CHAPTER 1
Walter Nash didn’t wish to attend the funeral. Who needed to bury their father, even when the 2 weren’t shut? But when he had been a bit of boy the pair had skilled many fantastic instances collectively, the stuff of Hallmark motion pictures and greeting playing cards.
Then, because the years crept by, Nash had the misfortune of turning into somebody that his tough-as-nails, take-no-prisoners Vietnam veteran father had been unable to respect, or apparently even like. After that, his father, Tiberius—universally known as Ty—had led his life and Nash his, and the 2 by no means noticed each other for probably the most half, though they resided in the identical city: his father in an odd cluster of outdated properties, Nash behind a safety gate that saved out all others, together with most likely those that lived within the odd cluster of outdated properties.
Nash labored on his tie whereas he appraised himself within the mirror. Forty years outdated, a sew over six ft three and lanky, however too skinny with a bony, undeveloped chest and lackluster shoulders, and stick legs and arms; he’d by no means centered on muscling up. Except you have been an athlete, soldier, cop, or bouncer, what was the purpose? His brown hair was nonetheless thick and wavy, though graying barely on the temples.
He and his spouse, Judith, and their nineteen-year-old daughter, Maggie, lived in a sprawling nine-thousand-square-foot, two-story, stone-and-stucco home with a finely appointed completed decrease stage, and a complete of 5 bedrooms and 7 loos for simply the trio of them. There was additionally a three-car sideload storage, along with his huge burgundy Vary Rover, Judith’s silver Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedan, and Maggie’s forest-green BMW convertible occupying the bays. The property was accomplished by a big, landscaped yard anchored by an in-ground pool with iridescent tiles.
Maggie had been a school being pregnant, compelling Walter and Judith to hasten right down to the native courthouse to say their wedding ceremony vows with a decide they didn’t know, and within the absence of each their households. A real honeymoon had by no means adopted. They’d bought a condominium as an alternative. It made way more sense, Nash had determined. For him honeymoons have been merely very costly photograph album fillers. He had later offered the condominium and paid off each their school loans with the income.
Nash was a senior government VP at Sybaritic Investments. He had risen to that title after years of hundred-hour weeks and temporary or no holidays, and dwelling at thirty-five thousand ft as he went from one state or nation to the subsequent, crunching numbers, analyzing enterprise alternatives, negotiating phrases, and placing collectively sophisticated offers that required legions of legal professionals and lumps of paper, and a cool hand whereas beneath monumental stress.
All of his laborious work and sacrifice had paid off. He now earned a seven-figure wage plus substantial bonuses.
Though he adored them each, Nash was not overly near his spouse or daughter; it was merely not in his nature to be significantly intimate with anybody. They didn’t appear postpone by his aloofness. Certainly, his spouse and daughter welcomed him on these events when he did take part.
The reality was he had by no means made buddies simply. An introvert, he was proficient and proficient with numbers and transferring cash from right here to there, and assembling enterprise prospects collectively in ways in which have been visionary and worth enhancing. He may articulate all kinds of substantive and significant issues having to do with such duties, and likewise be a motivating and honest chief along with his staff. Nonetheless, in fact, he most well-liked to be alone.
He had had one pal, although, one which he missed terribly to this present day. He was a labradoodle named Charly. They’d gotten him from a breeder when Maggie was 4. A yr in the past, as age and sickness had robbed the senior canine of any high quality of life, they’d needed to put Charly down. Nash had develop into so disoriented and breathless throughout the process that he had thought he was having both a panic assault or a coronary heart assault.
Did that make me pathetic? Shedding tears for a canine once I didn’t come near that stage of grief for my father’s passing? Sure, it most likely did.
But, in Nash’s protection, Charly had demanded nothing of his proprietor apart from the power, time, and area to adore him. And Nash’s father? Nicely, the person had finished just about the other of that, a lot to his solely baby’s continued bewilderment.
Nash did take pleasure in offering his small household with a affluent dwelling. Judith had gone to school to check to develop into a instructor. Nonetheless, with the being pregnant they’d determined that she would keep house with Maggie. However now that their daughter was grown, Judith had talked about getting her educating certificates and perhaps beginning out instead instructor earlier than seeing if she needed to go full-time. Whether or not it was educating or one thing else, Nash supported her 100%.
