Page 132 of Nash Falls
Fixx looked at him nervously. “I’m smart and I work hard, and I really want to stay at the company.”
“Then tell me the truth.”
“Yes, I did. Your father made it, um, clear…”
“Fine. That is the perfect answer. You’re now executive VP in charge of acquisitions.”
“Walter Nash’s old job?”
“If you want it.”
She came around the desk and hugged him. “Rhett, I don’t know how to thank you.”
He cupped her firm butt with his hand, startling her. “I already have some ways for you to thank meproperly. Now, move across the hall to Nash’s old office. Oh, and dinner tonight, just the two of us.”
She looked at him nervously. “Oh, I’m so sorry, myhusbandand I have—”
“It wasn’t a question, Elaine. And hubby or not, you let my dad bed you, so get with the program, my new senior executive VP.” He kissed her on the lips and left with a spring in his step.
CHAPTER
64
NORMALLY, NASH WOULD NOT LOOKat himself in the mirror, but he did after another exhausting day of training. And he was impressed with what he saw.
Damn, I’m ripped.
He’d always had a flat belly, but now he also had an eight-pack and his core was strong as iron. The muscles in his arms, back, shoulders, chest, glutes, and legs rippled. He felt taller, looser, infinitely more powerful and physically confident.
He flexed his triceps and his quads, and was pleasantly surprised to see hardened domes of veiny muscle emerge all over. He could now run on the treadmill nonstop for an hour. He had done thousands of miles, mostly up mountains, on a stationary bike, until his thighs, hammies, and calves swelled with sinewy brawn. He had learned dozens of ways to fight, and incapacitate an opponent, from small, precise motions to more complex maneuvers that would be devastating to any combatant.
And he had been taught how to kill with a pen, a finger, a coin, a foot, a fist, an elbow, a knife, a gun, or anything else he could manage to get his hands on. It was like Nash had learned a difficult foreign language, one that he never knew even existed, like Russian and Chinese marbled together into a comprehensible hash, only with lethal outcomes.
His body was black and blue from the beatings he had taken from Shock and now Byron Jackson, who had revealed himself to be a cagey and skilled close-combat warrior. At first, he had knockedNash down multiple times with simple leg and arm taps against strategic body parts.
Jackson had lectured, “There are about a dozen spots on the human body where a bit of targeted, concentrated force will take an opponent down. Remember that torque against joints is the key. Muscle man, ninja warrior, dude on the street, we are all built structurally the same. You move a limb in the opposite direction it was designed to go, your man is going down, in pain. And in the seconds after that, he is vulnerable to whatever you want to do to him: knock out or kill.”
Then Jackson had demonstrated methods of seizing control of Nash’s arms, neck, shoulders, legs, loading them up and then driving them in the opposite direction the bones, tendons, and ligaments were designed to go. Nash then trained relentlessly to do the same until even Jackson praised him.
“Now, untrained people always try the wrong thing when someone has them in a neck lock,” Jackson had said. “They struggle trying to pull the dude’s arm forward and off. That’s always a loser because you’re going against his strength and using only your weakness. But this?”
He had Nash encircle his neck from behind with both arms as tightly as he could. Jackson didn’t struggle trying to pull the arm free, or turn to the left or right. He merely ducked under the lead arm holding him, torqued that limb against the structural grain, jacked it up Nash’s back to a painful degree, and while Nash was dealing with that and teetering to maintain his balance, Jackson easily kicked his left leg out from under Nash and he went down hard.
“Finish with an elbow strike to the cervical spine, and the dude is toast. Then you move on,” said Jackson.
To another obstacle, thought Nash, echoing Shock’s story about Ty Nash.
He’d then had Nash hold a knife against his throat before again effortlessly ducking under, controlling the limb, and “stabbing” Nash a dozen times with his own knife, while Nash was still holding it!
Despite the relentless training on close-quarter combat, it was really about early observation, Nash had discovered, seeing enough before the confrontation began so that you were never really surprised. And then using your opponent’s tells, mistakes, bravado, and momentum against him. Without breaking much of a sweat, or using very little muscle, you could beat men two or three times your size.
His proficiency on the gun range had grown by leaps and bounds. He could break down and then rebuild blindfolded every weapon Shock had in his armory. Nash would never be a world-class sniper, but he didn’t have to be to accomplish what he needed to.
He ate his sixth and final meal of the day and then was free to go to his quarters, where, after a shower, he did what he always did at night: He scoured the internet looking for news of Maggie. He had hoped that her kidnappers might post another video of her, but nothing ever appeared, and his hope that one would show up had faded to almost nothing.
The alerts were still out on him everywhere. He was considered armed and dangerous after it was determined he had taken his father’s old gun and Army knife. He had shown them to Judith, who obviously had told the police.
He was also a cuckolded husband, and his wife had done it with his boss. Talk about poor judgment of character on her part. But what Nash feared was that Rhett would provide a shoulder for his wife to cry on, and that would put Judith in danger of stumbling onto what Rhett was involved in. Because despite everything, Nash still cared for his wife, and he wanted no harm to come to her.
