CHAPTER
44
NASH IMMEDIATELY SLID INTO THEshadows 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.Anotherreminder 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. Withmygun.”
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.”
