“No you won’t,” Alek said, laughing. “You always just got people to do things for you, Amita. You’re not going to do the dirty work.”
“I did the dirty work for you, Alek,” she snapped.
“Until it got too much for you,” he replied immediately. “You were out.”
“You killed innocent people,” she growled, taking her hands off of Weick’s shoulders and stepping toward him. Drops of sweat squeaked out from underneath the layers and layers of tape on Weick’s arm. Her finger was off the trigger. Everything else under beige-colored tape.
Alek said, “So did you.”
“You killed my mother!” Amita screamed, stepping forward into the gun line, putting herself between the two barrels. She bent down in front of Alek, grabbing on to his pale eyes.
With the back of her hand, she slapped him across the back of his face.
“You’re not angry because she’s dead,” Alek murmured, burying his face partially into his shoulder and then lifting it to catch her stare. “You’re angry because I was the one to do it.”
“Yes,” Amita said. “You’re right. Like I said, you took away my choice. I could have rectified our relationship. She could have joined us… she had a grandson finally but you took away all of it, destroying your own family-”
Alek pulled the trigger. It gave an empty click.
“I’m not finished” —Amita smiled— “you destroyed your own family… Now I’ve lost my train of thought…” She looked down at the unloaded gun in his taped hands.
Alek’s face dropped from anger to defeat. It was according to plan, just a bit earlier than she’d anticipated. His finger pulled off of the trigger, reddening from the tightness of the tape around his hand. The gun was for show, to make him think as if he had a chance, as if he had a choice—the same thing that he’d done to her.
“You never would have made good with your mother,” Alek said, dropping his chin into his chest.
“Ah yes, that’s where I was,” Amita replied. “You’re quite right… I likely would have never been able to see eye to eye with that horrid woman, but you took away my option to do so if I’d wanted. You also took away the option to kill her myself.”
“That’s what it’s really about, Amita,” Alek said. “You wanted to do it.”
“I’ll settle for you.”
“But you won’t even do that yourself?”
“Weick deserves it.” Amita moved back out of the gun line—Weick’s loaded gun no longer pointed at her back. “And I won’t let her miss the opportunities that I did.”
Taking the last pistol out of her tailored suit pants, she pushed the magazine into the bottom. Both of them watched her, Weick still with those military eyes, looking for an opportunity to escape and Alek, with the eyes of the man she’d once loved, the ones she’d be chasing, the ones that had patronized her for years.
With meticulous chosen movements, she cocked the gun, pressed it to Weick’s temple and said, “Now shoot him or die.”
Chapter 29
Diana Weick
London, England
The barrel of the gun was almost a welcomed coolness against the heat that was growing across her body. The tape on her right hand and the gun, partway up her arm, was causing everything to sweat. No air or wind moved between these school walls. It was stifling, tense and rife with a heartbroken family dynamic that Diana couldn’t even take the time to care about.
She wanted to shoot Zabójca. If Voss was right about one thing, it was that Diana deserved to kill him after all he’d done. In fact, everyone in her family had a little bit of vendetta against this man. Wesley on behalf of Ratanake and Rex on behalf of Taras.
Still, she wouldn’t kill him like this. Whatever grand fate Voss had planned, it wouldn’t be fulfilled this way. With each passing second, the helicopters and soldiers got closer, and Voss got more irritated with Diana’s patience.
“Shoot him, Weick,” Amita said again, shoving her head with the barrel, cracking Diana’s neck to one side.
“I’m not doing this for you,” Diana replied, keeping her finger off the trigger.
“This is not for me,” Amita said. “It’s for you! It’s all for you! Do you think you would have had the motivation and the will to go after this man” —she whipped her pistol at Zabójca—“if you had known that your husband and son were still living? Do you think you would have saved all of those people in DC if it wasn’t for me?”
Diana pressed her lips in, still waiting. Somewhere in the distance—footsteps, wood creaking. She wouldn’t have to wait much longer. She’d spent enough time with villains to know that the monologuing eventually tired out. But that was usually when things turned to a more I’m-gonna-shoot-you-now type of mentality.
On cue, Voss pulled the pistol back to Diana’s head, putting it against her temple and sliding the cool barrel down her face until it was along her jaw, pushing up and under her chin.
“I see so much of myself in you,” she said quietly.
Then, Voss stepped in front of her, pushing herself into the gun that Diana was taped to, leaning forward over the desk to peck Diana on the forehead with her lips. Still holding her gun underneath her jaw, Voss used her other hand to stroke her hair.
Diana’s finger trembled against the gun, moving to the trigger.
The pressed button-up blouse over Voss’s chest was blocking her view. If Diana shot now, she could maybe get a two for one.
More footsteps. The door flung open, wood smashing against stone.
Voss turned.
Diana shot.
The bullet ripped through her stomach straight to Zabójca on the opposite side. Voss dropped to the ground, onto her knees, clutching her stomach and coughing out blood.
The desk across from her was in absolute shambles.
Voss had lined them up too well.
The bullet had gone straight from Diana’s gun and into Zabójca’s, exploding through the gun,
