by Tara Janzen
Her eyebrows lifted as she absorbed that surprising offer.
“Thank you.” It was the only appropriate thing to say. It was also exactly how she felt-thank you very, very much, Mr. Conroy Farrel. Erich Warner dead was a big favor to everybody.
He reached for his coffee, revealing the inside of his right arm. It was a tragedy of scars. Another tremor rippled up the inside of his forearm even as she was looking at it, and when she glanced up to his face, she saw him wince.
J.T., my God, J.T.-he’d been on a mission, like dozens of missions he’d gone on before, down into Colombia, and he’d been killed there. That’s what they all thought, what they’d all thought for six years.
But here he was, his memory gone, his body a testament to the suffering he’d borne, and she was overwhelmed by it all. She didn’t know where to begin to help him, or if she should even try. He didn’t even know who she was, and sometimes it was better not to fix things but to let them lie-and she had no idea what would be best for John Thomas Chronopolous.
It made her feel so helpless, and when she looked at him, she wanted to tell him.
But he’d kidnapped her and was holding her hostage, and she needed to be smarter than to trust him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Creedence Clearwater Revival, CCR, those were Creed’s boys, the guys with his theme song-”Run Through the Jungle.”
Like a cat.
A hundred yards from Dylan and Hawkins’s OP, Creed cut down through the trees to the river. He could hear the boat getting louder, coming nearer, but he needed eyes-on ID. They’d seen two fishing boats already today, and if it was another one, all the better. If not, the boss was going to have to make a few more command decisions.
At two hundred yards, Creed knelt in the brush at the shoreline, concealed behind a dense layer of trees and vegetation, sweat running down the greasepaint camouflaging his face.
Yeah, he could see it. A gunboat had entered the mouth of the Tambo River and was cruising along the far shore, about a hundred yards downstream and headed his way.
Creed took out his binoculars and keyed his radio.
“Cartel cowboys in an RPB,” he said when he heard Dylan’s beep, letting him know it was a river patrol boat. “Twenty or so, well armed. One woman, Asian, a gringo in a fedora-yeah, you heard me right-and sonuvabitch.”
“Continue,” Dylan ordered.
“I-” Creed stopped the transmission, looked harder at the boat crew. He didn’t want to make any mistakes, but hell no, it wasn’t a mistake. He keyed his radio again. “I found Waldo.”
“Again.” The order came back at him.
“Killian. He’s on the boat.”
Creed didn’t actually hear Dylan cussing, but he knew exactly what couple of words were coming out of the boss’s mouth.
In their business, surprises sucked. On the other hand, it was good to have a friend in the enemy camp. Creed had worked with Dax on the streets of Denver, stealing cars, and once in Afghanistan three years ago, and there wasn’t a doubt in his mind whose side the man was on. Suzi’s for sure-and he had to wonder, really, when did the art game get so damn dangerous?
He keyed his radio again. “Maybe it’s time to make a trade.”
“Roger. I want you and Zach back at your OP. If Farrel wants his girl back, he’ll deal with us before the boat party arrives.”
“Roger.”
Suzi gently turned the Sphinx on its side and looked for any marks on the bottom of the statue. There were a couple of scratches in the granite, and she duly notated them in the notebook Con had given her. Sure, he’d said she could have the ancient artifact, a mind-boggling idea, but she was a long way from home, and a lot of other people wanted this thing. Quite frankly, she wouldn’t have put five bucks on the chance of her being the one to get it out of Paraguay.
Not that she wasn’t going to give it her best shot.
Conroy Farrel was pacing. He was very quiet about it, walking from one door to the next, looking outside. Looking for the girl, Scout? Suzi wondered. She hadn’t seen her since last night.
“There’s a scanner in my fanny pack,” she said. He had it clipped through a couple of belt loops on his BDU pants. “May I have it?”
He didn’t hesitate to pull it out, look it over, then walk over and hand it to her.