A beautiful, tall, and athletic lady, she saved match and wholesome, optimistic and energetic. She preferred to backyard, and was a wonderful prepare dinner. She had been an attentive and hands-on mom to Maggie, volunteering liberally at college, being a member of the PTA, and likewise being steadily energetic in neighborhood features, all whereas Nash was in London, Singapore, or Doha negotiating and shutting yet one more deal.
He knew he couldn’t have finished what he did with out her help. Nash had at all times thought-about theirs a real partnership. Judith had additionally been a sport participant in all the company features and different duties anticipated of spouses whose important others have been climbing what may very well be a really slippery enterprise ladder.
A weekly cleansing crew sorted the home, and so they had individuals to keep up the pool and yard. Judith additionally went on enjoyable journeys
annually together with her girlfriends. He and Judith sometimes went away on their very own, or with Maggie, and after they did, it was at all times fairly nice. Their intercourse life was proper the place it needs to be, he thought, for individuals of their age with 20 years of marriage and a toddler behind them.
He had sensibly began Maggie’s school fund on the very day she had been born, however his daughter had determined to take a niche yr after graduating from highschool. She had been accepted at a handful of high quality universities. Nonetheless, Maggie had just lately knowledgeable her dad and mom that she wasn’t even sure that she needed to go the school route.
She had began to make noises about turning into an influencer and a creator on social media and utilizing a few of her school funds to try this. Nash knew that she spent plenty of time in her room on her pc, like most individuals her age. She additionally had a complicated digital digital camera and an costly Yeti microphone together with some enhancing gear. He may hear noises coming from her room at odd hours.
He didn’t thoughts serving to his daughter understand her goals. She was filled with constructive spirit, and was additionally tall, like each her dad and mom, and wonderful, having taken after her mom in that regard. Nonetheless, the parade of boyfriends that had come by means of their house throughout her highschool years! They’d run the gamut from cocky jocks to awkward nerds, and even some well-past-college males whom Maggie had met in methods she had by no means absolutely defined. Nash had despatched the older gents away utilizing his government voice to allow them to see the potential legal responsibility of courting somebody a lot youthful than themselves.
So if this influencer factor was partly a recognition contest, then Maggie might need a shot. However he additionally didn’t wish to help her to such an extent that she ended up incapable of supporting herself. Counting on others was not a good suggestion.
Earlier than their falling out his father had as soon as instructed him: “You rise or fall by yourself, sonny boy. Then you haven’t any one guilty or thank besides your self.”
This made Nash consider the titular head of his firm, its CEO, Everett Temple, who was 5 years youthful than Nash. His lofty place was due solely to his father, Barton Temple, who had based Sybaritic and plenty of different corporations over the many years. Everett was value at the least $200 million, once more solely resulting from daddy.
And Everett, who insisted on being referred to as Rhett, thought himself the very smartest particular person within the room, as a result of to see himself as something much less can be akin to confessing that his “success” had nothing to do with him. At the least that’s what Nash conjectured, and he doubted he was unsuitable. As a result of fairly often Nash was the neatest particular person within the room, even when he by no means intimated that he was.
I encompass myself with individuals simply as sensible and even smarter than me. That method, they collectively make me look sensible.
However who knew what tomorrow would carry?
CHAPTER 2
As Nash completed preparing, he thought of his mom and the breast most cancers that had taken her 5 years earlier than. And lengthy earlier than Nash had been born, Agent Orange in Vietnam had gotten its depressing clutches into his father, filling the person with carcinogens that had, for many years, wreaked havoc on his as soon as highly effective physique.
His father’s first spouse had killed herself for causes that had by no means been defined to Nash. He had married Nash’s mom when he’d been thirty-seven and so they’d had Nash a yr later. As an Military brat Nash didn’t have to maneuver round a lot, as a result of by the point he had come alongside his father was navigating the downhill portion of his enlisted experience to a full navy pension. They’d come right here when Nash had turned three, and he had been right here ever since, aside from when Nash had left to attend school.
When Nash was a toddler, he and his father had spent quite a lot of time collectively, doing issues that fathers and sons usually did. Years in Little League baseball the place, resulting from his clumsiness introduced on by rising an excessive amount of too quick, Nash performed outfield and his father referred to as out recommendation nonstop, or else screamed on the coaches, the ump, and different dad and mom, generally throwing fists in addition to insults. They’d gone canoeing a couple of instances and camped out as soon as, however not for lengthy as poison sumac waylaid Nash and practically despatched him to the hospital. By the point he was 13 his father had taught him how one can shoot like a professional and deal with firearms exceptionally properly. Nash, although, had completely refused to go searching along with his father. He may by no means see himself killing one other dwelling factor.
