CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER
STEERS SAID NOTHING TO HIM as she got into the rear seat of the car.
“Where to?” asked Nash.
“Just drive,” replied Steers.
He pulled through the gates and onto the road.
“Left,” she said.
He glanced in the mirror at his boss. She had reflective sunglasses on so he could not see what she was looking at.
“How did things go with your mother?” asked Nash. “I presume you’ve talked to her by now, since several weeks have passed since our visit with Connor Lord, but you never said.”
“As expected, except for one thing.”
“What was that?”
“Dai Lu?”
To his credit, Nash managed to keep driving straight down the road. “Excuse me?”
“It is my mother’s real Chinese name, but you knew that, Dillon-san.”
When he looked in the mirror she was holding a gun pointed at the back of his head.
“Drive me to where Hiroko-san lies.”
He turned right at the next road, and a few miles later he pulled to a stop at the lonely patch of land where Hiroko was buried nearby.
They got out of the car.
Steers said, “You will remove both of your guns and place them on the front seat.”
“I can explain this.”
“You will do what I asked you to do, Mr. Hope, or whatever your real name is.”
He noted that her voice trembled, but he saw that the hand holding the gun on him was rock steady.
He took out his pistols and laid them on the seat.
“We will now go into the woods,” she said.
“Why not just shoot me here?” he said.
“We will go into the woods and discuss this,” she replied. “You have earned that right. Otherwise, I would simply shoot you.”
She followed him down a path toward Hiroko’s grave.
When they reached it Steers said, “This is fine. You may turn around and face me.”
Nash turned and looked at her. She took off her sunglasses and he now saw the tears sliding down her cheeks.
“I suppose your mother told you that because she was so worried about your safety?” he said in a mocking tone.
Steers just stared at him, the muzzle of the gun pointed directly at his chest.
“Or maybe she wanted to throw a secret she knew into your face, to cause you pain one last time? Which version would you vote for, Victoria-san? The former or the latter?”
“You still call me Victoria-san even though you have betrayed the trust that we had? That I thought I had with you? From day one you have been planted in my life to spy on me. To take me down, is that not correct, Mr. Hope? I suspected you had an ulterior motive very early on, but then things seemed to change and, as you know, I became far more comfortable with you, more trusting. But now I know that my first reaction was the correct one.”
“If it were that simple, I would have let them kill you back in Hong Kong. I wouldn’t have taken you to the hospital. I would have just let you bleed out in the car.”
She flinched and bit at her lip and her eyes briefly closed before snapping back open. “Then you will tell me right now why you did not let that happen.”
He sat down next to Hiroko’s grave, picked up a twig, and twirled it between his fingers, then looked up at her. “I have every reason in the world to hate you more than anyone else on earth. More than your mother even.”
“I did not even know you before, so how can this be?”
“It’s true, we’d never met. But you stole, brutally and violently, the most cherished thing I had in my life.”
“How could I have done any of this? You are not making—”
She stopped, and her features appeared to be frozen in place. It was not the look of mere surprise, but profound shock.
“You are . . .”
He stood and looked down at her. And her gun, which was still pointed at his chest.
Nash touched, in turn, each of the tattooed links of chain on his head.
“Me. My wife, Judith. And my daughter, Maggie. Now deceased. At your hands.”
“You are. . .Walter. . .Nash?” Steers said breathlessly.
“I am. . .Walter Nash,” he said, and after all this time it felt like he had just released an enormous burden from his soul.
She slowly lowered her gun until its muzzle pointed straight down. Then she let it fall to the ground.
“I thought you were going to shoot me, Ms. Steers.”
“I am trying to understand you, Mr. Nash.”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult after what I just revealed.”
“But back in Hong Kong you let me live, when you had every reason to want me to die. It makes no sense.”
Nash looked down at the stone that lay on Hiroko’s grave.
“You’re right. It doesn’t make sense. . .
because I can’t make sense of it.” He glanced at her.
“After spending all this time with you? Well, I suppose my perception of you became. . .complicated. But I do hate you. For what you did to me. To my wife. And most especially to my daughter. For that I want you to be punished. Severely.”
Steers shook her head, again, as though trying to fling off the imprint of this stunning exchange.
But when she grew still Nash watched as fresh tears slid down her cheeks.
When she spoke, her voice was tremulous.
“I told you long ago that I am not a good person. That I have hurt a great many people for no reason other than money or my own self-protection. You should have let me kill myself,” she added dully.
“It was Hiroko-san who would not let you take your own life. She cared for you. She loved you.” He glanced down at the grave. “Until her dying breath she did. A person must be truly evil to not have one person to mourn their passing.”
“But Hiroko-san cannot mourn my death now, Mr. Nash. She is gone.”
He looked at her. “No, but I can.”
In the gentle breeze that rippled through the woods the pair stared at each other over the width of the woman’s grave.
“I have never been deceived by anyone as I have been deceived by you. And a great many have tried, including my own mother.”
“It is not a role I wanted to play. But I didn’t have a choice. You were the reason I did not have a choice.”
“Me?” she said blankly.
“Yes. Do you really think I wanted to become”—he ran a hand over himself—“this?” he added fiercely.
She said slowly, “That must have taken much time, discipline, and. . .motivation. And I suppose I was the motivation.”
“No, not you. It was this.” He slipped out his wallet, extracted an item, and held up the picture. “This was my motivation.”
Steers stared at the picture of Maggie Nash that he had taken from his wife’s locket and retrieved from a secret hiding place when they had returned to the United States. “A truly beautiful young woman.”
“Not anymore,” replied Nash icily. “Not anymore. Thanks to you.”
His phone buzzed. He took it out and looked at the screen. “It’s Thura. May I answer?”
She nodded.
“Hello, Thura, I’m—”
“F-fuck, D. . .Dillon.”
“Thura, what is it?” exclaimed Nash.
“T-they. . .sh-shot. . .ever-body. B-bad.”
“What? Who, who shot everybody?” Nash glanced at Steers, who was looking panicked.
“M-men. . .all d-dea—”
“All dead! Thura? Thura! What’s happened? Who’s there?”
He heard a gunshot and then another voice came on the line and said, “You give us her, you get to live.”
Nash ended the call, grabbed Steers’s arm, and said, “We’ve got to go. Now!”
They fled back to the car.