She wished he’d give her the whole damn fanny pack, but she wasn’t going to hold her breath on that. Her phone had rung three times, and each time he’d answered it and given a set of directions. Nothing more.
Somebody was coming, Erich Warner at the least-and Suzi couldn’t imagine that was going to be good for her.
She picked up the scanner and let out a short breath. If nothing else, she would at least know if the damn thing worked, and if it did, Dax’s farfetched theory about the Faraday cages in Beranger’s basement would be true. She hoped to hell she got a chance to tell him.
Without further ado, she turned the scanner on, and it lit up, clear as day. So simple, and after a moment it beeped in the completion of the GPS locator function, and that was that.
Well. Somehow she felt better, like she’d done her job-found the damn thing and locked in its location.
Great.
She was sure there would be a bonus in there somewhere, if she could just get out of this damn country alive.
She set the scanner aside and went back to cataloguing every little thing there was to catalogue about the great Maned Sphinx of Sesostris III, a.k.a. the Memphis Sphinx. Howard Carter himself had discovered this thing. He’d held it in his hands. He’d drawn it-and Suzi could feel it all, the depth of the statue’s history, the power of the legend. In Grant’s office, she’d scoffed at the idea of the Sphinx having occult powers, but holding it in her hands was enough to make a believer out of her-almost.
The gold mane framed a regally serene face and draped down onto the black granite shoulders of a lion. The rock-crystal eyes were small and elegant, set into the granite eye sockets like a pair of stars, no bigger than the irises would have been. The thing was beautiful, the lion’s paws placed firmly and squarely on the statue’s base, the beast’s tail curled precisely around its body, the animal emanating an innate power, an unexpected suppleness of form. It was an amazing piece of art, the golden mane luminous, the crystal eyes catching the sunlight-a magnificent sphinx.
The moment held her, and she placed both her hands on the statue, one on each side of the lion body. It was truly beautiful, conceived and created on the banks of the Nile four thousand years ago. The granite was warm against her palms, with a luster that caught the light. It wasn’t pure black; there were flecks of gold and gray in the stone, which made it seem to shimmer.
Magical, indeed.
And for the moment, hers.
People had killed for this statue, possibly hundreds of times over the centuries, and suddenly what had seemed so abhorrent before made sense. This black and gold beast with the cut-crystal eyes was worthy of blood, of sacrifice.
She slid it a few inches across the table, into a stream of sunlight, and the crystalline eyes lit themselves from deep within.
Ahhh, she thought. This is it. And when this happens in moonlight, the power of the creature is unleashed. The doors of time will open, either to give or to take-but the power is there, lying latent and heavy in the rock.
With the sunlight catching on every facet of crystal, she reached for the left eye and slowly twisted and pulled, and hoped beyond hope that the piece would release and fall into her hand. She wanted to see inside, to touch a place of ancientness.
This Sphinx was made for Sesostris III, King of Egypt and the Nile, two thousand years before the birth of Christ.
So clearly, she heard the voice of history, of pain, and loss, of being buried in the crypt, of crying out to be released.
Released.
The rod of crystal pulled free, and Suzi’s pulse began to race. She couldn’t pull her gaze away from the dark abyss of the empty eye socket. She leane
d closer, her heart in her throat-so dark, like the far reaches of coldest space. Her breath vaporized along the surface of the supremely serene, one-eyed Sphinx.
Impossible.
But she exhaled again-and again the coldness of the statue turned her breath to visible vapor.
She tilted her head slightly to one side, peering deeper into the empty socket. The stone was shot through with gold and gray flecks-and as she looked, noticing each cluster of flecks in the dark night of the eye socket…they seemed to move… in orbits. She blinked and leaned in closer, curious, enchanted… enthralled by the-
“No, Suzi. That’s not for you.” Con grasped the Sphinx by its head, covering the empty socket, and with his other hand, he relieved her of the crystalline eye and set it back into place.
She blinked, feeling a cold shiver trickle down her spine.
Oh, my.
Her phone rang again, and she turned to look at Con. He had the Sphinx in one of his large hands and her phone in the other.
