Terminal Vendetta (A Diana Weick Thriller Book 3), Cate Clarke [best books to read .TXT] 📗

wrapped around the smudged metal railing. The subway stopped. The doors slid open. Crowds of people got on and off, filtering past Amber and Diana, scrunching themselves against the seats and the knees of strangers.

“Voss. She personally asked for you,” Amber explained. “You know her?”

Diana shook her head.

“Vice-chief,” Amber said. “She, like you, wants to take out the Readers before they get to whatever the next phase is in their plan.”

“She doesn’t trust the FBI to handle this?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“So she wants the credit?”

“She wants you to get the credit, actually.”

“Me?”

“I think she’s got a bit of a thing for you, Weick.”

Diana rolled her eyes.

“Yea, this is off of MI6’s books,” Amber said, ignoring her attitude, pushing closer to her still.

“So you’re not following orders?” Diana raised an eyebrow. From her one mission with him, Amber had been one to do what he was told, follow the book, and only break the rules if he was given permission to.

Amber smirked and said, “I follow what I believe in.”

“Me too.” Diana looked out the subway window as they came out over a bridge, the city passing down in streaks of silver. The Han River behind them, careening through Seoul with skyscrapers, mountains and curved roofs on either side of it.

“I’ll bite,” Amber stated. “What do you believe in then, Weick?”

As they pulled into the next station, Diana shifted herself closer to the door. Above, the speakers rallied off the stop name.

“I used to believe in a lot. Government, my family, justice, myself,” she said, whispering as he followed close behind her.  “But now—maybe—it’s just punishment.”

Chapter 5

Taras Kushkin

Paris, France

The sheets were surprisingly cheap for an apartment as extravagant as this one. Crown moldings framed the high ceilings, and live-edge wooden shelves lined the room, piled with antique books and candles that had never been burned.

He turned over in the bed, the back of the man next to him broad and muscular but a name that he couldn’t remember.

Taras flicked his legs out of the cheap sheets, standing up and stretching as he crossed the studio apartment to open a window. It reeked of sex and booze. He grabbed one of the half-drunk wine bottles from last night, taking it with him to the patio. As he unclicked the slats of the window with one hand, Taras was immediately disappointed. It was one of those Parisian-style patios which meant a thin strip of concrete between two sets of iron bars.

Taras sighed, leaning over the first of the bars and taking two long swigs of the wine, some of it dribbling down into the beard he’d been growing for a few weeks.

After all that had happened, Taras had made it to Paris. He’d thought it would lighten his mood, restart his life as this new Taras without the support of the Kushkin organization but instead, it had spiralled him further down into a depression—his life without Rex Tennison.

And that’s what it truly was. Rex Tennison wasn’t dead. He knew that for certain or else he would be dead himself. They were connected through something beyond this realm of pitiful human existence.

But still, they said he was dead. The Readers. The news with their everlong scrolling of names.

“Café?” a voice grumbled from behind him. “Ah… I see you already ’ave your morning drink.”

Taras lifted the bottle of wine and brought it to his mouth.

“No café for moi,” Taras grumbled, looking out over the streets of Paris below him, and way in the distance the Eiffel Tower scraping against a gray sky.

“It was fun last night,” the man said. “You are a good dancer.”

Taras turned, leaning his back against the iron bar, letting the smell of shit and fresh graffiti waft in from outside.

“Did we dance?” Taras asked. His memories were faint from all of the drugs and alcohol he’d been drowning himself in.

“Oui.” The man laughed. “At my friend’s club. You don’t remember?”

“No,” Taras replied. “Your name?”

“You don’t remember that either…”

“If I remembered,” Taras said with another sip straight from the wine bottle. “I wouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s Matthieu,” the man grumbled, moving to the kitchen to start making coffee. His body painted with the morning sun like it was chiseled from shined stone, every muscle in the right place, shadows catching in his divots.

“You remember my name?” Taras asked, trying to determine what fake name he’d given this one.

“I am not so shallow, Thomas,” Matthieu scoffed, ripping open a bag of coffee with his white teeth.

Tucking in his lips and nodding, Taras pushed himself off the window, sitting down at the simple granite island.

“It’s a beautiful apartment,” Taras said. “I wonder how you afford it on a go-go dancer’s salary.”

“You remember that I’m a dancer, but you don’t remember my name?”

“Your profession is much sexier than your name.” Taras shrugged.

With the kettle placed on the stove, Matthieu laughed a little, filling up a filter with freshly ground coffee, covering up some of the smells from outside.

“I only dance at the club at night,” Matthieu explained. “I do have a… uh… day job, yes?”

“Yes,” Taras said, nodding. “And what’s that?”

Pushing blond hair out of his face, Matthieu raised a well-manicured eyebrow and said, “It’s not very interesting. Not very sexy.”

“I want to know.”

After another moment of suspicion, Matthieu sighed and said, “I’m the director of Aeroport Orly.”

“The airport south of Paris?” Taras asked, picking at a bunch of grapes in a bowl in the middle of the island. He popped two into his mouth. “Really?”

Matthieu nodded.

The kettle began to whistle.

“So you can fly wherever you like? At any time?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“But you have control over who goes in and out, don’t you?”

“In some ways, yes. I do report to a board, ’owever.”

“That explains why we’re so far south,” Taras said. “It’s going to be a trek back to the city center.”

“I can give you a ride.”

“Perhaps you can do me another favor.”

With another sip of the wine, Taras placed the bottle down on the island and circled it to join Matthieu by the