“I missed you,” Diana whispered.
“Me too,” Kennedy replied. “What’s that?”
After they’d both taken a look at the maps of the past, they turned their attention to the matte black drone parked in the middle of the concrete floor.
“I think it’s a gift,” Diana said, slowly edging closer to the drone. As she went to grab the edge of the table to stabilize herself, her fingers hit the remote for it—something she had absolutely no idea how to use.
Kennedy on one side and Diana on the other, they both circled the drone.
“This was like the thing that…” Kennedy looked at the drone and then up, her eyes wide and fearful.
“Same thing that killed all those people,” Amber said from the edge of the garage. Over his shoulder, Diana could see Axtell standing at the end of the driveway—on the phone again, not paying attention or pretending not to. For all Axtell knew, she was just dropping Diana off.
“Not exactly the same,” Diana murmured.
“You can’t be serious, Diana.” Amber crossed his arms, staring down at the sharp wings, the rounded top, and the panels ready to pop off and release all the fire it had inside. “This is why we came back here?”
“It wasn’t the only reason,” Diana snapped, looking across to her daughter. Amber followed her eyes but seemed unconvinced, sighing and tutting his teeth as he made his way around the drone as well.
“That UCAV is way too powerful in their hands,” Diana said. “Fight fire with fire.”
“Sure,” Amber said. “Don’t you think the US military has some drones prepared after what happened? This is an illegal, black market Russian drone. You are asking for trouble.”
“Am I not already in trouble?” Diana gestured to the soldier at the end of their driveway.
“She’s no threat to us,” Amber snapped. “Veteran Affairs, Diana. She’s on your side.”
“We have no idea whose side she’s on,” Diana said. “And that’s beside the point…”
“She looks nice,” Kennedy said, shrugging and looking down the driveway.
Kennedy was right. Axtell looked nice. Diana would even go so far to say that she was nice. But nice didn’t mean trustworthy. The evilest of people sometimes were the most honest. It certainly had been that way with Taras. That man had been many things, but he wasn’t a liar. Delusional, yes. Out of his mind most of the time, absolutely. But he told the truth through his own warped lens, and it had led to Diana’s acquisition of this military-grade weapon sitting in her garage. And she wasn’t going to let it sit and collect dust when she could use it against the Readers.
“Okay, fine. Let’s say you keep this bloody thing.” Amber stopped on the opposite side of it, staring across its six-foot wingspan to Diana. It was smaller than the UCAV, more compact, but it had to be just as deadly. Taras wouldn’t have given her something that didn’t have an obnoxious amount of firepower. “How are you going to fly it?”
Pointing with two fingers, brushing them across the side of her head, Diana motioned to the drone remote on the table behind him. Amber turned to look at it.
“And…” He turned back. “You know how to use that thing?”
Kennedy let out a quick loud laugh. They both dropped their gaze on her.
Clearing her throat and nervously looking between the two of them, she said, “Well… sorry, Mom, but there’s no way you can use something like that. I mean, I’ve seen you with computers.”
Diana pulled her lips together, knowing that Kennedy was right.
“Well, don’t worry.” With her eyes jumping between the two of them, Diana smirked. “I know a guy.”
Chapter 22
Wesley Tennison-Weick
London, England
They were out of the zip ties. They were out of the bathroom. Dad was still alive. It was the best it had been in weeks. The lady had left them in the office with the door locked. She worked alongside them, tapping on her laptop, taking time every day to check on Dad’s vitals, always keeping her pistol nearby.
Wesley could do so many things that he’d taken for granted, like feel the heat of the sun through the large window wall and check the time on the ticking clock behind the desk. They slept on the armchairs. Dad was hooked up to an IV, fluids pumping into his arm while he drifted in and out of consciousness.
She was wrapping up his back with gauze, taking the time to place each strip gently.
“You seem like you know what you’re doing,” Wesley noted, leaning over the other armchair to watch. Really, to keep an eye and make sure she wasn’t trying anything shady.
“Before I was an agent…” she said, placing another strip over his back to the soundtrack of Dad’s strained, moist breaths. “I was a doctor.”
Wesley had found her title through snooping in her desk when she’d gone to the washroom that morning and left them untied. She didn’t have much for paperwork and seemed to keep all of the important stuff locked away on her laptop. But he knew one thing—that she was the vice-chief of MI6.
He could have called for help. They were out of the bathroom, and he had heard voices in the hall—it wouldn’t be that hard to scream out. But, she had promised him that if he did so, she would instantly use that pistol on Dad’s head. And Wesley believed her.
What was most surprising out of all this, aside from being kidnapped in itself, was that Wesley had been here before. Not that long ago, he had spent days holed up in a conference room downstairs with Laird, watching SEALs charge into Kushkin’s compound through a computer screen. It was the same place that he’d run after Zabójca through the glass halls and listened to Ratanake’s final words.
They were supposed to be the good guys. The same guys that James Bond worked for, so they had to be good. But that was the “collective they.” It
