Ultimate Weapon Read Online Free PDF

was bullshit. All they had to do was look Rachel in the eyes, and it was clear that the kid was as sharp as a brass tack, tracking at all levels. She was just a stubborn, hard-headed, suspicious little pissant who did not appreciate being cognitively evaluated by strangers wearing white lab coats. Tam could relate to that perfectly. The doctors just didn’t get it.
    Rachel was determined to make up for every last bit of what she’d missed in love and affection, and no one could blame her, but her craving for attention made Tam feel she had the kid wrapped around her head sometimes. Rosalia helped, the sweet, stolid Brazilian lady who came in every day to provide Tam with a chunk of quiet time for work, but that precious chunk was always chipped away at each end by some daily emergency or other, if it wasn’t eaten up entirely, and in any case, it just wasn’t enough. She could barely hear herself think. God, she could barely breathe.
    And even so. Even so. That kid was hers. Everyone else had failed her, but Tam would not. No fucking way. She would make it work. Tam pressed her eyes against her knees until the pressure made them ache, and still she saw that dusty trench in the ground they’d thrown her mother and her baby sister into. Irina had been two. Their faces, so pale and stiff and still. Their eyes, so wide. Dirt showering down on top of them. Tossed away like garbage.
    The image was stamped on the inside of her eyelids.
    Ah, God. Her least desirable memories, crashing into her like a runaway train. This was the price she had to pay for dredging up tenderness out of the depths of herself for Rachel.
    She’d dreamed of revenge all her life, not tenderness. She didn’t process tenderness well. It crossed her wires, blew her circuits. It confused and rattled her. Revenge was so much more simple and comprehensible. Revenge she could wrap her highly functioning mind around and feel it start to buzz and hum and work.
    She was a well-tuned revenge machine, programmed to locate and kill Drago Stengl, and put the ghosts of her past to rest. And now look at her, trying to manufacture tenderness for Rachel out of a revenge machine. It was like making cookies with a rocket launcher. Like making lemonade with grenades instead of lemons. Problematic as hell.
    Rachel’s shrill, teakettle shriek suddenly sounded, and Tam sprang up like she was on springs and bolted for the bedroom. The kid always freaked out when she woke in the dark and found herself alone.
    She slid under the covers and curled up around the rigid little body. After she had soothed the child back to sleep, she nuzzled Rachel’s neck, inhaling the fragrance of no-tangles shampoo. Feeling the magic happen. The tension, easing inside her. That soft, hot place, blooming open. So sweet. She couldn’t resist. She was strung out.
    Now that the dream images were easing off, her habitual obstinacy was rearing right up to take its place. She was glad. That was much more comfortable.
    Hell with it. Rachel might not have a normal mom, or a normal life, but she’d have pure screaming hell on wheels to protect her if anyone ever tried to hurt her again. That was worth something. That counted. It had to count.
    So Rachel was damaged. Big fucking deal. So were they all. She was also tough, and strong. Tam would try everything money could buy to help her. Anything that might give her back some small measure of what those murdering pieces of shit had stolen from her.
    Rachel was not so damaged that she should be tossed like garbage in a hole. Buried with indifference and bureaucratic bullshit. Rationalizations about points of diminishing returns. Poor allocation of resources. Black holes.
    Fuck that. Rachel was not so damaged as that. And even if she was, fuck anyone who didn’t want to waste his or her precious time and energy on black holes and damaged goods, anyway. Fuck them all.
    Tam snuggled the child and inhaled the scent of her hair as if it were pure oxygen in a