What he saw startled Nash. It was pretty much the same boxing dummy that he had used at Shock’s facility back in the states. It even had tape markers on the various strike points. He wondered who used this room. He knew it wasn’t Steers’s men. They had their own boxing dummy, which Nash used as well.
Puzzled, Nash left the workout room. He would normally turn left and head to the elevators to go up to his apartment. Now, after having stumbled on the room inside the workout space, his curiosity got the better of him. And since no one was around, he turned to the right and walked down the corridor to the end. There were three doors down here; two of them were unlocked and empty. But one was secured. When he heard voices behind this door, Nash slid behind one of the other open doors, but kept it ajar just a sliver so he could see out.
Two men exited from the secure doorway. Nash recognized them as part of Steers’s protection team.
They turned away from him, and he noted that the door of the room they had just exited was a self-closing one.
If he timed it just right . . .
As the men walked off, Nash was able to slip through the gap before the door closed. He waited until he could no longer hear their footsteps and then, using his phone’s flashlight feature, he looked around the darkened space.
There were shelving and tables with cardboard boxes stored on them. Each box had writing on it, but it was in Mandarin. He looked inside a few, thinking he might find drugs or even body parts. But some contained clothing, others books; still others held some framed pictures that were very old, and he recognized no one in them.
One box did contain things of interest. The items looked like ceremonial garments of some kind, very colorful, made of silk with unusual markings down the sleeves and across the chests. There were also hats and jewelry and handbags that looked old but well-preserved.
He kept searching until he found one box in a far corner. When his phone light flashed over the box’s front and he saw the lettering in the English alphabet, his blood felt like it had frozen in his veins: MN.
With trembling fingers, Nash slowly opened the box and shone his light inside.
His heart skipped when he saw the velour warmup suit his daughter was wearing when she had appeared online to accuse him of sexually abusing her. Then he found her shoes. The tears trickled from Nash’s eyes as he conjured the image of his deceased daughter. Smiling, happy, full-of-life Maggie Nash.
Now her entire remaining physical existence had been banished to a box in the basement of a building in Hong Kong, a place she had never even visited.
Nash wanted to pull everything out of the box and take it with him, but that would have been a death sentence for him. He picked up the velour jacket and pressed it against his face, trying with all his might to detect her scent. And he thought he had; he felt her right next to him.
At least I want it to be so, even if it never will be for real.
And down at the bottom of the small box, his light glinted off something. He reached down and picked it up. It was the ring that he and Judith had given their daughter when she’d graduated from high school. She’d loved it and almost never took it off. She’d been a September baby, so it was a sapphire. He thought back to the bones they had found in that field. Some had been the bones of her hand. Perhaps the hand that had worn this ring.
He held the ring for the longest time, trying not to think about what had happened to his daughter, but, in truth, that was all Nash could think about.
Although it was risky, he took photos of everything, put the items back in the box, and closed it up. He left the room after making sure no one was about, and rode the elevator to his floor. And all the way, Walter Nash thought only about killing Victoria Steers.
CHAPTER
37
FOR MONTHS AFTERWARD NASH ACCOMPANIEDMasuyo to Kowloon Park twice a week. And each time she had him buy her ice cream. She also went to the bathroom during each trip and then left the container on the same bench, as always. It was as though she was defying him to question her actions.
However, Nash held his tongue and just watched. On the third time this happened, he was able to walk slowly enough behind her to see a young, slim man dressed in a dark suit rush up from somewhere and take the container off the bench. On the fourth time, Nash managed to surreptitiously snap a picture of him with his phone.
When he got back to his apartment he looked at the image. The man resembled a million other youths in Hong Kong.
Nash enlarged the photo as much as possible to examine the ice cream container. When he got it to its highest magnification, he thought he could see an edge of a piece of paper sticking up from the napkin that had been wound around the outside of the container.
Okay, she goes into the restroom with the container, writes her message, hides it behind the napkin, and leaves it on the bench for this guy to retrieve.
The only problem was, whom did Masuyo know to send messages to? She’d been in prison in another country for years. It made no sense at all unless it was someone from her past who now resided in Hong Kong.
* * *
A few days later Nash got a message from Steers. She wanted to meet. He had seen very little of her recently.
He took out his gun, checked that a round was in the chamber, and rode up to her penthouse, accompanied by a member of her protection team. The man looked at Nash like he was a piece of bird shit that had fallen on the floor of the elevator.
When the doors opened, the man said, “Get off, now.”
“Getting off now,” Nash shot back. He looked at the man as the doors closed.