“Go,” he said when he answered.
He listened for a moment, and as he listened, she watched his face turn very grim.
“Dylan Hart. I won’t forget.”
Good Lord, Dylan. The relief flooding through her was palpable. Dylan would be able to find her.
“How many?” Con asked.
She thought about calling something out, but all she could think was-
“Costa del Rey!” she hollered as loudly as she could.
“No,” Con said into the phone, giving her a very cold look.
It shut her up. She’d gotten her point across.
“If you hurt her in any way, I’ll hunt you down, Hart. You bring her back to me, the Toussi woman is yours. If not, you can pick up the pieces when I’m gone.”
And Conroy Farrel had most definitely gotten his point across.
Geezus. Dylan and Hawkins had snatched the girl. She had to get out of here. She couldn’t outrun Con, and she couldn’t outgun him, but there had to be a way.
“We have no deal, Hart, except for the women. Keep your distance.” He hung up the phone and put it back in her pack.
Keep your distance? Good God. Was it possible Dylan was just outside the compound? Suzi had no idea how long Scout had been missing. The girl could have driven into Ciudad del Este and gotten nabbed there for all she knew.
But her gut was telling her Dylan was close. That he and the boys had grabbed Scout right off her own front porch. That’s the way the guys worked-up close and personal.
Con had moved toward the open door onto the deck. He was looking out, and after a moment, gave her an order.
“Get over here.” He still had the Sphinx in his hand. “You’ve got a job to do. If you do it right, exactly the way I tell you to do it, and everything goes well, you’ll walk away from this.”
If not, she’d probably die-he didn’t have to spell it out. She could see the handwriting on the wall.
Holy crap.
He handed her the Sphinx when she stopped next to him.
“There’s a boat coming,” he said, pointing to the river, and when she looked, she could see it, a gunboat with a.50-caliber BMG mounted on it, which did nothing to calm her fears. “Erich Warner is on the boat, and he’s coming to buy the Sphinx.”
“That’s a lot of people on there.” And every one of them was armed with some kind of carbine slung over their shoulders. Holy gee-fricking-crap. There was only one way to spell firefight-B.A.D.I.D.E.A.
She did a quick look around at the interior of the house. Too many windows was her first thought.
“I… uh, need my pistol.”
“I’ll handle security and defense,” he said. “You just do as you’re told.”
Oh, man, she could have belted him for that. Doing as she was told had never been her strong suit.
“We’re going to let them make the first sortie. What I need is for Erich Warner to come off the boat. You’re going to make that happen for me.”
Oh, God. She clutched the Sphinx closer.
Down on the river, the boat was tying up at the dock, and a whole army of guys was getting off. Drug runners, that’s what she was seeing, somebody’s private paramilitary force-and then she saw Dax, right in the middle of all of them, with his own damn carbine slung over his shoulder.
For an instant, she doubted him.
And then she didn’t. She knew Dax Killian, and if he was working for Erich Warner, he was doing it for a reason. He’d been running his end of the Sphinx business like a military campaign, not like a collector. She knew his background. She knew what kind of man he was-the kind she wanted, the kind she needed, and so help her God, the kind of man she could fall in love with.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Well?” Hawkins asked, watching the house and compound through his rifle scope. Dylan had made his offer, trade Farrel’s girl for Suzi.
“He said he wouldn’t forget my name.”
“That’s a start.” He let out a short laugh. Geezus Kee-rist. “Have you decided whose side we’re on? It’s getting a little crowded down there.”
“We’re on Suzi’s side. Everyone else is fair game, including Farrel, if we can’t take control of him.”
“Fuck.” He hated this damn mission.
“Jungle Boy,” Dylan said into his radio. “Are you in position?”
“Affirmative.”
“If Conroy Farrel takes one step onto that deck, I want you to trank him.”
“Affirmative.”
Dylan put the radio back into a pocket on his tac vest and lifted his binoculars back to his eyes.
