“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? Orpretendedto 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.
CHAPTER
74
IT WAS FROM JUDITH. MORRISmust have given her his new contact information on the secure portal.
The note was long but was summed up best by her telling him that she was sorry for having doubted him. And that she wished things could be different. She was in a safe place under an assumed name and life, and while not ideal, Judith was doing okay. She ended by telling him to stay safe and that she respected what he was doing and that she loved him. Very much.
He read it over three more times and was surprised that he didn’t feel more emotion from her words. It was like an email from a friend, not a lover or a spouse.
Too much has happened in the interim for us to ever. . . be what we were before.
He set his phone aside and looked out the window. Dawn was not that far off, and Nash wondered what it would hold. People were after them. As the anonymous man on the phone taken from Thura had suggested, he could turn Steers over to Lord and company, if that was indeed who their pursuer was, with the result that Nash perhaps could survive this.
But I can’t do that to her. I’m not sure what I can do for her, but I can’t do that. She’s had enough betrayals.
He fell asleep for a few hours, then rose, dressed, slapped his gun in its holster, went downstairs, and made coffee and had breakfast. An hour later, when Steers had not appeared, he boiled a cup of tea and took it to her room. He knocked and she told him to enter.
She was sitting up in bed. She looked freshened and her hair was damp, probably from a shower. She had changed into a nightdress that covered her arms.
“Tea,” he said.
“Thank you,” she replied, averting her gaze. Every fiber of the woman seemed to quiver with suppressed emotion.
He set the cup next to the bed and looked down at her. “It’s actually nice outside. We might want to go for a walk, with sunglasses and hats on of course.”
“Yes,” she said. “That would be. . .fine.”
He had turned to leave when she called out to him. “About last night, Walter.”
He turned to look at her.
“I apologize for allowing you to see me in such aconfusedstate.”