Axtell was also prepared to defend him against both Diana and Amber, unsure of where their allegiances truly lied. Axtell was a glorified babysitter, no matter how much she said she “admired” Diana.

  “Well, at least everyone already thinks he’s dead,” Amber said, scrutinizing the stains on the linoleum table between the stacked-log walls.

  “Everyone except for the Readers,” Axtell said, looking at him, her face completely stoic, almost expressionless. That intensity reminded Diana of a younger version of herself.

  It was hot in the cabin. No air-conditioning and the five bodies inside were warming up every space between the cedar logs. No room for secrets.

  Amber was the only person in the cabin that she trusted, and they had discussed on the long drive here exactly where they were drawing the line for shared information. They could tell the United States military officials everything. But if they did, it would be taken out of their hands, up to Hoagland and his cronies to stop them. And Diana just didn’t trust them to do so. If Ratanake was still alive, things would have been different. She had no trusted contacts in the military anymore.

  Besides, the United States military knew nothing about the Readers and Zabójca when compared to the two of them. On top of all that, the Readers had people on the inside as proven by Lionel Barr/David, Carson, the SEAL who shot Ratanake, and Cameron Snowman.

  And that thought reminded Diana of something she’d forgotten about in the wake of all the death, explosions and terrorism—Taras’s suitcase.

  She quickly excused herself, claiming she needed fresh air after the twelve-hour drive. It was dark outside but still hot and humid, the night air sticking to her skin like dew on grass. Rounding her way around the rental car, she opened the door to the backseat. Despite the industrial cleaning they’d put it through, it still smelled of David’s blood. Just a slight scent under the smell of oranges and Cheetos that they’d eaten on the way to Tok. Underneath Amber’s duffel bag, she dragged out the roller suitcase that Taras had carried around with him as if it was a keychain strapped to his belt loop. She pulled it up onto the seat and unzipped it.

  Piles and piles of folders and papers, almost all of them about Zabójca.

  But on the top of the pile, there was a sticky note pressed onto a printed-out photo of a familiar location, her garage at home in Seattle. The maps of the park where she lost Kennedy were still partially taped to the wall in the corner, some of them floated down to the cement ground after all the time that had passed. And in the middle of the picture, of the garage, a matte-black, shrunken-down version of the UCAV that the Readers had underneath the sticky note that said:

  “Fight fire with fire - T”

  Chapter 18

  Amita Voss

  London, England

  It was an early gray day with spattering bits of rain, and she knew immediately that something was amiss as soon as she walked in her office. The motion lights were on. It was too early for Reina to arrive, and Chief Harlow still wasn’t back from his vacation. Besides, neither of them would dare to enter her office without her express permission.

  She placed the box of premade sandwiches on her desk and looked toward the bathroom door. Rounding the office, she turned on the modern record machine in the far corner, covering up any sound she was making. It was set to a 1970s Bollywood album that had been one of her mother’s favorites. And while it did cover the clicking of her boots and the loading of her pistol, it also sent her back to her memories.

  Standing in the dim kitchen, her mother cooking papadum, the small room filled with the smells of black pepper and oil. In the corner, a cot for her brother to sleep. She would escape out that kitchen door, into the suburb of London that was filled with neighbors from all over the world—a street of poor immigrants trying to make their way in and out of English society. Hard harsh smells and multilingual graffiti. Vinyl records spinning with music that her mother wouldn’t allow her to change, let alone touch.

  And if she did try, it was a wrinkled hand across the back of her face or the slap of a wooden spoon against her backside.

  Amita pulled the safety off the pistol as she listened at the bathroom door. It was quiet. None of the father’s regular labored breathing coming through. The sandwiches were a waste. It was clear they didn’t appreciate her efforts at keeping them well-fed. It hadn’t been that way when they first started, but she’d had to break them down first in order to allow them the opportunity to build themselves back up.

  Besides, it wasn’t about them. Not in the slightest.

  But she did need them alive for this plan to truly be successful. At least, successful in her eyes. They would say what she was doing was fruitless, that her intervention was absolutely in vain. It was. But it was also working. With the updates from Amber, she knew that Weick was doing the best she had since her resurgence. It was only a matter of time before she killed Zabójca and this could all end.

  The horns and chimes on the record faded into a vocal instrumental, the singer moaning and whooping.

  The knob flicked down, and she quickly pushed it open, standing back at the doorframe. The first thing she saw was her reflection in the mirror, her sunken brown eyes strained and
tired, one of the buttons on her blazer straining around her bosom—one too many pastries, too little fieldwork. Then, something rolled against her foot, a Q-tip from underneath the sink.

  She lifted the pistol.

  The boy tossed something in her face, and she was suddenly soaking wet and burning at the same time. Amita screamed, stumbling back, clawing at her face. She crawled backwards, everything black and dark until she thumped against the edge of her desk.

  Her eyes managed to catch a glimpse through the veil of sweltering pain.

  Wesley was in the doorway, an open bottle of bathroom cleaner in his hand and a razor in the other. Her fingers scrambled against the pistol, raising it and taking a shot. Wesley ducked out of the way, back into the bathroom, the mirror behind him shattering as the bullet wedged itself into the drywall.

  Everything was searing. She reached up to the desk, knocking over photo frames and an award she’d received fifteen years ago. Her hands clutched around her stainless-steel water bottle. Wincing through the pain, she spun off the cap and dumped the water over her face, trying to wash out the cleaner from her pores.

  “Dad!” Wesley screamed from the other side of the wall.

  Amita couldn’t decide if she was livid or impressed. It was clear this was Diana Weick’s son—resourceful and brave. Albeit, reckless and overcompensating. Her face still burned, but some of the pain had subsided; she went back to the bathroom, this time more cautious as she rounded the corner, holding the pistol close to her body.

  Wesley was bent over his father’s still body. Rex Tennison was facedown, his back exposed, bleeding and pussing. It smelled as well, an unsightly infection that had taken over his entire body.

  “Dad!” Wesley cried again, shaking his father, holding his fingers up to his neck and trying to flip him over. “We gotta go, Dad!”

  He managed to flip him over, his back squishing against the tile beneath him, more liquid gushing out. With his palms pressed against his father’s chest, Wesley began CPR. It was evident that he didn’t have much for first-aid experience. He was only a child.