“Fuck,” Laird muttered as he ashed off the joint and began to write a letter.
Yes, he had agreed to do this job, but they weren’t going to stifle his freedoms just because they thought every soldier shared their same viewpoints. And he wasn’t going to roll over and suck Zabójca’s dick like Cameron Snowman had. He had to at least share what was happening with, maybe, the only soldier he still trusted.
Picking up the joint by bending down and wrapping his mouth around the tip, Laird’s hands furiously scratched at the pad of paper in front of him. Still not taking his fingers off the page, he took another inhale and exhale, the smoke hanging in the air of the basement until it caught into the circulation of the furnace behind him, carrying the dank smell throughout the ancient house. It was going to take longer this way, but he knew there were more people like him, more people that could get into anything sent through the internet.
He stuffed the letter into an envelope and bounded up the stairs.
Planting a quick kiss on his mom’s cheek as he whizzed past the kitchen, Laird hopped out through the side door, stepping over another one of his tripwire traps. It was so fucking hot. Every bit of him was sweating even though he was only in loose gray sweatpants. His clammy palms were softening the edges of the envelope as he walked along the long driveway to the road.
When he got to the mailbox, he leaned the envelope against the metal sides of it, scribbling Diana Weick’s Seattle address on the front. And there was a certain weight lifted off of him when he jammed it inside. The guilt wasn’t quite as heavy. But maybe, that was just because he was too high to really recognize what he’d agreed to. His bloodshot eyes made their way to the sun, high in the clear sky above him. The heat as tireless as the high, as the guilt and as the Readers.
Chapter 13
Taras Kushkin
Dawson City, Yukon
There was too much pain. He had been shot several times over the last few months but this one hurt the most. They’d taken the sniper shot at him from a long distance, and the bullet had wedged itself alongside the wound of his previous shot from Diana Weick. His body and his mind could withstand a lot. Over the years, he had survived through countless traumas much worse than the pain of a bullet, but this one… it was in his whole body, travelling up and down his arms, pounding in his chest.
He didn’t have much time.
So he would do his best to take down Zabójca with him, but he’d known his shot had missed almost as soon as it left the barrel. He’d seen Weick behind him in the distance, standing on the other side of the trees, lining up the shot with the same sniper rifle that had shot him down as the “distraction.” It had been a ridiculous notion anyway—to have Taras as a distraction. It had bought them a few more minutes but at the cost of his life. At least they could celebrate that they would survive this.
They hadn’t trusted him. He hadn’t been a priority. Not that he’d expected them to bow to him as they could have, but he’d hoped they at least would have tried to keep him alive with some minimal effort. But he could feel it draining like petrol being emptied from a canister—his life. Rex’s life. Both of them, dying.
The grass was in his mouth, pooling in his gums alongside the blood.
He flipped over onto his back as Weick rushed over to him.
“Is he dead?” Taras asked.
Weick looked down at him, blonde hair falling over her face as she checked his wounds.
“Quiet,” she said, opening up his jacket to stare at his stomach. By her face, he knew the situation was dire. By the palms of her hands, immediately covered with red, he knew it was over. Everything he had worked for.
Behind him, he heard the struggling sounds of footsteps and then scattering down the mountainside. Weick’s eyes flashing up and watching an escaping Zabójca. She maneuvered herself around Taras, putting her back at his side as the safe house exploded.
Everything in his vision, Weick’s grimacing expression and the blue sky behind her, slowly filled with clouds of smoke. She began to wrap things around him, put pressure on his wounds. Heat suddenly pushing from all sides.
Taras reached up, clutching a hand to her wrist.
“Stop,” he said. “Go after Zabójca.”
She looked down at him, brown eyes searching him, fiddling with his wounds. With one labored breath, he closed his eyes for a moment, slowing his heart, trying to show her that there was nothing left for him here on this earth. That it was his time.
“He is dying too,” Taras croaked.
“Zabójca?” Weick asked, looking over her shoulder. Almost hopping up to go after him but fighting with herself over Taras’s life. Even after all he had done to her; she still was struggling with remorse. She didn’t want to leave him for dead this time as she’d done in the desert—her perception of him had changed. Those feelings complemented each other, hers and his.
He no longer wanted revenge on Weick. Perhaps, it had been the burning of the manor, or the interactions with horny strangers that had seen him as someone normal and not as the son of an international terrorist. Perhaps, it had been Matthieu, offering him safe passage to Canada as a favor without any reciprocity other than a kiss on the cheek. Or perhaps, it had been Weick herself. She had let him onto her side, not trusted him but protected him as one of her own for however short an amount of time
