“Rhett’s gone? How?”
“I was asleep. When the dude didn’t show for training I went lookin’. He’s gone. He was all pissed off thinking he’d done enough. Wanted me to give him his new ID and tat him up and all. Dude has progressed but he ain’t nowhere near where he needs to be. But guess he decided on an alternative. And there’s another thing. And it’s got me worried.”
“What’s that?”
“He took one of my guns with him. Any idea where he might have gone that he needed a weapon?”
Nash stared out the window and tried to process all of this. Then a thought occurred to him. He eyed Steers and then said, “I think I might. Look, we were on our way to see you.”
“We?”
“Yes,we. You heard what happened?”
“Yeah, it’s all over the news. Does theweinclude Victoria Steers?”
“Yes, it does. I’ll explain when I get there. But after what you just told me I’ve got to go somewhere else first. Luckily, we’re not that far away. If Rhett left sometime last night it’ll be the afternoon before he gets there, if he drives straight through. Then he’ll have to wait until nightfall, and we’ll be waiting.”
Nash clicked off and looked at Steers. “Rhett is going to kill his stepmother.”
“Because she knows that he killed his father?” said Steers.
Nash shot her a glance. “Yes, how did you figure that?”
“What other reason would he have to murder her? He has enough money to forestall any other danger, except someone telling the truth.” Steers sat up straighter. “And what are you going to do about it?”
“Stop him, if I can.”
As they drove along, Steers’s eyes widened and a smile crept across her features. “We may actually be able to do better than that, Walter. Far better.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t think we need to go to your friend’s place after this little detour.”
“But we need help, Victoria.”
“I think we can get it somewhere else. From a very unlikely source, in fact.”
When he glanced at her curiously Steers started to explain.
And now Nash’s eyes widened. When she’d finished, he said, “How did you come up with that so fast?”
“When you have lived the life that I have, you must think fast and well, or perish.”
* * *
Clambering over the wall of the estate late that night, even with the backpack he carried, was far easier this time for Temple than it had been on the night he’d dumped his father off the balcony. From there he made his way to the rear door. There was no security here right now. He’d made sure of that. The only people here were Mindy, their daughter, Angie, and the staff in their quarters, which were far away from the main house. He’d fired Colin the butler before he’d gone to Shock’s facility. He sensed something like this was coming down the road ever since Nash had told him that he knew the truth about Barton Temple’s death.
He tried to make it seem like he’d figured it out, but I know it was Mindy. That was what they were talking about outside the night he came to dinner. I saw them from the window. Well, by doing that you signed your own death warrant, lady.
He had to play it smart. The house had an alarm system, and as he looked through the side door he saw by the red light that it was engaged. If he opened the door and then disarmed the system,hiscode, not Mindy’s, would be recorded, and the cops would know he had probably been there or given someone else the code to get in.
But he knew the house well, and thus he climbed up a copper downspout to the top floor and exited onto the same exterior balcony from which he’d pushed his father to his death. The doors going into the office were armed, but he knew the windows were not.
In fact, he had left one of them unlocked before leaving to go to Shock’s because, again, he knew this day might come.
He slipped through the window and into the office, where he pulled a crowbar from the backpack to force open a small safe set in the floor under the rug. He emptied the contents into the backpack. He then rifled the desk drawers and collected some cash, watches, and a couple of rings, which he also put into the backpack. His plan, obviously, was to blame Mindy’s murder on a botched burglary. He walked down the darkened stairs and reached the floor where Mindy’s room was.
His gloved fingers were curled around the gun he’d taken from Shock’s place. He had initially planned on shooting her. But now Temple knew he couldn’t bring himself to do that. It was Mindy, the mother of his child.