Temple slumped back, looking defeated. “Okay, okay, I get your point.”
“But if we can find Nash, maybe she’ll cut you loose.”
Temple scoffed, “Fat chance of that. I’ll be tied to her until I’m dead or she is. Thanks a fucking lot, Dad,” he screamed out the window.
When they reached Shock’s training facility, they used some tools they had brought along to allow them to get in the same way they had before.
“We have to be careful that we don’t trip that alarm again,” warned Temple.
“Yeah, we’ll need to be really careful,” replied Nash, who knew that Shock had remotely triggered the sirens that had driven them away from the place the first time.
They spent hours searching the facility from top to bottom.
Later, they sat side by side near the front entrance, Temple looking dejected and Nash looking relieved, because the tattoo binders were gone.
“Well, that was a big waste of time,” groused Temple.
“But it shows we’re trying.”
“Steers doesn’t give a shit abouttrying, Dillon. She wants results. And she gave us a month. The clock is ticking.” He perked back up. “You said someone tried to kill her? Who?”
“Not sure. Probably the same person who runs that prison. I forgot to tell you one thing. That elderly woman they used to switch Masuyo with?”
“Yeah? What about her?”
“They sent her head back to Steers via DHL.”
Temple looked like he might throw up. “My God, these people are animals, they really are.” He suddenly glared at Nash. “So why the hell didn’t you let them kill Steers? Both our problems would be over if you had. I really can’t believe you passed up that opportunity, Dillon. I would have let them fill her full of bullets.”
“First of all, my job is to protect her. Second, I don’t care who it is, I’m not going to stand by and watch a defenseless person get gunned down. And third, do you really think they were going to letmelive?”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Temple conceded. “We can’t catch a break, can we?”
“Well, since you weren’t there when the shooting started, I’m not sure your statement is accurate. And Steers and Ididcatch a break. We came out of it alive.”
Temple, who obviously wasn’t listening to Nash, said, “You think they’ll try again?”
Nash thought about Steers now planning to host the person who owned the prison and had perhaps tried to kill her. “Anything’s possible.”
“You better have an army guarding her, then. Any person who can own and run a prison in the middle of Myanmar must have both big bucks and a lot of pull.”
“No argument there.”
“And on top of that sending a head by express delivery? I mean, that’s Godfather shit. How did Steers take it?”
“She wasn’t happy about it, obviously. But she took it in stride.”
“The lady has ice in her veins. She is vicious and vindictive. Look what she did to Lynn Ryder, not that I’m crying any tears over that bitch.”
Nash chose not to enlighten the man about Ryder being very much alive. He thought it better that Temple believed Steers had no compassion or conscience.
And, despite what I’ve learned about her and seen, does she, really? That’s what Shock was trying to tell me. That, in the end, it’s a binary choice: me or her.
CHAPTER
52
THEY DROVE FOR A FEWhours on the way back, then stayed the night at a hotel. They were back on the road at the crack of dawn.