“Looks like the drug runners are sending Mr. Killian up to parlay.”
They both lay very quietly in the muck and the mud and the leaves, sunk into the landscape as invisibly as possible, watching the scene unfold.
“When Farrel is finished here, he’ll be ready to trade,” the boss said.
“Good. Then we can go back to square one and start all over. That’s good, Dylan.”
“Asshole.”
“I wanted to wrap this thing up in Bangkok last November. We practically had him.” Without a doubt, he and the boss had been at this for a while, tracking down Conroy Farrel.
“You seeing that?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah.” Dax had barely stepped foot on the deck before he stopped, bent down and picked something up, then turned around and headed back toward the two squads of paramilitary forces lined up on the dock.
“I wonder what that’s all about,” Dylan asked.
But Hawkins, hell, he figured they were going to find out soon enough.
Conroy Farrel was one tough customer, and the Memphis Sphinx was absofuckinglutely amazing, and Suzi was safe. Dax had caught sight of her standing just inside the door, the Sphinx in her hands, with Conroy standing in the shadows behind her.
Dax had hoped to get a lot closer to both of them, but Farrel had other plans. Actually, Conroy Farrel had only one plan-kill Erich Warner as expediently and with as little fanfare as possible.
That’s the way Dax would have done it, but he wouldn’t have put Suzi in the middle of it, and Farrel’s plan was deeply flawed in that respect.
Dax quickly crossed the stretch of empty ground between the house and the dock, wondering if Erich Warner wanted the Sphinx badly enough to abandon common sense, leave the boat, and go up to the house to get it.
Probably, he thought with disgust.
Warner would have the illusion of cover-heavy on the “illusion” part. The German could take as many of Vargas’s soldiers as he wanted, and he could take his little Oriental pit bull, Shoko, but Farrel had made it clear that the Sphinx wasn’t moving without Warner personally coming up and getting it.
Dax knew for a fact that Warner wouldn’t get anywhere near the house, let alone near the Sphinx. Conroy Farrel would drop him the instant he got a shot, which would be the exact instant Erich Warner poked his head out from under the canopy on the boat.
Dax knew,
because that’s the way he would have done it.
He made his way down the dock, through two squads of Vargas’s trained militants, and stepped into the boat. Vargas’s captain had remained on board, in charge of the craft.
“We’ve got a problem,” Dax said to Warner. Actually, Dax had more than one, but the German really only had one. “The dealer wants to talk with you personally.”
“Why?” Warner asked, showing a respectable amount of skepticism. “I can have the money transferred from here, she can check her accounts, and you bring me the statue. That’s the deal.”
It always came down to this-who had whom over the bigger barrel. On this deal, Dax figured it was a wash. Both men had already shown an obsessive amount of zeal for what they wanted.
“She wants to meet.”
Warner looked disgusted.
“Some woman named Suzi thinks she’s calling the shots here?” He said the name with such disdain that for a moment, Dax thought the man’s intelligence and instincts for survival would win out.
“Yes, sir.”
“She wants a million dollars for her statue, and she’s running out of time. Tell her I’ll make the transfer when she gives you the Sphinx.”
Behind the German, Shoko said something in Japanese, something bitchy, and Dax saw Warner’s mouth tighten.
“Shoko told me there was a woman involved. Call this dealer, tell her the terms of the original agreement are set.”
“Actually, sir, she wants to talk with you.” He handed Warner the radio Conroy had left for him on the deck.
Warner gave the thing a very skeptical look, then took it and keyed in the mike. “Yes,” he snapped. After a moment, his expression hardened. “Five million?”
Hardball on a losing game, Dax thought.
“I want to see it.”
Of course he did, and Dax needed to be somewhere else.
“Sir,” he interrupted, keeping his voice very low. Warner turned to him. “Tell her I’m coming up there to negotiate the terms of the meeting. You shouldn’t go in there cold.”
Warner dismissed him with a nod, probably having no intention of going up to the house, not if he could get what he wanted any other way, and he was a man used to getting his way.
