Terminal Vendetta (A Diana Weick Thriller Book 3)

by Cate Clarke

  Cameron picked up a pen, clicking it under his thumb as he paced around the room.

  “What are you going to do with your share?” he asked, circling around the desk that Asher was leaning on, one headphone in his ear. There was the light thumping of EDM coming out of the one hanging on his torso.

  “...of the money,” Cameron explained even though he didn’t need to. He just had to fill in Asher’s silence sometimes to stop himself from going stir crazy. But Asher just watched him walk back and forth, clicking the pen.

  Cameron went on. “I think I’ll buy a place by the ocean, a sea-view place on the Georgian coast. Closer to my roots but not right in it, you know? I know some guys in Atlanta that do these graffiti murals and man, are they dope. I’ll get them to do like the whole back of the house so the fishes got something to look at.”

  Despite the small size of the apartment, the windows were large and there were no coverings, the afternoon sun illuminating everything including the roll of Asher’s eyes.

  “It’ll be nice to be rich at twenty-five,” Cameron continued. “Or in your case… twenty-three? You can’t be older than me, can you?”

  Asher stared at him.

  Frustration welled in Cameron’s throat.

  “Mind you, maybe you’re older than that considering the early onset balding.”

  With two steps forward, Cameron dropped the pen on the desk Asher was leaning on and flicked off his baseball cap. His head was shaved, the hairline far back. At first, Cameron thought maybe Asher was actually going to do something—punch him in the face or kick him in the crotch. He certainly wanted to. There was a seething anger behind his light eyes, but beyond that, absolutely flat. Not even a drop more of anger as he bent down by Cameron’s boots, picked up his hat and pulled it back onto his head.

  Asher gave him a slight smirk.

  The tension between them was cut with a phone call, Cameron’s pocket vibrating. He took a step back, shaking his head. Asher was not his first or second choice for a partner. At least with Park he had been fun to hang out with, always angry and emotional. Meanwhile, you could shoot a fresh, fluffy puppy in front of Asher, and he would barely flinch. Neither of them great conversationalists. They had that in common.

  “Yeah?” Cameron snapped.

  “It’s done,” Zabójca said. His accent was slight after all these years. Apparently he knew over half a dozen languages, but you would never be able to tell.

  “Eagle’s dead?” Cameron asked.

  “No,” Zabójca replied. “They announced it. Skeleton’s taking it. They’ll swear her in on the 18th. Two days. Tell your hire.”

  The line went dead. Cameron had been eager to keep him on, just to talk, but he didn’t even get the chance. He sighed and shoved his phone back in his pocket.

  “Marianna Axtell,” Cameron said to Asher, walking around the room and sitting down at the desk. “That’s who they’re going with.”

  “Are you telling Laird?” Asher asked, also rounding the desk opposite Cameron to sit down.

  “Would you like to?” Cameron raised his eyebrows. Peeking around the dual monitors, he checked Asher for a change in his face but his mouth and eyes were still, lit up by the sun on one side and the blue light from the computer on the other.

  “I’ll do it,” Cameron grumbled.

  He was tired of sitting around. There was a big part of him that just wished they had done things the old-fashioned way, gotten that password out of her by putting a gun to her head. That was always an effective motivator. That or threaten her family. They didn’t need people like Laird. Though Zabójca and Asher were in agreement that he could be flipped to their side, Cameron wasn’t so sure. People like Laird were selfish. He was like Diana Weick. They only cared about protecting themselves and their families, even if that meant sacrificing the greater cause.

  Two days. Cameron could wait two days to send his message. That meant two days with Asher, trying to not go crazy between the silences. If Asher thought the quietness made him mysterious, he was dead wrong. It made him suspicious. It made him doubt his loyalties. And there were few mercies that Cameron had left in him.

  Chapter 21

  Diana Weick

  Seattle, Washington

  On the way to Anchorage, on the plane to Seattle, weaving through the suburban streets—there wasn’t much to say. Diana and Amber couldn’t discuss what they wanted to because Axtell was escorting them, keeping a close eye and ear on every movement and every word, waiting for the slightest indication that they had turned or were working for someone that the US military didn’t agree with.

  There was a moment, though, when Axtell asked Amber to pull over. They were almost to the Weick house and they pulled over near a park. It wasn’t until Diana took a hard look out the window that she realized this was the park she and Rex had used to jog through. Huffing next to one another, Rex giving her advice that she didn’t ask for but usually right about everything.

  “You okay?” Amber asked from the driver’s seat, looking at her in the rearview mirror.

  “Yeah,” Diana said. “Have you talked to the Voss boss recently?”

  She pushed the memories from her, not allowing herself to grieve right now. Her mourning had been pushed off for weeks and there was no use in starting it all now.

  “No, actually…” Amber said, looking out ahead at Axtell, who was pacing on the sidewalk with the phone to her ear.

  “You sure she still wants you following me around?”

  “Oh yeah.” Amber nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Do you know why she’s so interested in me?”

  With a hum, Amber thought, switching the car off so they weren’t idling. He scratched at his facial hair, still so perfectly manicured even after days of being in the northern boonies.

