“I guarded VIPs, Ms. Steers. People who were intimately involved in the world you are describing. I would be dull indeed not to have absorbed as much of that as I could.”
She tapped the remote against her long leg and continued to watch him intently. Nash could feel his pulse spike and sweat accumulate in his armpits simply from the woman’s glare.
“You leave in two days. If you bring my mother back safely, then you will have fulfilled your part of the bargain.”
“And if we fail to save your mother?” said Temple.
“Then my people will bring you back from Myanmar and you both will be turned over to the Chinese government for the appalling murder of Lynn Ryder.” She eyed each man in turn. “The Chinese do not dawdle when it comes to such crimes. It will not take years like it does in your country. It will take weeks. So I strongly recommend that you do. . .not. . .fail.”
CHAPTER
9
ONLY ONE NIGHT LATER NASHwas in his bed asleep when strong hands seized him and something was placed over his mouth and nose. A few seconds later he fell unconscious.
When he awoke he was lying on the floor in a darkened room, spreadeagled and bound to steel rings set into the floor, so he could not move. As his eyes adjusted to the darkened conditions and his senses began working normally, Nash jerked when Victoria Steers said, “Hello, Mr. Hope. Thank you for joining me.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” he replied tightly.
She ran her eyes over his bare chest. “You are to be congratulated on your obvious physical discipline. And your skin art runs the spectrum from ordinary to. . .interesting.”
Nash had had the scales of justice tattooed on his chest, a roaring lion on his back, a dragon running from his right delt down his arm to the back of his hand, medieval shields across both thighs, and one large die on each of his calves. She let her fingers dance over his shaved head. “This is the truly interesting one. The kinks in the chain? What is the meaning?”
Running from earlobe to earlobe and over the crown of his head was a long chain, kinked in three separate places equidistant from one another into a fairly indistinctive shape, but one that he knew to be a heart.
He cleared his throat. “Honor, devotion, and sacrifice.”
This was a lie. But he could not tell her the truth without giving up a clue as to his real identity. They actually symbolized him, his wife, and his now-dead daughter.
Steers bent forward and let her long hair drift into his face. It smelled pleasantly of lavender and coconut. But he turned his head to the side.
Steers looked amused. “You do not like to be touched?”
“Not after being taken from my bed, knocked out, and bound, no.”
She stood over him, straddling his body. He could see she had on a long white robe that covered her completely. Not knowing what was going to happen, but suspecting something truly unpleasant was about to occur, Nash closed his eyes.
“Open your eyes, Mr. Hope,” she said softly.
When he didn’t she put a bare foot on his crotch and started to press.
As it became more and more painful, he finally opened his eyes and was surprised that she had only drawn up the sleeves of her robe.
Seeing his look she said derisively, “Did you really think I would take off my clothes foryou?”
“I . . .” But then he focused on her arms and drew in a quick breath. They were covered in what looked to be long-healed burns now cast as ripples of twisted flesh. When she turned, and lowered her robe to her waist, he saw that her back, too, had been burned in sections; the flesh was raw and looked exceedingly painful.
She covered herself and turned back around to face him. “This ismyskin art, of a sort, although I did not choose to have this done, as did you yours. Tell me, Mr. Hope, what do you see in what I have just shown you?”
“I. . .see someone who has obviously suffered greatly.”
Nash now believed that Steers might have been on the plane owned by the Steers family that had crashed, and perhaps killed her father. If true, he couldn’t even contemplate how she had survived, or handled the pain. And then he thought of her meditation. The way she moved, slowly and gracefully. Had she the mental willpower to make the pain, if not go away, at least subside to a manageable level? She did not strike him as one who would control pain with medication, because that would mean Steers had to rely on some artificial means, when it was clear she preferred to rely only on herself.
If she has such mental strength, she is even more formidable than I thought.
She gazed down at her arms. “This was once something of significance to me, but no longer. I was advised to have operations, to cleanse myself of. . .it. To return to my normal self, or as normal as possible. But though some medical attention was required, I decided to let it mostly. . .lie, as it were. As a remembrance.”
“Of what?”