Terminal Vendetta (A Diana Weick Thriller Book 3)

by Cate Clarke

  Wesley nodded, holding back. He couldn’t blow up now. His grip tightened around the fabric arms of the chair, his knuckles whitening. His mom probably would have already killed this lady, snapped her neck. Especially if she was the reason that Rex was dead. Mom, for a long time, pretended like she didn’t care what Dad did or said, but Wesley knew she cared almost as much for Rex as she did for him and his sister.

  Looking at his dad though, it hurt. It hurt to see him like this.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Wesley asked, pulling himself out of her grip. She yanked him back in, rubbing in the rest of the ointment more roughly now before smearing her hands together and going back to Dad.

  “It’s hard to say,” Voss said. “He was septic. He’s on medication now to regulate it, but it will change from day to day.”

  It may have been the longest strip of words that Wesley had heard her put together since the bathroom. He was trying to think back to his gym health class and the discussion of infections and sepsis. He couldn’t remember much aside from that sepsis was deadly. And that was clear from the fact that they had literally brought Dad back to life only a day ago.

  Before she left for the day, Voss tied them to the armchairs, using more zip ties to keep their wrists flat against the fabric-covered wood. She gave Wesley an awkward look over her shoulder as she put her coat on, checked her phone and locked up the office door. Everything she could have done to keep them hidden away from her colleagues, she was doing. It was clear to Wesley that she was not doing this as an MI6 mission.

  They heard her boots click, a muttered conversation to someone in the hall and then the ding of the elevator. After a few moments, the motion lights clicked off, leaving the office in darkness aside from the low dim coming from the power bar under the desk and the moonlight coming in through the window. The heavy click of the clock on the wall filled in the time as Wesley drifted in and out of sleep, his head lolling back against the back of the chair.

  “It’s gone.”

  The voice woke him up.

  “It’s broken,” Dad muttered in his feverish sleep. “I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead.”

  “Dad,” Wesley hissed.

  “Diana,” Dad said. Then in a low, confusing growl, “Taras.”

  “Dad!”

  Wesley turned his head, the heaviness of sleep and exhaustion still weighing on his body. Dad was struggling against the chair and the ties, every muscle twitching and pulling in the light of the moon. Then, with one gasping breath, like he’d been brought back to life a second time, Dad’s eyes flashed open and his head snapped forward.

  Two drops of sweat dripped off of his forehead, falling onto his torn suit pants.

  “Dad,” Wesley whispered. “Are you okay?”

  “Wesley…” Dad replied, slowly turning his head to him. The light in his blue eyes —it was the first sign, the first heart-squeezing symptom, that Dad was getting better. It was as if he was seeing him, looking at him, for the first time. Wesley almost cried, but he was pretty much dried out from the last couple of days.

  And as soon as the light was there, it darkened. Not into the dying gaze he’d had, but into that type of intensity that Mom had when she was really focused on something. Scatters of silver moonlight caught along his unshaven stubble and clenched jaw as he said, “We’re getting out of here, champ.”

  Chapter 23

  Nehemias Laird

  Nowhere, Texas

  Maybe it was his skills in technology. Maybe it was his wily boyish charm or the perfect curve of his ass, but Laird knew that Diana Weick would come crawling back to him. They were connected, whether she wanted to admit it or not. They had history. And there were few things stronger in this world than the pull of nostalgia.

  But before he could help Diana, he had another contract to fulfill. The Readers had sent him the information, and now it was just a matter of waiting for the administration at the VBA to activate Axtell’s accounts.

  He was upstairs, laying out on the bed, two fans on either side of him blowing hard into his face, squeaking with every third rotation. Mom was rustling around in the kitchen downstairs, making something disgusting to eat. Sure, he was grateful for it, but she was a terrible cook. Yesterday, she’d made lasagna with tomato soup instead of tomato sauce.