  “I think it’s because she wants you to be what she couldn’t,” Amber said. “Do you know anything about her?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well…” Amber turned his body so he could look at her properly through the seats. “She used to be a field agent for the MI6, a good one. Like really good. She was awarded several times… I actually think she’s received damehood? But unsure on that. Zabójca was her prize, and she was bloody pissed when the Americans came in on it. She had been working Zabójca’s case for years and suddenly, Ratanake was all over him too. They did not get along. I think without chasing around Zabójca, she lost a bit of her drive… realizing that she didn’t have any power or control over her missions as an agent. So she got into office politics and worked her way up real fast. She’s got that control now, but I think the way she left the field had her feeling… How do I describe it? Unfulfilled, I guess.”

  “So she’s getting her fulfillment through me? She wants me to kill Zabójca?”

  “Oh. I’m sure she’d be chuffed to bits if you did. You’re the only American soldier she’s ever spoken highly of. But I’ll tell ya, she can be kinda mad. She’s got… boundary issues.”

  “Boundary issues?”

  Wrapped up in Voss’s story, neither of them noticed Axtell returning to the passenger’s side and opening the door. Amber tucked his top lip in and turned back to the wheel of the SUV.

  “Ready?” Axtell asked.

  “Are you?” Diana replied.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said.

  They made the final trek back home, through the winding suburban roads back to the Weick’s three-bedroom bungalow. Going back meant Diana would have to deal with the emptiness that Wesley had left behind. And she couldn’t. She couldn’t do that now. The emotions were too heavy and too distracting from what she needed to do first.

  “Who was that?” Amber asked innocently.

  Axtell looked at him, her profile sharp with a sloped nose against the clear background of the windshield.

  “VBA?” Diana asked.

  Axtell moved her gaze over her shoulder and said, “Yes.”

  “Congratulations?” The upturn in Diana’s statement fo
rced a small smile across Axtell’s face.

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  When they got back to the house, Diana immediately went to the garage. The confirmation that the drone was here would mean two things. First, that Taras hadn’t been lying. And second, that Christina and Rob hadn’t been doing a very good job watching the house.

  As the garage door began to open, Kennedy came running out of the front door. She crossed the lawn in socked feet and almost tackled Diana to the ground with the force of her hug.

  “Mom!” Kennedy exclaimed.

  “You were watching,” Diana said, laughing a little.

  “Always,” Kennedy murmured into her chest.

  The garage door clicked at the top.

  “Your aunt and uncle here?” Diana asked.

  Kennedy shook her head.

  “Well, good to know that you’re keeping an eye out, sweetie,” Diana said, kissing Kennedy on the top of her head. Her light brown roots were growing back underneath the dark hair dye that she’d been given by that jackass Jeremy Messer. It felt so distant now, those moments without Kennedy when Kushkin had been the one true public enemy. But the maps in the garage of Wenatchee National Park reminded Diana that it really wasn’t that long ago, scouring the country for her daughter.

  She pulled Kennedy in close, rubbing her hand up and down her arms.

  “I missed you,” Diana whispered.

  “Me too,” Kennedy replied. “What’s that?”

  After they’d both taken a look at the maps of the past, they turned their attention to the matte black drone parked in the middle of the concrete floor.

  “I think it’s a gift,” Diana said, slowly edging closer to the drone. As she went to grab the edge of the table to stabilize herself, her fingers hit the remote for it—something she had absolutely no idea how to use.

  Kennedy on one side and Diana on the other, they both circled the drone.

  “This was like the thing that…” Kennedy looked at the drone and then up, her eyes wide and fearful.

  “Same thing that killed all those people,” Amber said from the edge of the garage. Over his shoulder, Diana could see Axtell standing at the end of the driveway—on the phone again, not paying attention or pretending not to. For all Axtell knew, she was just dropping Diana off.

  “Not exactly the same,” Diana murmured.

  “You can’t be serious, Diana.” Amber crossed his arms, staring down at the sharp wings, the rounded top, and the panels ready to pop off and release all the fire it had inside. “This is why we came back here?”

  “It wasn’t the only reason,” Diana snapped, looking across to her daughter. Amber followed her eyes but seemed unconvinced, sighing and tutting his teeth as he made his way around the drone as well.

  “That UCAV is way too powerful in their hands,” Diana said. “Fight fire with fire.”

  “Sure,” Amber said. “Don’t you think the US military has some drones prepared after what happened? This is an illegal, black market Russian drone. You are asking for trouble.”

  “Am I not already in trouble?” Diana gestured to the soldier at the end of their driveway.

  “She’s no threat to us,” Amber snapped. “Veteran Affairs, Diana. She’s on your side.”

  “We have no idea whose side she’s on,” Diana said. “And that’s beside the point…”

  “She looks nice,” Kennedy said, shrugging and looking down the driveway.

  Kennedy was right. Axtell looked nice. Diana would even go so far to say that she was nice. But nice didn’t mean trustworthy. The evilest of people sometimes were the most honest. It certainly had been that way with Taras. That man had been many things, but he wasn’t a liar. Delusional, yes. Out of his mind most of the time, absolutely. But he told the truth through his own warped lens, and it had led to Diana’s acquisition of this military-grade weapon sitting in her garage. And she wasn’t going to let it sit and collect dust when she could use it against the Readers.

