Hope Rises

The second installment of the Walter Nash series picks up with Nash, a former business executive who has transformed himself into a muscled, tattooed, shaved-headed bodyguard operating under the alias Dillon Hope. Recruited by the FBI to dismantle the criminal empire of Victoria Steers, a global drug trafficker of Chinese and English parentage, Nash has infiltrated her organization by serving as the personal security guard for his former boss, Rhett Temple, the CEO of Sybaritic Investments. In the previous book, Steers had Nash's teenage daughter Maggie kidnapped and framed Nash for abusing and killing her, destroying his life and severing his ties to the FBI. Nash's wife, Judith, is in protective custody.

The story opens aboard Steers's private jet en route to Hong Kong. Upon arrival, Steers shoots her emissary Lynn Ryder in the head with what Nash believes is his own confiscated pistol, then tells Nash and Temple they can be framed for the murder, with Nash facing execution and Temple life imprisonment in China. She offers a choice: work for her or face these consequences. Their mission is to free her mother, Masuyo Steers, from a prison in Myanmar near the Chinese border. Over the following days, Steers lays out an elaborate extraction plan while establishing dominance over Nash: She drugs and binds him, cuts a long incision up his arm as a mark of ownership, and then unexpectedly kisses him.

Nash and Temple enter Myanmar from India with local guides, including a resourceful Burmese man named Thura. They traverse mountains on dirt bikes and horseback, surviving a deadly confrontation with a Kachin Independence Army (KIA) soldier and a betrayal by another guide, an Indian woman named Amrita, who tries to kill them for reward money. Thura saves both men by killing Amrita. Nash grows suspicious that Steers intends for him and Temple to die at the ambush scene while her real team escapes with Masuyo.

At the ambush site near Bhamo, Nash uses homemade explosives to overpower the six-man extraction team, killing five while Thura shoots the sixth. Nash fabricates a cover story, takes custody of Masuyo, and escapes via helicopter and overland travel back to Hong Kong. He considers handing Masuyo to the FBI but decides against it, reasoning that doing so would end his access to Steers.

Back in Hong Kong, Temple negotiates his release to return to America, while Steers orders Nash and Thura to remain as Masuyo's personal bodyguards. Nash accepts, recognizing this places him where he needs to be. Over the following months, he occupies a precarious position between mother and daughter, each demanding his exclusive loyalty. Masuyo systematically reviews her daughter's operations and conducts covert message drops in Kowloon Park, which Nash documents and feeds to FBI Agent Reed Morris.

Nash's relationship with Steers deepens unexpectedly. She shares her passion for art, confesses she has no friends, and reveals a vulnerable side. Her elderly former nanny, Hiroko, shares explosive family secrets with Nash: Masuyo was a Chinese agent who married her English husband Joseph Steers as cover; Victoria's biological father was not Joseph but a Chinese man, making Victoria wholly Chinese; and Masuyo killed the other Steers children but used psychological manipulation to convince Victoria she had committed the murders herself.

An assassination attempt at a restaurant nearly kills Steers when a member of her protection detail slashes her neck. Nash kills the attacker, fights off additional gunmen, and rushes Steers to a hospital. A package containing the severed head of the woman substituted for Masuyo at the prison confirms the deception has been discovered. Nash later learns that Ryder is alive; the shooting was an elaborate ruse designed to coerce Nash into believing he was complicit in a killing. One night, Steers turns a gun on herself, declaring she does not deserve to live; Hiroko intervenes and leads her to bed.

Steers holds a strategic meeting with her cartel partners, announcing she will no longer pursue an agenda designed to maximize American drug deaths, breaking from China's goals. Connor Lord, an American-born reclusive billionaire with deep ties to Chinese leadership and Middle Eastern rulers, arrives for a private meeting. Through a listening device, Nash hears Steers offer to sell her entire criminal empire to Lord for one dollar.

Steers moves everyone to her American estate. Nash learns from Morris that U.S. fentanyl deaths have dropped sharply because Steers has secretly replaced fentanyl with less lethal substances, defying her Chinese partners' goal of maximizing American overdose casualties. Hiroko is found dead, poisoned; Nash and Steers believe Masuyo killed her. Temple discovers Nash's true identity through fingerprints and a crucial observation by his half-sister Angie, who has a developmental disability. Temple threatens exposure, but Nash forces a deal and sends Temple to train with Shock, Nash's father's old friend and trainer. The sale of Steers's empire to Lord is completed at Lord's Malibu estate. On the flight home, Nash tells Steers that Thura's cousin revealed Masuyo was never actually imprisoned in Myanmar.

Events accelerate when Masuyo reveals to Steers that Nash knew her Chinese name, Dai Lu. Steers drives Nash at gunpoint to Hiroko's grave and demands the truth. Nash reveals his real identity as the man whose daughter she had kidnapped. Before the confrontation resolves, Thura calls: Armed men have attacked the estate, killing the security team. Nash and Steers flee to her safe house in New Orleans, where their relationship deepens through shared vulnerability. Steers reveals the most stunning secret: Maggie is alive. The CIA recruited Steers as a mole years earlier, arranged for Maggie's remains to be fabricated, and placed her in protective custody with the U.S. Marshals.

Steers explains that she sold her business to Lord specifically to draw him into an overt criminal enterprise for the first time. She and Nash recruit Temple as a double agent. Temple initially resists but agrees after Nash confronts him with recordings implicating Temple in his father's murder and the attempted murder of Temple's wife, Mindy. Temple returns to Sybaritic as CEO and pitches Lord and Masuyo on shifting operations to methamphetamine. At a warehouse near San Diego, Lord reveals he has captured Nash and Steers. Temple appears to betray them, staging Nash's death with a prop knife and prompting Lord to shoot Steers with a fake gun. FBI agents storm the building, arresting Lord and dozens of coconspirators, shutting down 14 distribution centers, and confiscating five billion dollars in contraband. China disavows Lord, and his global network collapses.

In the aftermath, Steers visits Masuyo in federal prison, offering a tube of poison as an alternative to execution. She tells Masuyo that Hiroko was her true mother and that Masuyo's masters abandoned her. Masuyo swallows the poison. Nash watches his own funeral from a hidden room while Judith and Maggie grieve, having decided that if the world believes he is dead, no one will hunt his family.

Nash drives to a remote prison to pick up Steers upon her release. She emerges with a buzz cut and an electronic ankle monitor she will wear for life. Nash has furnished a small apartment for her with an art studio, a garden planter, and a bicycle. She will work as a drug counselor under the name Jenny Lee. The two acknowledge their feelings for each other, and Nash promises to return, driving away beneath dark clouds but toward a brightening horizon.