  Laird only needed two things for these two jobs—his laptop and the drone remote. The drone remote was on its way from Seattle, expedited shipping, bopping around on the back of a FedEx truck. The hugely unnecessary VBA press conference was this evening so Laird was on a bit of a time constraint. He should’ve woken up earlier.

  The TV in front of him was playing the news, still pretending like Hoagland was dead, speculating on the identity of those in the Readers but coming up with virtually nothing.

  Finally, there was a ping on the laptop, someone registering and upgrading Axtell’s information and security clearance. Laird snickered to himself, leaning forward, his skin slick with sweat because they were in the middle of a Texan heat wave.

  Once all the information came through, he saved it all and pulled up his phone, having to search for it for a moment because it had gotten wrapped in his stained-yellow sheets.

  This money was going to change everything. He could get the water back on so they wouldn’t have to deal with that damn well anymore. The hole in the ceiling could be fixed so his mom didn’t have to sleep in his bed when it rained. Fifty thousand would only go so far in this American economy, but if the Readers accomplished what they set out to do, he’d have some more money in his pocket soon. Laird certainly wasn’t going to be the one to stop them from doing that. Though he would do his very darndest, as Weick had said, to “stop them from murdering more innocent civilians.”

  Win-win-win for Laird. Get the money from the password, save people from whatever the Readers had planned for this press conference based on Weick’s assumptions, and get the money from the veteran pension fund. It was a lot of assumptions but if it all went through, he’d be in the best position that he had been in years.

  Snowman said they wanted to pay back into the people. Though they were likely going to keep most of it for themselves, it seemed like they had some type of plan to compensate veterans for all of the things that the government didn’t.

  “Is that it?” Snowman said from the other end of the phone.

  “Your order is hot and ready,” Laird replied, leaning back on the bed.

  “Test it,” Snowman muttered.

  “Sure,” Laird said. “For more money.”

  “Not you,” Snowman snapped. “Shut the fuck up for a second.”

  He was in a bad mood.

  There was some shuffling on the other side, squeaking of chairs and tapping of keys.

  “It’s directly from the source,” Laird continued. “But if y’all wait too long they’ll change it and your opportunity will be gone like a fart in the wind.”

  After a hard sigh, Snowman barked, “I said shut the fuck up.”

  From downstairs, his mom turned up the sounds of Stonewall Jackson, pumping out from the satellite radio he’d gotten her for her birthday many years ago. There was another pause and more clicking of keys as the Readers got their shit together.

  “Okay, good,” Snowman said.

  “You wiring the money?” Laird asked.

  “Yeah yeah.”

  “Right now?”

  “Tonight.”

  “You mean after you drain the veteran pensions?”

  “You want more info…” Snowman started. “Then you gotta sign up officially, Laird.”

  “Oh shit no,” Laird said. “I just want what’s owed.”

  “And you’ll get it.”

  “After you blow up a bunch of people?”

  There was a short silence, another squeak of a chair. Laird slid himself off the edge of the bed, going to the window. He pulled back the ancient lace curtains. Through the grime—that his mom had once cared about but had completely given up on in the last decade—he sa
w the FedEx truck slowly bumping down the gravel road. Probably thinking he was lost when he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

  “Laird, I’ll tell you every single thing that you want to know if you come join us,” Snowman said, a grin in his voice. “The Readers are working toward the end game here. You could retire… move out of that shitty farmhouse and your mom’s basement.”

  “I like my mom’s basement,” Laird replied.

  Snowman chuckled.

  The FedEx truck pulled into the end of the driveway, stopping as the driver peered through the windshield at the distant house. The crooked metal mailbox was already jam-packed full of bills so he had to place the package at the bottom of the post, not willing to come any closer. Maybe it was the antennae that threw people off, or the broken shutters or the smell of weed and mold.

  “It really is your last chance,” Snowman said.

  “Yeah,” Laird replied. “Yours too.”

  They both hung up, Laird sticking his phone in the waistband of his boxers while he pulled on his sweatpants.

