“Okay, but why?” Hoagland asked. “You know why that Polack and those young guys are after me, don’t you? But you’re choosing not to tell the United States military….purposefully withholding information from the ones who gave you your entire life and your celebrity cameos. Because, why? Who are you really working for, Diana Weick?”
She hated the way he said her name. It rolled between his fat lips like smoke cycling off his tongue, hissing and soft. Going back to the inside of her cheek, Diana chewed, flashing her eyes between Amber, Hoagland and Axtell.
“I’ll answer your questions...” Hoagland leaned forward, folding his hands between his knees. For a moment, the way he sat reminded her of Rex. The inside of her cheek began to bleed, the taste of iron in her mouth. He said, “If you answer mine.”
Diana gave Amber a second intense look, and he took his hand off her chest, stepping out of her way, raising his hands by his ears and not hiding how he felt about any conversation with Hoagland.
The major general patted the cushion on the couch next to him, picking at his teeth with his tongue as he looked her up and down. Diana held back something, strong language or vomit—she wasn’t sure. Her boots squeaked against the wooden floors as she took a step closer to him but didn’t sit down.
“Fine.” Hoagland looked to Axtell and Romano for confirmation that Diana was the crazy one and not him. “The least you can tell me after all this hubbub… is the why.”
“Why do you think somebody would want to kill you, Hoagland?” Diana asked, taking a moment to peer out the thin curtains to the wilderness outside. The closest cabin was about fifty feet away from theirs, but vacancy couldn’t be that low at this time of year, especially for being out in the middle of nowhere.
Hoagland chewed on his mustache, a very different color than the hair on his head.
“That comes with the territory,” Hoagland replied. “Plenty of people want to kill me.”
“Surprise,” Diana stated. He narrowed his eyes. “It’s not about you, specifically. It’s about the position that you were supposed to get.”
“Position?”
“Don’t play dumb.”
Diana rounded the coffee table, putting herself in the middle of the cabin, staring across it to hold his gaze. Axtell and Romano were on either side of her, now suddenly appearing as if it was them against Hoagland and not the other way around.
Amber was pouring himself some tea.
“You mean the VBA deputy position?” Hoagland asked.
Diana nodded.
“Well, lucky for them…” Hoagland said. “I can’t take it now considering that, in the eyes of everyone else except for who’s in this room, I’m dead.”
“Right. Which means…” Diana trailed off, looking to Axtell on her left. With her palm, Axtell smoothed down the top of her hair, a twinge of nervousness in her eyes—some of the first emotions Diana had seen on her.
Uninterested in any conversation that didn’t have to do with him, Hoagland said, “Okay, my turn.”
“We’ve gotta get moving,” Diana said.
“No way, sweetheart,” Hoagland snapped. “My questions first.”
From behind her, Diana heard Amber sigh and sip loudly on his tea.
“Did you really take down Kushkin by using an office chair?” His slight laugh rumbled.
“Really?” Diana rolled her eyes. “Yes.”
“What’s Jay Leno like?”
“Kinda a dick.”
“I knew it.” Hoagland grinned. “Ratanake lived with the bottle, didn’t he?”
Diana stiffened, squeezing her hands at her sides, resisting the urge to flip the coffee table onto his lap. There was a moment of silence, Diana fuming and ruminating over the question from this absolute dickhead. He didn’t deserve any answers or any information about a soldier like Dominic Ratanake. Especially about the struggles that he dealt with every night, every time they were separated.
“Okay, fine.” Hoagland sighed. “Touchy subject.”
He stood up from the couch, leaning back with both hands on his hips, jutting his gut forward. Throwing on a t-shirt and then a jacket, letting them all watch, Hoagland moved for the door.
“Oh yeah,” Hoagland said as he adjusted a backpack against his shoulder. “Who you working for?”
“Me.” Diana turned to him.
“And who does he work for?” Hoagland used a stainless-steel container filled with coffee that Axtell had made for him, leaving none for anyone else, to gesture to Amber. Pushing back from the kitchen table, Amber turned slowly, looking to Diana and the major general.
“Independent,” Diana said.
Hoagland caught her eyes, challenging her stare, challenging the lie. Diana didn’t need to bring Amita Voss into this, not now. She didn’t trust Hoagland for one, and for two—she really didn’t know what role Voss was playing in all of this yet, other than that she had asked Amber to help Diana in this battle against the Readers. I mean, that had been all it seemed.
Until she read those files from Taras.
But Amber couldn’t know about her past. If he knew about her past, he probably would have no incentive to stay on Diana’s side. Maybe he would just head back to London, back to his cubicle.
“Back in my day,” Hoagland cleared his throat and continued talking as they followed him out of the cabin, bags in hand, “we didn’t have terrorists like these ‘Readers.’ Even our enemies were real men. They didn’t cry and whine about the way the military treated them. They did what they were told because they were soldiers, and they didn’t need anything more than that. But now we’ve got these wishy-washy millennials telling us what to do and the way we should run our government from their fucking cellphones. You know who’s next in line for that VBA position? Now that I’m ‘dead’? All they’ve got for options are two ladies that are going to quit in two years to have babies. They’re doing it to look progressive, catering to fucking Twitter hashtags. They’ll see soon, though… it’s just going to make it easier for those guys and the Polack to get what
