CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER
NASH, WEARING A BALL CAP and sunglasses, had picked up a week’s worth of groceries from a store that Steers had told him about. She also wanted some specialty items from there.
Steers made dinner for them that night with some of the ingredients he’d purchased for her. She told him the dishes were from recipes that Hiroko had taught her.
“She was quite proficient in the kitchen. When I was a little girl I always loved to smell her cooking something.”
Steers served an appetizer called gyoza. “It is like a pot sticker or dumpling. This is yaki gyoza.”
Nash had watched her make the meal, after she had declined his offer to help. But it still seemed surreal, having a moment like this in the middle of everything they were facing.
Nash took a bite of the dish. The pork, cabbage, garlic, ginger, onion, and soy sauce flavors did not overwhelm one another, but rather complemented each other. “It’s delicious,” he said.
She smiled at his compliment. “It is a testament to Hiroko-san’s talents.”
They next had soba and udon noodles in a thick fish broth, and then, as their main dish, karagge, which she told him was deep-fried seasoned chicken.
They had both opted for sparkling water over alcohol.
As the two ate they talked about things that had nothing to do with their current plight. Nash had been to New Orleans before on business trips and once had traveled there with Judith and Maggie for a holiday. They had also attended a concert in the city.
The memory of the trip with his family evidently weighed so heavily on him that Steers said, “Are you all right, Walter?”
He glanced up at her. “I was. . .just thinking about some stuff.”
She nodded. “It is quite unusual that we sit here, diametrically opposed on so many issues, and share a meal and speak of trivial things.”
“Life doesn’t have to make sense. It just. . .is,” he replied.
“Have you had any communication with your wife?”
“No. I doubt that I ever will.”
“Once this is over, surely you will be reunited.”
“Once this is over, you and I will most likely be dead, Victoria,” he replied, more sharply than he probably intended. But then again, maybe not.
She bowed her head at this comment.
After that each then fully retreated into their own thoughts.
The rain fell heavily two nights later. Nash tossed and turned in his bed. Usually he slept well when it was raining. But the way the pellets of water were hitting the slate roof of Steers’s home sounded almost like the jarring impact of pistol shots.
At two in the morning he finally gave up, put on his pants, and padded barefoot out into the main living space. He sat in a chair in the dark, closed his eyes, and tried to make his mind shut off. However, with everything facing them, Nash found that impossible.
Then, during a lull in the storm, he thought he heard something. He sat very still and listened. There it was again. Like someone grunting or perhaps moaning.
He rushed back to his room and grabbed his Glock. Nash then came back out into the hall and eased over to Steers’s bedroom door, which was down the hall from his.
He put his ear to the wood but heard nothing. He tapped on the door and said quietly, “Victoria?” There was no answer. He slowly eased the door open, mindful that she was armed after having taken the gun he’d purchased on their way here. And if he surprised her from perhaps a nightmare?
He opened the door just enough to see that her bed was empty. The bathroom door was open, and he could see that it was dark inside.
He went downstairs, where he heard the noise again. He knew that homes in New Orleans did not have basements because of the high water tables. But then he recalled that the stairs up to the front door had been very high.
Because there’s an aboveground floor below this one.
He looked around for a passage leading down and finally found it in the small library. It was a pop-out door that looked like a wall, and it even had a large painting hanging on it to aid in this deception.
He eased the door open and encountered a set of carpeted spiral stairs. He skittered down them, reached the landing, and turned right, following the sounds that were now reverberating clearly.
The hall was lined with doors that were locked. He kept going and reached the end of the hall, where there was a door that had a glass panel above. A light was on inside. He peered through the glass.
And there was Steers. And in front of her was the same boxing dummy that he had seen back at her building in Hong Kong.
Steers was clad in a white T-shirt and shorts, the damaged skin on her arms and part of her back revealed.
Her feet were bare. She was holding a pair of knives, and he watched in fascination as she attacked the dummy.
Steers wielded the blades with exceptional skill, he noted, and she drove home the knives on every critical area of her opponent.
Then she set the knives down and wiped off the sweat using a towel draped on a bench. She then assumed a martial arts fighting stance and once more went after the dummy. Her powerful kicks and hand strikes were first-rate, as good as if not better than the ones of which Nash was capable.
She kept going full-bore until she was dripping in sweat and then she bent over, gasping for breath.
It was then that Nash opened the door and walked in.
When Steers saw him she straightened and backed away, looking like she had just been discovered in some compromising position.
He eyed the dummy and then her. “I had no idea you had such fighting skills.”
