Page 150 of Nash Falls

Well, what husband wouldn’t? I wanted to kill Rhett. I still do.

Twenty minutes later Fixx drove up in her red BMW and entered the parking garage.

Nash figured there was nothing more to learn here since he couldn’t go into the building, throttle Rhett, and make him tell the truth. He instead drove out into the hills to Barton’s estate. Well, not Barton’s anymore. He wasn’t sure who had inherited it. The gates opened as he neared them, and Mindy drove out in a four-seater Mercedes-Benz Cabriolet with the top down. He now thought he had his answer as to who had inherited the property. He also received some additional intel when he saw the car seat in the back with a baby in it.

Years back Barton had informed Nash about his vasectomy. They had been in Saudi Arabia on a business trip and a drunken Barton had let it slip: “I’m done with that shit in my life, Walt. You were smart to only have one.”

Well, I don’t have her anymore, thanks to you and your family.

Since Barton couldn’t be the father of the child, Nash wondered who was.

His first thought clearly was Rhett. That also might explain what had happened to Barton, if Rhett was sleeping with the man’s wife and Barton had perhaps found out.

He drove back to the motel, sat down with his computer, and again went over the flash drive on Steers that Shock had provided.

As with any due diligence on a business deal, you learned new things, possibly important things, on the second, third, and fourth passes.

Victoria had risen to the top in her quest to be the head of the Steers crime family. But the real question was: What had happened to her parents? There had been no sightings of either the mother or father for years, according to the FBI.

Had Steers killed them, too?

He next looked on the flash drive files at a list of aircraft owned by the Steers family. Jets had to be registered, and over a thirty-year period the Steerses, through their various companies, had owned multiple planes, both turboprops and jets. A shell company owned by an org affiliated with Victoria Steers had recently purchased a Bombardier Global 8000, a top-of-the-line private jet that could fly over halfway around the world on one tank of fuel. He next went back and compared the ownership of the various aircraft from each year. He discerned very quickly that there was a pattern here where the Steerses would sell the plane after roughly five years and purchase a newer model, as, no doubt, tastes, technologies, and wealth levels changed. They seemed to favor Gulfstream and Bombardier aircraft.

And that’s when Nash noted one anomaly. Years ago the Steerses had owned a Learjet 75, a popular midsize aircraft. There was no paper trail of the aircraft’s being sold or otherwise disposed of, even as new jets were bought and older ones sold. Yet any record of the Learjet 75 had simply disappeared off the books a number of years before. But a plane couldn’t just disappear, could it?

He had the tail number and went on a database that he had learned about when Sybaritic had invested in a private jet company.

He stared down at the screen when the results of his search on the tail number had come up.

Nearly ten years ago, total hull loss. With the result the plane had been scrapped.

There were very few ways an aircraft could suffer a total hull loss.

And a plane crash was right at the top of that very short list.

He searched the news from ten years before and going forward for any story about a plane crash involving the aircraft. He found nothing. How the hell did you coverthatup?

Could Steers’s parents have been on that flight? And had it been sabotaged? Or shot down? If it had been something normal, there would have been no need to cover it up.

He messaged Morris with this information and then turned to the rest of the material on the flash drive. He found nothing else compelling, then checked his phone for the location of the nearest gun range. There was one about four miles away. He called, made a reservation, changed into jeans and a T-shirt, and drove there.

The owner, who was heavily tatted himself, asked about the chain-link designs on Nash’s head.

“Personal” was all Nash said in response.

He laid his Glock and the Beretta on the table, put on safety goggles and ear protectors, carefully loaded his guns, and spent the next hour practicing his technique and aim. After he was done and had checked his targets, the owner, a fellow in his seventies with a Vietnam veteran’s cap, strolled over.

“Damn fine shooting. And I was watching you, your stance and technique are textbook. You military, right?”

“My old man was. He taught me.”

“Well, he taught you damn good. What was his name? Maybe I know him.”

Nash almost saidTy Nash. “Jimbo Hope.”

“Nope, don’t know him. You from around here, fella?”

“Just passing through, but I like to keep my skills up.”