CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER
NASH IMMEDIATELY SLID INTO THE shadows as the woman looked all around before heading into the building.
He quickly followed. When he got to the lobby she had already been cleared to go up in the elevator.
He asked one of the guards in the lobby about it and was told that they had checked with Thura, and Steers had approved the woman’s admittance.
Nash rode the elevator up, got out in the foyer, and spied Thura, who was coming into view from one of the halls, probably after finishing his rounds.
“Did you see her?” asked Nash.
“The woman who just came up? Yeah. She went to Steers’s office. Boss is working really late.”
Nash stole down the corridor and drew near to Steers’s office.
It made sense. At least the visitor showing up when she had.
Because I’m not supposed to be on duty but asleep in my bed.
He waited in a niche down the hall. Twenty minutes went by and then thirty.
Finally, the door opened. And Steers and the woman stepped out into the corridor.
Nash didn’t hesitate. He walked out from the shadows and stood there.
The supposedly dead Lynn Ryder spotted him and said, “Fuck.”
Steers eyed Nash and then turned to Ryder. “Leave us.”
Without another word, the woman walked off.
Now it was just Nash and Steers staring at each other across a five-foot space that might as well have been the width of a continent.
“Well, that cow was definitely not a cow,” commented Nash.
“What?” said a startled Steers.
“Nothing, just something Hiroko-san once said. So Ryder is alive and kicking?”
“You believe that you deserve an explanation?” she said.
“I’ll let you answer that, Victoria-san. But I will say that trust and friendship should be a two-way street.”
She bowed her head. “You humble me, truly.”
“Does that mean I get an explanation?”
She motioned for him to enter her office.
They sat in chairs inches from each other. She had removed the bandage and the scarf. The wound was healing nicely, Nash observed. But it would always be visible. Another reminder for the woman, he thought.
“Lynn Ryder and I met nearly ten years ago. She was outside of my business then but became part of it soon thereafter.”
“Okay, but you also shot her in the head. Or so I thought. With my gun.”
She now looked at him in triumphant fashion. “One gun looks much like another. And when I intimated that the gun I used was yours, you readily accepted that fact. It is what magicians refer to as sleight of hand and psychological manipulation. I use that often in my business.”
“But the blowback on you, the blood everywhere? That wasn’t magic.”
She touched her temple. “A patch under the hair, triggered by the wireless remote in the fake gun. A harmless charge that detonated a small package, contained in the patch, of what looked to be blood and other things. Like they do in the movies. It was all prearranged, you see.”
“It was very well done. But why?”
“You needed to be persuaded that you had no choice but to stay and do my bidding. Otherwise you would be charged with murder. Or so you believed.”
“And your reputation as a heartless woman would remain intact?” He held up the arm that she had cut. “But this wasn’t an illusion. And neither is the one on Rhett Temple.”
She glanced away and crossed her legs. “I am not a good person, Dillon-san. You more than most should know this.” She shot him a curious look, and Nash interpreted it as Steers perhaps thinking about the fact that she had also kissed him, but he could be wrong about that.
“What you are is perplexing as hell,” he replied.
“I have ordered people to be killed. I distribute drugs that kill many people. There is nothing perplexing about that.”
“And yet you didn’t kill Lynn Ryder.”
“She is a valuable asset who had done nothing to harm me.”
“Neither did the people who take your drugs.”
“As I said, I am not a good person. I am the opposite.”
“But you have some conscience, clearly.” As he said this, Nash realized the significance of his words.
How can this woman have a conscience?
She exclaimed, “I have no conscience. I killed my own brothers and my sister. I am a sociopath. I have looked this term up. It fits me precisely in every way. I . . .”
An open-mouthed Steers stopped and looked astonished that she had made such a stunning admission.
She said hesitantly, “I am sorry. I. . .that is not for. . .your ears. Please do not—”
“But did you really kill your siblings?” Nash interjected before he could catch himself.
