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He found himself floating into the darkness again. Next time he woke up, she was gone.
Two weekslater
Stuart Kwon walkedout of the gentlemen’s club and straight into his waiting limo. He’d been out almost every night, drowning the failure of his plans in alcohol and women. Baran and Marissa Cole survived. He didn’t exactly know how. There were rumors that Baran had died, others that he was in a coma, but Stuart didn’t particularly care right now. All he cared about was making sure that none of those attacks led back to him. It was fortuitous that Reed had been taken down by a U.S. Capitol police sniper. Reed had taken a last stand when one of the AGS operatives had recognized him and he drew his gun on Trenton Cole. He knew Reed made recordings of their phone calls as a form of insurance and would be the only person able to incriminate Stuart. The feds could have offered Reed immunity in exchange for the mastermind. Him. The senators also survived. When Reed was taken down, the rest of his men had surrendered.
The NKUF had lost confidence in him. They were expecting the grand finale of a nerve gas attack in DC to pull the U.S. into war with Syria so they could use the distraction to start their own mischief with South Korea.
Plain and simple. Stuart had underestimated his enemies.
The unfamiliar scenery pulled him out of his ruminations. He noticed that the limo was heading in the wrong direction.
Irritated, he told the driver, “Nikolai, I told you I wanted to go home.”
Nikolai didn’t answer. Now that Stuart looked more closely, the man before him was bigger than his driver/bodyguard. Stuart heard the ominous sound of all the locks engaging, and the privacy screen went up. He started to panic and pulled out his phone. His security team shouldn’t be far behind.
“Don’t bother,” a low voice said. “Your phone is useless. And your security team won’t be following us.”
He looked back and saw nothing but empty road.
“What do you want?” Stuart demanded. “Money? I could give you plenty of that.”
There was a harsh laugh. “I don’t need money.”
“Then what?”
The man didn’t reply.
Kwon sneered at himself. Everyone had his price. The man was just holding out for a huge sum of money.
The limousine turned off into a desolate stretch of empty land and stopped. The interior lights came on. The doors unlocked. A car door slammed.
A man got in and sat across from him. The stranger removed his hat.
It took a few seconds for Stuart to recognize the man before him. And for the first time in a long time, he felt the cold licking fingers of fear.
Jack stared malevolentlyat the man before him. He wanted nothing more than to break every single bone in Kwon’s body, and then put him back together, so he could break them all over again. But this couldn’t go messy, and he didn’t have much time to pull this off before Kwon’s security team woke up and sounded the alarm.
“You—” The naked fear on Stuart’s face gave him some satisfaction.
“Realizing now you can’t buy me off, can you?” Jack said. “You had me tortured—”
“That was my nephew—”
“Bullshit. You were the puppet master this whole time, the money man,” Jack said. “You had chemical weapons brought into my country. You’ve gassed innocents—”
“You have no proof.”
“Nothing tangible. I don’t care,” Jack replied. “All that I’ve stated wouldn’t put this burning need for revenge in me. I’dprobably let international court take its course to put you away. You see, Stuart, I can take the physical torture and maybe forget it. But you harm a single hair on the one person that means everything to me, you’re a dead man. I wouldn’t have been content with Owen Reed’s blood. That opportunity had been taken from me anyway. You were the prize. Your death is the only acceptable payment for what you have done to my wife.”
Jack leaned in closer and snarled, “My wife. You have no idea of the rage I felt when I thought you had killed her. Or the agony I went through seeing her hooked up to those machines and knowing that she had lost our child because of one senseless act of revenge.”
“So your answer is also revenge?” Stuart challenged.
“Yes. An eye for an eye and all that. The difference between you and me, I don’t let others do the job. Revenge is personal. And if you don’t have the grit to get your hands dirty, don’t do it at all. Besides, the world is a better place without scum like you. I’m considering this my patriotic duty.” Jack’s hand shot out and jabbed Stuart in the throat causing him to choke, gasp for air, and fall across the seat.
“Burn in hell, motherfucker,” Jack growled, stepping out of the car and pushing the button to lock it. He strode to the front of the car, popped the limo’s hood, took a device out of his coat, and fixed it to the battery.
He heard Stuart screaming and pounding on the limousine door. Unfortunately for Stuart, the paranoia of having bullet-proof glass also made it harder to break. Jack walked away. And with grim finality, he pulled out the trigger and pushed the button.
