Chapter 82
CHAPTER
Nash was sitting at a table with Rhett, while Ryder sat in a forward seat staring out at the gloomy morning as the aircraft cut smoothly through the low cloud ceiling.
They were all served breakfast and coffee at an accelerated pace because the flight was only about ninety minutes.
Nash recalled that, with necessary stops in between, and the ubiquitous traffic snarls, it had taken him and Shock nearly fifteen hours to cover the roughly seven-hundred-mile drive to the training facility.
As soon as they dropped below the clouds once more on their descent, the landing gear came down.
A few minutes later they were taxiing to a stop at a private jet park where a sleek, black Cadillac Escalade was waiting.
Rhett took the wheel, while Nash rode shotgun and Ryder occupied a rear seat.
“Ms. Ryder has arranged for some manpower to meet us there,” said Rhett.
“You expect trouble?” asked Nash.
“We expect anything,” interjected Ryder tersely.
It took another forty-five minutes to get to their destination. The road in was very familiar to Nash, but he looked around with what he hoped was a sense of seeing it all for the first time.
“Isolated, no prying eyes,” he noted.
Rhett nodded. “I think that’s our people right up there.”
He indicated the SUV parked by the side of the road about a hundred yards from the automatic gate into Shock’s training center.
Rhett stopped next to them and they got out.
Three men emerged from the SUV; they looked hardened and capable.
They were also all Asian, Nash noted. Ryder was clearly in command, giving them instructions in what Nash recognized as Japanese.
They climbed back into their vehicles and drove to the gate, where one of the men in the other SUV hit the call box button.
There was no answer, as Nash knew would be the case.
“Nobody home,” observed Rhett. He eyed Ryder, who was already on her phone.
Another man from the other SUV got out and nimbly scaled the wall. Three minutes later the gate slid open and the vehicles pulled in.
They all got out and looked around at a space that Nash had been intimately familiar with for well over a year.
He took great care not to show recognition of any feature, and just pointed out elements that were visible to the naked eye.
But he also knew that Shock had security cameras hidden everywhere.
“Okay, let’s get inside and start the search,” said Rhett.
“This facility has to be alarmed,” noted Nash. He had figured it would be a beneficial point to raise to divert any suspicion away from him, although he hoped no one had any.
“Good idea,” said Rhett. He looked at Ryder. “Can we get inside the building without calling all the cops down on us?”
Ryder pointed to one of her men and again spoke in Japanese.
The man went to the main door of the building, which Nash knew housed the living quarters.
From a gear pack the man drew out a small electronic device and ran it along the perimeter of the doorjamb until it started to beep.
He next took a spray can from the gear pack, inserted a very thin flex straw in the nozzle, and shot this spot with the contents of the can.
The substance came out as stark white and seemed to harden immediately.
He waited for ten seconds, then took a long, thin strip of metal from his pack and inserted it between the door and the doorjamb at that same spot, carefully sliding it back and forth.
He examined this area with a lighted flex scope with a small viewing screen attached.
Apparently satisfied, he pulled out a pick gun from his gear pack, inserted it into the lock, and popped it.
He opened the door, and no alarm sounded.
As they passed through, Nash looked at the collapsible dome-shaped sensor affixed to the topside of the doorjamb.
It was still in the unreleased, pushed-down position despite the door having been opened.
It looked like it had been glued into place.
And the thin metal piece, Nash figured, had been inserted to clear away any of the glue-like substance so that it wouldn’t impede the door opening.
“Search everywhere,” ordered Ryder.
As they began to do so, Nash suddenly thought of something. The cabinet in the room that held the tattoo binders. If Shock had left them. If they saw the—
Shit.
He walked there as quickly as he could, opened the cabinet, and saw that the binders were still there. He started going through them, while two of the other men came in and started to search other parts of the office.
When Rhett came in about a half hour later Nash was closing up the cabinet.
“Anything?” asked Rhett.
“Just business documents, and promotional newsletters I guess they send out.”
At that moment Ryder hurried in and held out an iPad. “We found these prints in one of the bunk rooms. They match Nash’s.”
“So he was definitely here then,” said Rhett.
“But he’s not here now,” pointed out Ryder. “We have to track down this Isaiah York. He has to have another place somewhere.”
“And no mention of that in those binders you looked at in that cabinet?” asked Rhett. “Another property? Another address? On some of the promo materials you mentioned?”
“No, and I went through every page.”
“Shit, okay, let’s regroup.”
Nash side glanced at Ryder when the woman ventured over to the cabinet door and opened it. His hand eased to his gun. Okay, this might be it.
And that would have been it if the man who had stayed outside on watch had not phoned Ryder, even as loud noises from outside reached them in here.
She answered, listened for a few moments, and said to the others, “Sirens and alarm lights are going off outside. There must have been a trip sensor somewhere. We need to leave. Now.”
Nash thought that a trip sensor would have no doubt sounded a long time ago, but he was not arguing with Ryder’s command to immediately vacate the premises.
They all rushed to their vehicles and drove off. As the sirens grew louder, they reached a side road that carried them on a macadam path through a forest of mostly evergreen trees.
“GPS says this winds back to the road we originally came in on,” said Rhett, who was in the lead of the two-vehicle caravan. “We should be okay.”
And when the sounds of the sirens faded, they all let out a collective breath of relief.
However, Nash’s was longer and more sincere than the others.
Ninety minutes later the three of them plus the team of Asians were cruising at forty-one thousand feet.
It didn’t make Nash feel any better when Ryder was on the phone the whole time. And whenever she glanced at him, it was not with a friendly expression. But then again, he had concluded she never looked friendly to anyone.
He kept his fingers only a few inches from his gun the entire trip, while he noted that Rhett had his eyes closed, but did not appear to be sleeping.
Nash wondered what would happen if he had to end up shooting everyone except the pilots and flight attendant.
Maybe he could then hijack the plane to Cuba.
I might just take being in Witness Protection and stocking shelves at a dollar store in Idaho over this.