She looked at him strangely. “Do not try to make me into something I am not, Dillon-san. It is a fool’s errand. It makes you look weak.”
“Okay, so how did you kill them?”’
“You do not need to know anything about that,” she said sharply. “I never should have spoken of it.”
“But you did speak of it. So just tell me how you killed your oldest brother, and I’ll stop asking.”
“You will stop asking now, if you are truly wise.”
“Are you going to kill me if I don’t?”
In answer she walked around to her desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a pistol. She pointed it at him. “Yes, I will kill you.”
“Answer my question about your brother and then you can shoot me.” He pointed to the center of his forehead. “Right here, kill shot ten times out of ten.”
“You are mad,” she cried out, the pistol wavering in her hand.
“No, I’m just curious. I want to know how you killed your brother. That’s all. One answer and we’re done.”
She pointed the gun at his head. “We are already done.”
“Then give a dead man his last wish. Answer me.”
“I will not.”
“You don’t remember because you didn’t do it.”
“You are a fool,” she snapped.
“I don’t think so.”
“I hate you,” she shouted.
“That may well be true, but you didn’t kill your family.”
“You know nothing about it.”
“I apparently know more than you do.”
“You bastard,” she screamed.
“I’m not doing this to hurt you, Victoria-san.”
Tears trickling down her cheeks, she said in a pleading voice, “Then why are you doing this to me? I do not understand.”
“I’m actually trying to save you.”
“From what?” she exclaimed.
“Maybe from yourself.”
Her hand slid to the gun’s trigger and her voice regained some resolve. “You cannot save me. You cannot save yourself because I am going to kill both of us. We end tonight.”
“Then go ahead, Victoria-san. Go ahead.”
Then she did something unexpected.
She placed the gun’s muzzle under her chin.
“No, you will not die, Dillon-san, but I shall. It is better this way. For everyone.”
The tears were now streaming down her face and the pale skin had a sheen of red from the blood pulsing through it.
“Taking your own life will solve nothing,” he said.
“It will solve the dilemma of me,” she retorted.
“You are a person, not a dilemma.”
“I am a person who does not deserve to live.”
He watched as her features calmed and her finger curled to the trigger. But he couldn’t let it end, not like this.
“If you kill yourself, you will leave behind many unanswered questions, to be sure. But you will be leaving behind people who care for you.”
“Who? Who cares for me!” she screamed, her features twisted. “My father is dead. My own mother, I now realize, does not care for me. She only cares for the business. For power. So who do you speak of?”
“He speaks of me,” said the voice.
Nash turned to see the diminutive Hiroko standing there in her robe, though at this moment she seemed to loom far larger than her physical self. She was not looking at Nash, but rather her focus was directly on Steers.
“Hiroko-san,” Steers said in a strained voice. “I do not wish you to see me like this. Please go.”
Hiroko did not go, but came forward. “I have seen you in many ways ever since you were born, Victoria-san. I have seen a happy, shy, and curious child grow up into someone else. But that child is still inside, hoping one day to come alive again.”
Steers looked at Nash and said in an imploring tone, “Will you tell Hiroko-san that she speaks nonsense? I am what I have always been.” When Nash said nothing, Steers screamed, “Tell her.”
“I can tell her but she won’t believe me,” said Nash. “So what’s the point?”
Hiroko walked over to stand next to Steers. She gently took the gun from her and passed it over to Nash.
“You will come with me, Victoria-san. You will sleep in my bed while I watch over you. Like when you were a little girl.”
“I am no longer a little girl,” Steers said dully, all the fight in her now gone.
“In years, what you say is true. But in other ways, we will see. Now come with me. Please.”
Steers allowed herself to be led out of the room by her former nanny, leaving Nash alone and holding the gun that might have been the weapon of both their deaths.
He slumped back in his chair, as spent as if he had run a marathon.
This simple case of revenge and justice had taken on far greater complexities.
And Nash wasn’t sure how much more of this he or Steers could take before they both would become permanently broken.
Or dead.