PERSONAL VENDETTA
Copyright © 2021 by Cate Clarke
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Join My Newsletter
Do you want to be notified whenever a new Cate Clarke novel is released? Then simply click below and sign up to my no-spam mailing list, and I'll make sure you are always the first to know!
JOIN MY NEWSLETTER
Chapter 1
Diana Weick
Seoraksan, South Korea
The paint was smooth and untouched. Three colors were spread out in the square palette: green, black and beige. With two fingers, she swiped across the green, covering her face in it, joining it together with black streaks and beige smears—One swipe at a time, methodical and practiced, because Diana Weick had done this several times before.
In the small park bathroom, the stall doors were made up of slats of wood. There was one sink and one mirror, Diana gripping her hands to either side of it, staring at the paint smeared across her face. Yes, she’d done this several times before, but it had been a long time since she had seen herself like this—full green face, full SEAL.
Against the wall was the gun bag, a long sniper rifle affixed to its straps, the scope packed into the zippered sides. Sniping had always been Nelson Rank’s specialty. But this wasn’t about getting that right shot, not right now anyway. It was about finding out what the hell the Readers were doing in South Korea and who they were after. Besides, Rank was a traitor and dead.
From the bathroom, Diana slipped out into the woods of the mountain, trekking up and off the trail. The air was thick with humidity, low rolls of mist crawling across her ankles as she climbed. Spring was long gone, the bloom of summer already settling in the Korean countryside. Green everywhere, Diana blending in with the surroundings, keeping her eye on the trail she was hiking adjacent to, a concrete walkway with metal railings.
She wasn’t convinced that Zabójca and David were here for a romantic tour of Seoraksan. They were after something important, meeting somewhere way out of the way and secret just to… do what? Exchange information? Purchase a highly encrypted password?
This had been the difficulty that Diana had run into after a few weeks of working independently. No government backing. No Dominic Ratanake or superior officers or detectives giving her any information or reconnaissance beforehand. It was all up to her and only her.
And that’s what she wanted.
Her breathing was heavy by the time she reached a rocky outcrop, climbing up and over it while adjusting the gun against her back.
At least, Kennedy was home safe. And Diana knew—they would call her a bad parent, a terrible mother, for leaving her daughter behind as she went off on her personal revenge mission. Kennedy had just lost her brother and her father. Diana, her son and ex-husband. But the exact same thing that would make her a terrible mother would make her an effective soldier. If she waited the time to grieve, the Readers would be so far ahead on their plans that Diana would never be able to catch up. And more people would die.
Besides, she couldn’t sit in that empty house in Seattle, waiting for something to happen, waiting for the shadow of a ghost to walk through the door and remind her of everything that the Readers had taken from her.
Revenge was petty. But motivating. Intoxicating. It was personal. Not only her only son and Rex, but Ratanake, the officer who’d trained her, who’d loved her, who had framed her whole career—killed by the Readers. Ratanake had passed his enemies on to her, and Diana was settling up.
Perhaps Zabójca was the reason Ratanake had drunk so much, covering up the intoxication of revenge with alcohol.
Up ahead, Zabójca and David were sitting on stone steps with the temples of Singheungsa below them. Curved slate roofs, dotted with foliage, green and white illustrations of lotuses and dragons wrapped around red wooden pillars, holding up ancient open rooms that had been burned and rebuilt too many times throughout history.
Diana crouched herself against the mountainside, taking the sniper rifle out and screwing the pieces together. Through the scope, she watched them.
The back of Zabójca’s bald head was shining with sweat in the humid air. David’s red and gray beard had grown out and jutted out from the bottom of his face like an angled dock when he turned his head. With one hand, she adjusted the scope, taking a closer look. They were whispering to one another, exchanging quick words.
Zabójca took his pointer finger and his thumb and put it under David’s chin, mimicking a gun going off beneath him. They both laughed, but Diana saw the concerned look in David’s eyes. There was an uncertainty in this partnership. Zabójca was a well-off, well-trained international terrorist. The Readers were an organization working to take down the United States Military in whatever way possible—both equally chaotic and dangerous and with a common enemy, but very different tactics. That and Zabójca was, simply, much more terrifying.
A