  “Okay, fine. Let’s say you keep this bloody thing.” Amber stopped on the opposite side of it, staring across its six-foot wingspan to Diana. It was smaller than the UCAV, more compact, but it had to be just as deadly. Taras wouldn’t have given her something that didn’t have an obnoxious amount of firepower. “How are you going to fly it?”

  Pointing with two fingers, brushing them across the side of her head, Diana motioned to the drone remote on the table behind him. Amber turned to look at it.

  “And…” He turned back. “You know how to use that thing?”

  Kennedy let out a quick loud laugh. They both dropped their gaze on her.

  Clearing her throat and nervously looking between the two of them, she said, “Well… sorry, Mom, but there’s no way you can use something like that. I mean, I’ve seen you with computers.”

  Diana pulled her lips together, knowing that Kennedy was right.

  “Well, don’t worry.” With her eyes jumping between the two of them, Diana smirked. “I know a guy.”

  Chapter 22

  Wesley Tennison-Weick

  London, England

  They were out of the zip ties. They were out of the bathroom. Dad was still alive. It was the best it had been in weeks. The lady had left them in the office with the door locked. She worked alongside them, tapping on her laptop, taking time every day to check on Dad’s vitals, always keeping her pistol nearby.

  Wesley could do so many things that he’d taken for granted, like feel the heat of the sun through the large window wall and check the time on the ticking clock behind the desk. They slept on the armchairs. Dad was hooked up to an IV, fluids pumping into his arm while he drifted in and out of consciousness.

  She was wrapping up his back with gauze, taking the time to place each strip gently.

  “You seem like you know what you’re doing,” Wesley noted, leaning over the other armchair to watch. Really, to keep an eye and make sure she wasn’t trying anything shady.

  “Before I was an agent…” she said, placing another strip over his back to the soundtrack of Dad’s strained, moist breaths. “I was a doctor.”

  Wesley had found her title through snooping in her desk when she’d gone to the washroom that morning and left them untied. She didn’t have much for paperwork and seemed to keep all of the important stuff locked away on her laptop. But he knew one thing—that she was the vice-chief of MI6.

  He could have called for help. They were out of the bathroom, and he had heard voices in the hall—it wouldn’t be that hard to scream out. But, she had promised him that if he did so, she would instantly use that pistol on Dad’s head. And Wesley believed her.

  What was most surprising out of all this, aside from being kidnapped in itself, was that Wesley had been here before. Not that long ago, he had spent days holed up in a conference room downstairs with Laird, watching SEALs charge into Kushkin’s compound through a computer screen. It was the same place that he’d run after Zabójca through the glass halls and listened to Ratanake’s final words.

  They were supposed to be the good guys. The same guys that James Bond worked for, so they had to be good. But that was the “collective they.” It didn’t mean as individuals they were good. Even Bond himself was borderline neutral.

  “Why’d you switch to MI6?” Wesley asked, slinking down in the armchair slightly but still keeping his eyes glued to her fingers. His wrists were raw. Voss had covered them in some type of ointment and though they were healing, she hadn’t given them anything for the pain. Not a single Tylenol from the apparent doctor.

  “To impress my mother,” Voss replied nonchalantly. “A PhD wasn’t enough for her.”

  “I enlisted to impress my mom too,” Wesley said.

  Voss stopped what she was doing to look at him, bandage stretched out between wrinkled fingers.

  “And?” she questioned.

  “And what?”

  “Was she impressed?”

  Wesley brought his eyebrows together and said, “I don’t kn
ow actually.”

  With a quiet hmph, she placed the next bandage down, gently spreading it out across Dad’s burns. She wasn’t the cause of that—Dad’s infection. Wesley knew that. But she certainly hadn’t done anything to help it until now, and he had zero reason to trust her. That didn’t mean he couldn’t get her to trust him, though.

  She was still tying them up at night when she left, and all he needed was one time that she didn’t. The stresses of their escape had caused a breakout of pimples across Wesley’s neck. It would have once been his biggest obstacle, getting over his own personal embarrassments. But he was so much more than that now. He was a soldier—a prisoner of war.

  Underneath the desk, he saw a spider skitter across the carpet.

  Wesley scratched at his neck.

  “Don’t do that,” Amita said. Before Wesley could say anything, she had walked over to his armchair and pulled his face back by his hair. She examined the patch of acne. “No more scratching.”

  Her dark purple boots thumped against the carpet as she went through her bag of medical supplies, pulling out a small white container. She slapped a generous amount of mystery ointment onto his neck.

  “So you do care if we live or die?” Wesley asked, leaning his head to one side so she could rub the ointment in.

  Looking down at him with sunken brown eyes, she said, “Well, I certainly don’t want you to die.”

  “But it could have happened…” Wesley stated. “If you had left us in that bathroom much longer… Dad wouldn’t have made it—”

  He pulled in a breath through his teeth as her nails scratched at one of the inflamed pimples.

  “An unintended but realistic consequence,” Voss replied.