Terminal Vendetta (A Diana Weick Thriller Book 3)

by Cate Clarke

  “This is not for me,” Amita said. “It’s for you! It’s all for you! Do you think you would have had the motivation and the will to go after this man” —she whipped her pistol at Zabójca—“if you had known that your husband and son were still living? Do you think you would have saved all of those people in DC if it wasn’t for me?”

  Diana pressed her lips in, still waiting. Somewhere in the distance—footsteps, wood creaking. She wouldn’t have to wait much longer. She’d spent enough time with villains to know that the monologuing eventually tired out. But that was usually when things turned to a more I’m-gonna-shoot-you-now type of mentality.

  On cue, Voss pulled the pistol back to Diana’s head, putting it against her temple and sliding the cool barrel down her face until it was along her jaw, pushing up and under her chin.

  “I see so much of myself in you,” she said quietly.

  Then, Voss stepped in front of her, pushing herself into the gun that Diana was taped to, leaning forward over the desk to peck Diana on the forehead with her lips. Still holding her gun underneath her jaw, Voss used her other hand to stroke her hair.

  Diana’s finger trembled against the gun, moving to the trigger.

  The pressed button-up blouse over Voss’s chest was blocking her view. If Diana shot now, she could maybe get a two for one.

  More footsteps. The door flung open, wood smashing against stone.

  Voss turned.

  Diana shot.

  The bullet ripped through her stomach straight to Zabójca on the opposite side. Voss dropped to the ground, onto her knees, clutching her stomach and coughing out blood.

  The desk across from her was in absolute shambles.

  Voss had lined them up too well.

  The bullet had gone straight from Diana’s gun and into Zabójca’s, exploding through the gun, his hand and the mountain of tape around it. The work surface of the desk had been blown through by the bullet and was in two pieces, one of the edges dripping with Zabójca’s blood. Because of the close proximity, the bullet had continued its way through Zabójca’s arm—clean into the chair and the wall behind him.

  There was a certain satisfaction in the fact that Zabójca now had zero operational fingers.

  Amber was the first one she saw, barreling into the room with his gun out, sweeping the room like the practiced professional that he was. Behind him, Rex and Wesley stumbled inside, both with wear and stress painted across their faces. Still, they had all come for her.

  They had come for her, and they were alive.

  The heat of tears stung on either side of her eyes as she watched Rex cross the room, beginning to rip at the pieces of the tape that were holding her to the desk. Flakes of her skin ripped off with each strip of tape, leaving the skin underneath red and raw.

  Wesley cut the zip tie on her other wrist with a small knife.

  “Where’d you get that from?” Diana asked with a slight smirk, exhaustion in her voice.

  Wesley looked up at her and jutted out his chin toward Amber, who was still checking every corner, looking out the windows for more enemies. And he was right. There were more enemies. Where was Asher? And Cameron Snowman? There were two very dangerous Readers that were unaccounted for.

  But Snowman had to know by now.

  Diana had put her neck on the line to send him that information about Asher and his family. Maybe, it had worked. Maybe, Snowman had stepped out of the Readers and re-evaluated those that he was working with. Or he’d gone solo, and she was going to reap those consequences later.

  “Asher,” Amber said, looking to Diana.

  She shook her head and tucked in her lips, rubbing at her wrist, finally able to stand up from the desk.

  “She hid him away,” Amber stated. With two strides, he crossed the room, crouching in front of Voss who was on all fours. “Where is he, Voss?”

  Voss coughed, blood dripping out from between her lips and immediately soaking into the ancient wooden floors, desperate for moisture of any kind.

  “You betrayed me,” she said. “You told me you would train her for this.”

  “I went off the books for you, Voss,” Amber snarled.

  “Is that all that matters to you?”

  “It should have mattered a bit more to you.”

  She tried to grab at his collar but missed, flattening out against the ground—limp and weak. Maybe, there were some similarities between Diana and Voss, but she couldn’t see what she saw. It was a fantasy, a mother-daughter delusion projected onto Diana because of convenience and accessibility. Voss had latched on to an image of Diana that she’d seen on the news and on talk shows, latching on to things she’d read about her—most of which weren’t true. And it had led to this entire agenda of forcing Diana to enact on her own personal vendetta.