  The remote was exactly how Diana had described it. He opened the package on the kitchen counter, Mom watching him over her shoulder as she stirred at some type of stock on the stove that smelled like dirty gym socks.

  “What you got there, sweets?” she asked. Her short red hair pulled back into a low bun. The rest of her squat and fat and covered in floral patterns because that’s what she always wore. She had to have the biggest collection of multicolored florals in all of Texas. Her breathing was heavy as she went to the pantry to grab a box of salt.

  “Gadget,” Laird said, turning the remote over and scrutinizing every part of it. “Ma, sit down. I can’t have you dying of a heart attack in front of me. You know how that would scar me?”

  “Oh honey,” she said as she released her heavy breathing over the top of the stock pot and began to stir again. “You’re already scarred.”

  “Right,” Laird mumbled, rubbing at the stretched faded skin along his chest and neck. On the back of the drone remote, there was a silver box engraved with the words “Kushkin Organization.” He dropped it. It clanged against the table.

  His mother jumped and said, “See, now you’ll be the one to give me a heart attack.”

  “Fuck.” Laird quickly grabbed the remote and half-ran down the stairs to his computer. Weick had failed to mention that this drone was a Kushkin war weapon. Something felt wrong about boosting up the weapon of their once mortal enemies, but he was going to do what Weick asked him because first of all, he’d owed it to her, and secondly because she’d promised him a shit ton of money. A lot more than he thought she’d had.

  He clicked his tablet to the top of the remote and when the camera came on, it showed the concrete of a driveway stretched out in front of it. There was a woman unloading groceries from an SUV across the street and when he sent the drone forward and up, she screamed and dropped a watermelon onto the pavement. It cracked and little bits of pink and black seeds scattered out.

  Laird laughed.

  It was a long way from Seattle to DC for the drone, but this was high-tech stuff. All he had to do was input the address that Weick had given him and set it on its course. Weick was lucky this thing could fly at eight hundred miles per hour. Kushkin had really set her up—was that who she was working for now? Had she flipped all the way to Russian terrorism? He certainly wasn’t one to judge.

  The monitors showed the empty podium of the press conference. The drone was parked behind it all, pretty far away, on the roof of an apartment building, waiting for that opportune moment that Weick had told him about—the other drone. But they had to wait for it to show up first and for Axtell to give whatever kitsch speech she was about to release on the world.

  In the peripherals of the camera, it was that guy that Laird had seen on the occasional news story—swarthy British guy holding a sniper rifle on his shoulder. He looked at the drone and said, “Idris Amber, MI6. Nice to meet you, Laird.”

  Way too polite.

  Laird wished so bad this thing had a microphone. Instead, he replied with a whir of the motor.

  The monitors above him flashed multiple news networks as Axtell took to the stage. She was a strong-looking Hispanic woman in full formal military uniform. She looked like the type of woman that would shoot him down in a bar and beat him in an arm wrestle.

  With a soft smile, she took her spot on the podium, her hands kept behind her back. An American flag acted as her background, covering the facade of the veteran affairs building.

  The news ribbon rolled with a bunch of purposeless headlines: First woman to take on VBA, Marianna Axtell Details Plans for Veterans, and Axtell’s Choice to Wear Uniform—A Controversial One.

  Laird rolled his eyes.

  “I am very grateful for this opportunity,” Axtell stated in a flat, professional cadence. “My brothers and sisters, our country's veterans, have seen and been treated to so many horrific experiences in order to better serve our country. Due to their sacrifice, we all live a safe and privileged American life. For a long time, veterans have received services and funding to better acclimatize to life outside active service—”

  Two eye rolls in a minute. Laird was maxed out. He lit up a roach that was pinched in his glass ashtray and took a long inhale to get him through the rest of this. This lady was a government peon—no opinions of her own and as ignorantly polite as Idris Amber.

  When she sounded like she was starting to reach the end of the speech, Laird leaned forward, puffing out his exhale from the side of his mouth as he kept his eyes glued to the tablet.

  “Something in the distance,” Amber muttered. “About a kilometer out. Northwest.”

