Spoilers ahead for the Ozark season 2 finale.
Cade Langmore might have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling Byrdes. In the Ozark season 2 finale, Cade was on his way out of town with a half a million dollars, until he was gunned down. Of course, before that he had made the mistake of killing an FBI agent and doing a pretty bad job of covering it up. But, his biggest mistake was trusting Wendy (Laura Linney). In the end, that's what really killed Cade.
From the day he got out of jail, Cade was after Marty's money, but without Ruth's help there was never any chance he could get it. The minute she chose Marty over her dad, he went off the deep end. He held up the strip club that Marty owns and Ruth managed in a drug store mask that made him easy to identify. After Ruth let him know she would not lie for him, he decided to snitch on her to Agent Roy Petty (Jason Butler Harner).
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Unfortunately, Petty, who planned to move back home with his mom, wasn't interested in Cade's story. After all, why should he believe a criminal with a grudge against Byrde? Cade didn't have any real evidence, he was just telling Petty what he already knew. When Petty badmouths Ruth, Cade hits him in the head. Knowing that he was in too deep, he kills Petty.
Cade is no criminal mastermind so he bungles the cover-up. He leaves his fingerprints all over the car and even goes and gets himself ID'ed by a cop who found him at the crime scene. The only thing he can do is run, but to do that he needs money, which is why he decides to go after Marty's daughter Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz). The minute he did that, he was dead.
While Wendy and Marty decide that getting Cade out of town is their best course of action, she goes behind his back and gets Navarro's lawyer Helen (Janet McTeer) involved. She calls for the hit on Cade when he's leaving town. The diner meeting was all a set up. The money was never meant to be a parting gift, but the price on his head.
Before Cade gets out of town, the Navarro cartel takes him out and makes it look like a drive-by shooting. We don't know who did the killing, but the person who shot the gun isn't the one who really sealed his fate. That was Wendy, who knew that no one would care to look into the circumstances of Cade's murder, especially after he killed a fed. For Wendy it was just a deal, but Helen knew it was so much more.
Helen warns Wendy that making this request will change everything. It's unclear if Wendy truly understands what that means. She has always been a risk-taker, someone who doesn't look before she leaps. And this was one swan dive into the criminal world. All for a little revenge against a man who wasn't really worth anything to anyone.
That decision will forever change Wendy and makes season 3 very interesting. She is no longer on the sidelines making small deals, she's now a part of the real action. It made Wendy a major player, but does she even know what game she's playing?