She quickly regained her composure and finished toweling off. Glancing at her exposed arms, she used the towel like a cape to cover them.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “I have no issue with your injuries. We all have them, some are just more evident than others.”
“It is not about you, it is about me,” she replied quietly.
He nodded and eyed the dummy. “I trained on one of these. For well over a year. But it seems that you have been doing this sort of thing for far longer.”
“My mother thought it useful. She herself was a master of wushu.” When Nash looked puzzled she added, “What you might call kung fu, although wushu encompasses more than simply one form of martial art.”
He picked up one of the knives. The handles were of intricate design, and the blades were both serrated and slightly curved, and perfectly balanced. “These look custom.”
“They are.”
Steers took the knife from him, picked up its twin, and placed them back into a box with cushioning inside that held precise cutouts for the weapons. She turned back to him. “How did you happen to access this floor?”
“Just followed the sounds of you killing your opponent. The pop-out door in the wall took a little sleuthing. The chair rail molding didn’t line up precisely. That was the giveaway.”
“So, you could not sleep?”
“I guess there’s a lot on my mind.”
“A cup of tea perhaps? It helps me when I have a lot on my mind.”
He followed her back upstairs to the kitchen. She boiled the water and made tea for them, letting it steep for several minutes.
Once they had their cups in hand, she led him out to the enclosed rear porch that overlooked the small backyard. The storm was still raging, and they watched the lightning strikes mar the sky, and listened to the resulting cracks of thunder as well as the sounds of rain hitting all around.
Though the storm was violent, Nash seemed to calm when starkly confronted by it. As he glanced at Steers he could tell by her features that she seemed more relaxed, too.
“When storms like this happened in Japan when I was a little girl, I would hide under my bed,” Steers finally said.
“Hiroko-san would come and find me and hold me so very tight.” She paused.
“Until my mother took me from her and made me run out into the storm, to show my mettle, I suppose.” She then seemed surprised that she had voiced this vulnerability, even if it had been from her youth.
“I was pretty much scared of everything when I was a kid,” confessed Nash. “Here my father was this big, tough combat soldier who all men both feared and respected. And I was his wimpy son.”
“You are no longer that little boy, Walter. And no one would call you a wimp now,” said Steers, glancing at him. “This I have seen for myself.”
“Well, maybe I’m more like my father than I thought.”
“I was very much like my father,” said Steers. “When I was young. But as I grew older I became much more like my mother.”
“Strong, tough, indomitable?”
“I think the more accurate term is cold-blooded.”
“I doubt that Hiroko-san would call you that.”
Steers shook her head. “Hiroko-san would never acknowledge who I became.”
She had put on a long-sleeved shirt to cover her arms, but now she edged one of the sleeves up and stared down at her ruined flesh. Her expression was so pained that, despite everything, Nash felt compassion for her.
“You’re not your mother, Victoria.”
“Oh, but I very much am, Walter. By now you have surely seen this for yourself.”
“You gave up your criminal empire. Do you think your mother would have done that? Or pretended to shoot someone in the head instead of doing it for real? Would you have blown her or your father out of the sky by putting a bomb on a plane? Or poisoned Hiroko-san?”
In lieu of a response Steers stood and walked over to one of the windows. She raised it so the wind and rain were able to enter their space. She stood there, her head against the glass, while the heavy winds drove the rain into the room.
Nash watched in silence as her clothes and skin grew wetter and yet she didn’t move, as though the woman was rooted to that spot no matter what the storm threw at her.
He wondered if she was imagining being forced to run out in the middle of a storm to prove to her mother that she was strong enough to do what Masuyo wanted done. Always what Masuyo wanted done. Like killing her other children.
Is she good? Is she evil? Should I hate her? Should I. . .?
He ceased these musings when she turned away from the storm.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She glanced at him, her face a mask of confliction. The woman looked close to just losing it, thought Nash. When he thought she might start to scream or cry or. . .something, she simply passed by him and headed up the stairs.
Nash sat there for an hour, watching and listening to the storm’s continued raging. Then he closed the window and headed to bed, but he stopped by her door on the way. He quietly opened it and peered inside.
In the explosive beams of the lightning spears, he could see that she was asleep.
Her arm had slipped off the side of the bed and dangled there.
The shirtsleeve had slid up, and her damaged flesh was revealed.
He stepped inside the room and drew closer to her.
In that ruined skin he saw many things, but chief among them a woman who was burned from flesh to soul, and not simply by a plane crashing.
Nash gently lifted Steers’s arm and laid it next to her. Then he walked back to his room feeling both more defeated and more confused than he ever had.
And that was when the email landed in his mailbox.