  With a few flicks of his thumbs, Laird started up the drone, flying it in the direction Amber had pointed out. Taking the long way around so he wasn’t shot down by any Secret Service, he kept the drone high and out of sight. The misty wisps of clouds flicked on either side of the drone’s camera.

  And just as the matte gray wings of the UCAV broke through the clouds up ahead, Laird’s attention was pulled from the tablet and to the monitors above him. The sound of gunshots. Axtell was down, on the ground. The American flag that had been waving behind her was trembling, a clean hot hole right in the middle of it.

  There was a scuffle, Axtell maneuvering under another body that was on top of her. The crowd began to move and evacuate as the UCAV swooped in for the final blow.

  “Shit,” Laird grumbled, turning back to the tablet and taking a shot. He let one of the missiles go, locking on to the UCAV, but it went wide. The UCAV was a high-grade military weapon, and it easily snaked out of the missile's trajectory. The missile flew past everything, colliding eventually with a tall oak tree in the distance, erupting every leaf and branch into flames.

  The panels dropped out of the bottom of the UCAV, lowering the same missiles that had almost killed everyone Laird knew just a few weeks ago at Ratanake’s funeral.

  A quick glance up at the monitors—the crowd was scattered, everyone on edge and trigger-happy after recent events.

  Something hit Weick’s drone. A shot from somewhere below.

  The remote beeped—the top right of the screen blinked with the message “Engine Failure - Land Immediately.”

  With one last inhale and exhale, Laird threw the joint into the ashtray. The remote between both of his sweat-covered palms, he turned the drone, heading it straight toward the UCAV. He couldn’t trust the missiles to make it. It was too high of a chance that he would hit civilians.

  On the monitors above, Axtell was being escorted off the stage by the body she’d been wrestling with—Diana Weick.

  The back of the UCAV was right in front of him on the blinking tablet, warning signs all over, and with one last push on the remote, Laird slammed his drone into theirs. There was a burst of orange, metal against metal, and then nothing but black.

  The monitors showed the explosion, metal parts and fire raining down on the rows of c
hairs below, a huge mass of red and orange clouds stretching across the sky. The news cut, some of them showing frantic and confused anchors, others cutting to a “technical difficulties” screen.

  Laird put the remote down. Quickly rolled himself a new joint and leaned back in the office chair, knowing that, at the very least, he’d done his job.

  Chapter 24

  Diana Weick

  Washington DC

  The flames stretched ahead—the heat at their backs. Drone parts flew everywhere, some of them catching onto jackets and purses that had been left behind by the crowd in front of the veteran affairs building.

  “On me,” Diana said to Axtell, guiding her along the side of the building.

  “What the hell is happening, Weick?” Axtell snapped.

  “Readers,” she replied. “They could still be after you just for the sake of it since the UCAV is down.”

  “Just for the sake of it?”

  “They do love sending a message.”

  They pushed through the crowded sidewalk of confused bystanders, Diana doing her best to keep her hand on the back of Axtell’s neck, ready to push her head down at the sign of another sniper shot. They were going to shoot her, just to be sure, and then blow up everyone that was in attendance.

  Thank God for Laird. It was something that Diana hadn’t thought in a long time, but it had never been truer than now. The UCAV was a crumpled pile of metal. So was Taras’s gift, but Diana was probably better off without it. Laird was definitely better off without it.

  They made their way into a multilevel mall, advertisements covering the windows and unaware DC citizens shopping for bubble tea. Amber met them exactly where they’d discussed—a bowling alley in the basement of the mall.

  “Fatalities?” Diana asked as soon as she saw him leaning back on a plastic chair, wing-tipped shoes propped up against the bottom of the electronic scorekeeper.

  “Two,” Amber said. “One from a piece of the drones and another from a sniper shot.”

  “Sniper was Snowman?”

  Amber nodded. She noticed a certain stress across his forehead, in and around his dark stare, more crow’s feet than usual.