She took half a step away from the car, walking back and forth along the gravel shoulder. Her eyes flashed up. The hawk was still circling.
With one strong hand, Amber clamped his grip onto her arm, steering her farther down the shoulder and out of David’s earshot.
“We gotta get him to a hospital,” Amber whispered.
“Or we just kill him.”
Sucking in on his cheek and clicking his tongue against his gums, Amber looked back at David who was now unconscious, bleeding out in the trunk.
“We can just drop him off at the front entrance,” he suggested.
“Or we just kill him,” Diana growled. “He’s dying anyway. You know what this guy is responsible for, Amber?”
“Yes. Yes, I bloody well know, Diana,” he snapped. “You’re really muddying the lines here, love.”
“No.” Diana watched the hawk dive, snatching something from between grains of budding wheat. It V’ed back up, something small and brown in its mouth.
The lines were muddy. It was all gray. David deserved to die for the things he’d done, for the people he’d killed, for the cause he supported. But was Diana the one responsible for bringing that down on him? She didn’t have to report to Ratanake, to MI6, but she was far from a justice-serving vigilante. At this point though, she was closer to a vigilante than she was a SEAL. It wasn’t process. It wasn’t orders. It wasn’t a decree.
It was nature.
She stepped forward, the trunk of the SUV casting her face half in shadow and half in the bright afternoon sun. Smoke billowed on the other side of the mountains, finally turning from black to white, almost mistaken for clouds at a cursory glance. Diana lifted Taras’s silenced pistol and shot David, once in the chest and once in his head.
Chapter 15
Wesley Tennison-Weick
London, England
If they didn’t move for long periods of time, the lights flicked off. In the darkness, he could only feel the cool ceramic of the toilet and the pain of his zip-tied wrists behind the tank. But he could hear so much. The pipes adjusting and settling into another night. The ticking of a clock on the other side of the wall. The labored breathing of his dad behind him. The darkness was not only an indicator of their lack of movement but everybody else’s as well. It meant she was gone. For now.
Relying on his remaining veggie burger-induced strength, Wesley stretched out his foot once again, opening up the bathroom cabinet with his bare toes. That was one benefit they’d had over the last few days, more food and more strength. Though Dad seemed to be getting worse, each day that she brought them something with more sustenance, the more convinced Wesley was that there had to be something useful under the sink. There had to be. It was literally his only hope, and the only thing in between these square-tiled walls that gave him the will to keep trying.
It pulled open and immediately slammed back shut.
Dad gave a light snore and groan of pain. His burns had just continuously gotten worse, maybe spread to other parts of him. Wesley regretted never signing up for the free first-aid sessions at school for student council members. Maybe, he wouldn’t be able to stop him from dying, but maybe he could’ve helped with some of the pain. The groaning. The sound of the wet tissue moving when he grimaced. The soft crying that he didn’t think Wesley could hear. Those were the sounds that stopped him from sleeping, that drove him to stick his toes under the bathroom cabinet again and again until finally he pulled it open with enough force to keep it that way.
Digging around with his foot, he knocked over a bottle and then another, plastic containers bonking against one another as the bathroom light sensed his motion and flickered back on.
Dad gave another cry of protest, burying his head into his shoulder, fever dripping off of him in globes of sweat.
Wesley persisted. This would be his last and only chance.
One of the bottles from underneath the cabinet rolled toward the door, the label for bleach face up toward the humming fluorescent lights. A Q-tip brushed against his big toe and the texture of it reminded him so much of a mouse that he yanked his foot back, banging it on the separator in the middle of the cabinet.
He hissed through his teeth.
“Wes,” Dad grumbled. “What are you doing?”
Wesley shushed him, his toes landing on something that felt like a rubber stick. He squeezed his foot, landing the stick between his toes and carrying it—slowly—toward the toilet. Okay, so maybe skipping out on the first-aid classes had turned out all right because he’d spent that time climbing up the forty-foot rope in the gym instead. The veins in his foot flexed.
From his peripherals, he caught a glimpse at what he’d picked up.
A men’s disposable razor.
His foot cramped up, and it dropped to the ground with a dull ping.
“Wes,” his dad said again, this time louder and more annoyed.
“I’m getting us out of here!” Wesley replied, also annoyed. Angry.
“You can’t.” Dad shook his head, his bare arms squeaking against the wall, his skin rubbed entirely raw on his wrists and right arm.
“Yes,” Wesley snapped. “I can.”
“Wes… I think that—” Dad started. “This is it, champ.”
“Don’t!” Wesley spat, tears spilling out of his eyes like a switch had been turned on, a handle pulled, gushing out of him. It broke in his throat too, a crack that went straight through him.
They’d been left in this bathroom to die. She was using them. Wesley didn’t know for what but he knew that what was happening wasn’t fair. And he knew that kinda thinking was childish. He was eighteen now. A full adult. But still not one part of this was fucking fair.
They’d escaped an explosion, been dragged from it, just
