There was a certain satisfaction in the fact that Zabójca now had zero operational fingers.
Amber was the first one she saw, barreling into the room with his gun out, sweeping the room like the practiced professional that he was. Behind him, Rex and Wesley stumbled inside, both with wear and stress painted across their faces. Still, they had all come for her.
They had come for her, and they were alive.
The heat of tears stung on either side of her eyes as she watched Rex cross the room, beginning to rip at the pieces of the tape that were holding her to the desk. Flakes of her skin ripped off with each strip of tape, leaving the skin underneath red and raw.
Wesley cut the zip tie on her other wrist with a small knife.
“Where’d you get that from?” Diana asked with a slight smirk, exhaustion in her voice.
Wesley looked up at her and jutted out his chin toward Amber, who was still checking every corner, looking out the windows for more enemies. And he was right. There were more enemies. Where was Asher? And Cameron Snowman? There were two very dangerous Readers that were unaccounted for.
But Snowman had to know by now.
Diana had put her neck on the line to send him that information about Asher and his family. Maybe, it had worked. Maybe, Snowman had stepped out of the Readers and re-evaluated those that he was working with. Or he’d gone solo, and she was going to reap those consequences later.
“Asher,” Amber said, looking to Diana.
She shook her head and tucked in her lips, rubbing at her wrist, finally able to stand up from the desk.
“She hid him away,” Amber stated. With two strides, he crossed the room, crouching in front of Voss who was on all fours. “Where is he, Voss?”
Voss coughed, blood dripping out from between her lips and immediately soaking into the ancient wooden floors, desperate for moisture of any kind.
“You betrayed me,” she said. “You told me you would train her for this.”
“I went off the books for you, Voss,” Amber snarled.
“Is that all that matters to you?”
“It should have mattered a bit more to you.”
She tried to grab at his collar but missed, flattening out against the ground—limp and weak. Maybe, there were some similarities between Diana and Voss, but she couldn’t see what she saw. It was a fantasy, a mother-daughter delusion projected onto Diana because of convenience and accessibility. Voss had latched on to an image of Diana that she’d seen on the news and on talk shows, latching on to things she’d read about her—most of which weren’t true. And it had led to this entire agenda of forcing Diana to enact on her own personal vendetta.
Zabójca groaned from the desk, clutching his blown off fingers into his chest.
“Where is he?” Amber asked again, standing up and pointing his gun down at Voss’s head, forcing her to stare up at him.
“You will never find him,” Voss said, her eyes flashing to Diana. “I protect my kin.”
“I’ve got records of all of her properties,” Diana said.
All of the eyes landed on her.
“Courtesy of Taras Kushkin,” Diana explained.
Zabójca spat on the ground.
“Russian degenerate,” he said. “Betrayed his own father. I am so glad I was the one to put that bullet in him.”
Helicopter blades, just outside the windows of the school, whirred loudly. More footsteps approached from down the hall.
Without warning, Rex turned, raised the gun from his pocket and shot Zabójca in the head, spattering his blood and brains onto the stone wall behind him.
There was a moment of shocked silence. Footsteps getting louder. Soldiers and officers calling out orders. Birds chirping outside—angered by all of these intruders on their island. Behind Diana, stale water dripped from the broken windows and onto the sill. Everyone contemplating what Rex had done before he turned the gun on Voss and shot her too.
Chapter 30
Nehemias Laird
Nowhere, Texas
Diana Weick had done it again. She’d saved at least a hundred people in DC and hopped her way overseas to track down her son, her boo thing, and the leader of the Readers. The news also showed footage of the vice-chief of MI6, apparently now a national disgrace and also dead.
On the screen, Weick tracked across the airport with her family, giving a slight wave to some of the photographers and news crews that were waiting for her.
Weick could have the world if she wanted. She had no idea how lucky she was.
But, she hadn’t stopped the money from being drawn. Laird was sure the United States military was freaking out right about now, billions of dollars drained from their accounts. With Zabójca dead, what did that mean for the money? What the hell were they funding? Or were they just being greedy and running off somewhere to buy their own private island?
Laird was changing the sheets on his mother’s bed, stretching freshly washed but relentlessly stained ones across the mattress. He knocked lightly on the bathroom door.
“You okay in there, Ma?” he called through the chipped paint on the wood.
“Yes, boy,” she replied. “Give me a damn moment to clean myself!”
“All right,” Laird grumbled. She was in a bad mood because the soap opera that she used to watch at 10:00 a.m. had been cancelled. Apparently, there wasn’t a very big audience for drink-throwing drama in the middle of the morning.
Downstairs, somebody knocked on the door and rang the doorbell. The ancient doorbell dinged—one of the only things in good shape after all these years due to a lack of respectable visitors.
Laird took a glance out the bedroom window but he couldn’t see to the front step. Halfway down