  Zabójca groaned from the desk, clutching his blown off fingers into his chest.

  “Where is he?” Amber asked again, standing up and pointing his gun down at Voss’s head, forcing her to stare up at him.

  “You will never find him,” Voss said, her eyes flashing to Diana. “I protect my kin.”

  “I’ve got records of all of her properties,” Diana said.

  All of the eyes landed on her.

  “Courtesy of Taras Kushkin,” Diana explained.

  Zabójca spat on the ground.

  “Russian degenerate,” he said. “Betrayed his own father. I am so glad I was the one to put that bullet in him.”

  Helicopter blades, just outside the windows of the school, whirred loudly. More footsteps approached from down the hall.

  Without warning, Rex turned, raised the gun from his pocket and shot Zabójca in the head, spattering his blood and brains onto the stone wall behind him.

  There was a moment of shocked silence. Footsteps getting louder. Soldiers and officers calling out orders. Birds chirping outside—angered by all of these intruders on their island. Behind Diana, stale water dripped from the broken windows and onto the sill. Everyone contemplating what Rex had done before he turned the gun on Voss and shot her too.

  Chapter 30

  Nehemias Laird

  Nowhere, Texas

  Diana Weick had done it again. She’d saved at least a hundred people in DC and hopped her way overseas to track down her son, her boo thing, and the leader of the Readers. The news also showed footage of the vice-chief of MI6, apparently now a national disgrace and also dead.

  On the screen, Weick tracked across the airport with her family, giving a slight wave to some of the photographers and news crews that were waiting for her.

  Weick could have the world if she wanted. She had no idea how lucky she was.

  But, she hadn’t stopped the money from being drawn. Laird was sure the United States military was freaking out right about now, billions of dollars drained from their accounts. With Zabójca dead, what did that mean for the money? What the hell were they funding? Or were they just being greedy and running off somewhere to buy their own private island?

  Laird was changing the sheets on his mother’s bed, stretching freshly washed but relentlessly stained ones across the mattress. He knocked lightly on the bathroom door.

  “You okay in there, Ma?” he called through the chipped paint on the wood.

  “Yes, boy,” she replied. “Give me a damn moment to clean myself!”

  “All right,” Laird grumbled. She was in a bad mood because the soap opera that she used to watch at 10:00 a.m. had been cancelled. Apparently, there wasn’t a very big audience for drink-throwing drama in the middle of the morning.

  Downstairs, somebody knocked on the door and rang the doorbell. The ancient doorbell dinged—one of the only things in good shape after all these years due to a lack of respectable visitors.

  Laird took a glance out the bedroom window but he couldn’t see to the front step. Halfway down the driveway, there was a clean black Ferrari, the sun bouncing off its every curve and dip like a shining diamond in the middle of a pile of garbage. Some dust picked up w
ith the wind, sticking to its doors—Laird physically cringed at the sight of that beautiful car being tainted by the farm’s dirt.

  The doorbell rang again.

  Laird closed the door to his mother’s bedroom and slunk down the stairs, setting up his rifle trap along the doorway, just in case. With three flicks, he undid all of the locks and opened the front door. It let out a loud squeak.

  There was a man standing on the front step wearing a two-piece suit with a T-shirt underneath the blazer, a baseball hat and a large black duffel bag in his one hand. He lifted his head, the cap casting a shadow over the top half of his pale face, but Laird recognized him.

  “Is this a special delivery?” Laird asked, his eyes going toward the duffel bag. He stepped back to his set-up lawn chair at the base of the stairs but didn’t sit down, crossing his arms and looking Asher up and down.

  Without saying anything, Asher stepped inside, setting off the trip wire. It seemed intentional or like he just didn’t care. As soon as his ankle hit the wire, he continued walking forward, the rifle shot grazing right behind him and hitting the wood of the doorframe. Splinters of old wood scattered into the air and littered the front step.