Additionally they attended sporting occasions collectively the place his father sucked down beers and Nash a soda. His father was the type of fan who shouted and gesticulated irrespective of how properly or poorly his staff was performing. Throughout these instances Nash ate a scorching canine and tacky fries, and considered different issues. For probably the most half these instances had been good; his father had been a enjoyable, prepared participant within the necessary moments of a bit of boy’s life.
As a toddler Nash had attended his father’s navy retirement ceremony. He had skilled nice pleasure throughout the ceremony as he watched his father in his full navy regalia, his chest brimming with hard-earned ribbons and medals, being celebrated by different courageous, robust, and robust males.
He’d additionally seen, after they would go to the seashore on trip, the everlasting wounds grafted onto his father from his fight days. He had felt pleased with his dad and sorry for him on the similar time, that he’d needed to undergo that and endure so.
These blissful instances had ended when Nash had opted to play tennis as an alternative of the manly sport of highschool soccer. It had been for a easy purpose: Whereas already over six ft at age fourteen, Nash was very skinny and underdeveloped, and he didn’t wish to get his head knocked off. Taking part in a sport that would injury your mind for the remainder of your life, for no compensation in return, had by no means struck him as a productive or clever use of his time.
His father, who Nash knew had been a soccer legend again in Mississippi, had utterly modified towards his son after Nash had made his choice to not pursue soccer. There have been no extra enjoyable instances. No extra father-son outings. There was solely a wall between the 2 that Nash had by no means actually understood as a result of he couldn’t consider one thing so frivolous as selecting one sport over one other may have such drastic and inane penalties.
Then highschool was finished, school had begun, after which Nash had married, develop into a dad at a younger age, graduated with excessive honors with a level in enterprise, and begun forging his id as a husband, father, and businessman extraordinaire.
His widowed father, who had lived solely eight miles away, in the identical little vinyl-sided home in a hardscrabble neighborhood the place Nash had grown up, had not spoken to his son proper up till the day he had died. He hadn’t even allowed Nash to return to hospice to say his goodbyes. He had by no means even instructed his son he had been taken to hos- pice. Actually, Nash had solely heard of his father’s demise from the person’s aged neighbor.
So in the present day was right here and goodbyes can be made, after which what precisely?
His black gown footwear polished, his hair combed, and his slender jaw set as agency as he may handle, he walked out the door to hitch his household. Then they might drive off to pay closing respects to a person who, for many years, had not revered his son within the least.
He was truly trying ahead to tomorrow coming as rapidly as doable. Then it could simply be one other day on the workplace the place he may very well be fairly positive of what to anticipate, for Nash was a person who, for probably the most half, loathed surprises.
And one other day of his predictable life left on earth can be checked off to be adopted by one other day that was just about a facsimile of its predecessor. Or so Walter Nash thought.
When Walter Nash is recruited by the FBI to assist carry down a world crime community his life is turned utterly the other way up on this thriller from #1 New York Instances bestselling creator David Baldacci.
Nash is an clever man, robust however fair-minded. He has a spouse and a daughter and a really high-level place at Sybaritic Investments, the place his innate expertise and dogged tenacity have carried him to the highest of the pyramid in his enterprise profession. Regardless of by no means happening grand adventures, and at all times working too many hours, he has a contented and upscale life along with his household.
Nonetheless, following his estranged Vietnam-veteran father’s funeral, Nash is unexpectedly approached by the FBI in the course of the night time. They’ve an necessary request: develop into their inside man to reveal an enterprise that’s laundering giant sums of cash by means of Sybaritic. On the high of this unlawful operation is Victoria Steers, a world prison mastermind that the FBI has been attempting to carry down for years.
Nash has little selection however to simply accept the FBI’s calls for and attempt to carry Steers and her companions to justice. However when Steers discovers that Nash is working with the FBI, she turns the tables on him in a method he by no means may have contemplated. And that forces Nash to take the final word step each to outlive and to take his revenge: He should develop into the precise reverse of who he has at all times been.
And even that is probably not sufficient.
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