“From any source?”
“From any source.”
“So you are loyal to me above all others?”
Nash knew this question was coming. It was like college debating, which Nash had actually done, where your opponent sought, by one logical statement after another, to box you right into a corner.
“Dillon?” she said when he did not answer.
“You place me in a difficult position, Mrs. Steers.”
“Where else did you expect me to place you, Dillon? Please do not make me believe you are not up to this. I would hate to have youreplaced.”
She said the last word in a way that sounded to Nash likekilled. And he could see very clearly how Masuyo had built a criminal empire. He now focused on how immensely difficult that must have been, since the woman would have had formidable opponents all around.
“If I have to make a choice, Mrs. Steers, I would have to say that my loyalties lie with you, because your daughter instructed me so.”
He hoped he had done enough table turning on the woman to let that statement suffice against his beingreplaced.
He got an answer when she glanced away, but not before he saw a disappointed look on her face. Not disappointment in his answer being a bad one, just an unwelcome one, because it seemed to be sufficiently nuanced to prevent further interrogation.
“Then, to sum it up, you are loyal to me. You report to me. My daughter does not come into the equation. If I find that she does, then you will go away, forever, are we clear on that?”
She stared at him, her eyes like twin knife blades looking to pierce him.
“I am very clear on what must be done going forward, Mrs. Steers.”
“If I do find that you have been disloyal, then my daughter will learn that you knew my real name to be Dai Lu. I wonder what she will do with that information.”
Nash didn’t have to wonder for a single second.
As they got up Masuyo left her ice cream container on the bench. When Nash went to retrieve it, she barked, “Leave it, Dillon.”
He followed her to the steps they had taken down to this spot.
When he glanced back a few moments later, the ice cream container was gone. He gave a searching look all around but he couldn’t see who had taken it.
What in the hell had just happened?
CHAPTER
36
NASH HAD FINISHED A GRUELINGworkout in the basement of the building. It was an elaborate space with everything the most fitness-minded person could desire. On several occasions he had ventured down here with Thura while various members of Steers’s protection detail had also been working out. These men, who looked chiseled from stone, had enviable flexibility, nimbleness, quickness, and power that truly belied their average statures.
And each time they had glanced arrogantly and dismissively at the pair as they went through their workouts and close-quarter routines. However, Nash silently watched, and absorbed everything he was seeing.
Once, when he and Thura had gone back to their floor after working out, Thura had said, “Damn, those guys are unbeatable, man.”
Nash had thought that as well until he had started to note their tendencies and weak points. He approached it like game film for football players. Even one small observation could provide an advantage that might be worth its weight in gold later. Nash had done the very same thing in business and found it to be a highly successful tactic.
Now Nash toweled off and sat on a bench after cooling down. Right from the start he and Thura had applied for and received gun permits to go along with their work visas. They had also been taken to a nearby gun range twice a week since they had been here. Thura was a good if undisciplined shot, and Nash had given him some pointers that the man had thought were excellent.
Considerable time had gone by, and he had heard nothing from Rhett Temple, not that he expected to. The man really didn’t have the means to contact him except through Steers. And Nash wasn’t under any delusion that his former boss was doing anything to fulfill his promise to bring Nash home. That wasn’t what Nash wanted anyway.
As he got up to leave he noted, for the first time, a door at the far end of the room.
He walked over to it. The door was locked, but there was a glass panel in the top section of the door that allowed him to see inside.