  Asher walked around the trap that was now smoking. It hadn’t been used in a long time. Laird had never really expected anyone to boldly walk right through it—the bore must have gotten obstructed over time. It smelled like rotten eggs.

  “Laird!” his mother called from upstairs.

  “Stay up there, Ma!” Laird yelled, pushing at the trap and kicking it until it was outside the house so they wouldn’t all die from either it exploding or releasing cancerous fumes. Coughing and waving at the smoke in front of his face, Laird shoved the rifle trap off the front step—it rolled and crunched against the dirt.

  “Bold move,” Laird hacked out as he re-entered the house and closed the door. Asher had set himself up on the fabric-covered couch in the middle of the room, facing the wall of wires and white brick fireplace.

  Still without a word, Asher put the duffel bag on the coffee table in front of him. Laird rounded around the other side of the table, checking the back of his jeans for his pistol if he needed it.

  A hard zip. Asher undid the bag and pulled at its sides so it would flop open, revealing piles and piles and piles of cash inside.

  “Holy shit,” Laird muttered, peering over.

  Asher took out a few of the bundles, counting and spreading them out across the table until he had a small mountain on the stone top. With one slightly trembling hand, he pushed the mountain toward Laird and said, “Your share.”

  “My share?” Laird raised his eyebrows.

  Asher nodded.

  There was a moment. Something Laird hadn’t seen Asher do before and something his reputation didn’t call for. He leaned back on the couch, took off his hat, wiped at the sweat on his brow and relaxed. One arm spread out across the back of the couch as he let out a heavy sigh, taking another good look around the house.

  “It’s a nice place,” Asher said, his accent strange and Americanized but with a slight foreign twinge. “I could live out here. Away from everyone, not that far from the Mexican border for a quick escape, plenty of technology to work with.”

  “You want to be my roommate?” Laird scoffed, slowly grabbing at his share of the money, placing some in his pocket and the rest on the mantle of the fireplace. From behind his ear, he grabbed a fresh joint that he’d rolled this morning and lit it up with a Zippo lighter from the breast pocket of his open flannel shirt. He took a hit and passed it to Asher.

  Surprising again, Asher took it and inhaled, squishing the filter with his gray lips. Coughing after the first hit, he passed it back. Laird sat down on the other end of the couch, testing the waters and his own confidence. Despite how in need he was of company outside of his mother, Asher was still a wanted terrorist and terrifying in his own right.

  The joint moved between them, filling the living room with the smell and the smoke, covering up the smells from the misfired rifle.

  It took more than a few moments but Asher finally spoke up again.

  “Your mum upstairs…” he started, the joint scratching at the back of his throat. “You stay here to take care of her, right?”

  Laird shrugged and said, “That and there’s nowhere else to go.”

  “And what about now?” Asher asked, gesturing to the bundle of cash peeking out of Laird’s pocket.

  “What? Will I stay?” Laird thought. “She can’t move.”

  Asher gave a soft laugh and a shake of his head.

  “It’s just that easy, I guess,” he said. “My mother couldn’t even bother to live in the same continent.”

  Looking over at his profile, Asher was sitting almost completely still, staring at the wall. But when he lifted his hand to wipe at the sweat on his forehead again, his fingers were shaky.

  “Bummer,” Laird replied. “I don’t mean to pry… I’m hoping this isn’t all just chicanery but, what the hell are you doing here, man?”

  “Hiding,” Asher said. “Seemed like as good a place as any. Though your traps need work.”

  Laird asked, “What are you hiding from?”

  Asher looked at him, his eyes red and bloodshot—not a regular smoker like Laird, this weed was going to stick him to this couch for hours.

  “It’d be easier to list the things I’m not hiding from,” Asher murmured.

  “I mean I saw some of the stuff on the news with that MI6 broad and Zabójca…” Laird trailed off, hoping Asher would pick up the details.

  He did.

  “Mum and Dad,” Asher stated, turning back to the wall, his eyes sadly fluttering down to his lap. Running a hand over his shaved head and leaning forward, he said, “I was born into this, you know? I never had a choice. And that’s what mum used to preach to me… that our choices defined us. So what do her choices say about her? What does the world think about my mother right now? They think that both of my parents are disreputable scum.

  “And they’re not wrong. They’re both… fucking terrible…” He continued with a heartbroken laugh. “I did all of this just to spend time with them, to get to know them, and I shouldn’t have. You know how they say never meet your heroes? How about never meet your parents? Like actually meeting them. It’s disturbing.”

  His voice jumped up and down. Despite his receding hairline and the wear on his face, Asher wasn’t that old and hearing him speak like this almost reminded Laird of Weick’s kid, Wesley. Just a bit older and a bit darker. Wesley was raised by ObiWan Kenobi while Asher was raised by Emperor Palpatine. The weed was forcing him to think of Star Wars analogies that this kid was probably too young for.

  “But you can do anything now,” Laird said, gesturing to the wide-open duffel bag on the table.

  “Sure I can.” Asher sighed, looking up and toward the piles of money. “I just don’t want to.”

  There was another moment of silence, interrupted by Laird’s mom popping on the TV upstairs—the voices of blood-and-thunder actresses weaved through the thin walls of the house. Laird pulled out another joint from behind his other ear, lighting it up for himself, not offering it to Asher this time because he certainly didn’t need it.

  “What about the other guy?” Laird asked. “Snowman?”

  It still hurt to say that name out loud. After all these years of pushing it down, it could still come back up in an instant like a gag reflex. He watched Cameron Snowman’s father get shot down, protecting his fellow SEAL members, at Kushkin’s compound from behind a computer screen.

  “Another one I’m hiding from,” Asher said, leaning back and stretching out his long torso.

  “What does he want?”

  “To kill me,” Asher said. “Also, the money.”

  “Uh…” Laird’s eyes flashed between the duffel bag and Asher. “Is he coming here?”

  Asher’s gaze slid over to him. “He might.”

  “Well, does he know you’re here?”

 
“No, but…” Asher trailed off.

  “But what?”

  “Snowman and I never really got along that well. He was looking for a reason to kill me and now that he has one,” Asher explained, “he’s going to find me.”

  “I can’t protect you from that one,” Laird muttered.

  “I know,” he said. “That’s not why I came anyway. I just… yeah. I don’t know. What’s the fucking point, man?”

  “What do you mean he has a reason to kill you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does.”

  “It doesn’t fucking matter!” Asher stood up. With one hand, he grabbed one of the straps of the duffel bag and tossed it, bundles of cash scattered everywhere, kicking up dust and leaving behind serpentine trails on the unwashed floors. Asher screamed, “Nothing fucking matters! Let him come and put that bullet in my head. God knows, I deserve it. God knows I don’t deserve this.”

  With both of his palms up, he gestured to the piles of strewn money. It had to be in the thousands if not millions of dollars in cash spread out over his living-room floor. It was more money than this house had passed through it in his lifetime.

  “What about the Ferrari outside?” Laird asked, sucking on the joint. Trying not to react to the tantrum, not because he didn’t think Asher’s volatile state was dangerous, but because he didn’t want to make it worse for him and Mom upstairs.

  Asher looked over his shoulder and said, “It is a nice car.”

  “The nicest.” Laird nodded, keeping his eyes moving between Asher and the window. There was a strong suspicion that Asher was right and Snowman would come for him, if not now then soon. The Ferrari wasn’t exactly the most subtle way to get through Texas, and the Roethlisbergers would gossip to anyone and everyone about who and what they saw go down their sleepy road.

  “Listen, kid,” Laird said, taking another hit and holding it in for a good moment before exhaling. He ashed it on the edge of a glass tray on the coffee table “I’ve been there. I know what it feels like… to feel like there’s no fucking point. I’ve had the barrel in my mouth, man. I understand.”

  In his peripherals, Asher turned all the way around to look at him but this time, Laird had his eyes fixed to the wall opposite him. The wires he’d strung up over the years buzzing and filling the pauses.