Breaking Loose

CHAPTER EIGHT

Well, another new low, Suzi thought, glancing around the lobby of the Posada Plaza. If the entrance to the Old Gallery had been the dumpiest, dirtiest, most squalid place she’d ever seen in her life, what with the mounds of garbage that seemed to simply pile up and spill over everywhere in Ciudad del Este, then the lobby of the Posada Plaza was the dumpiest, dirtiest, most squalid place she’d ever actually been inside.

Hands down.

The smell alone was a physical assault. She didn’t want to even begin to know what mix of jungle rot and bodily fluids it took to make that smell.

Fortunately, she was a professional. She had a job to do, and she wasn’t going to be dissuaded by…a small cough escaped her. Then another.

Good God.

“This is the worst of it,” he assured her, taking her arm again when she turned toward the elevators. “We’re taking the stairs, remember?”

The stairs, of course. She glanced back at the lifts and saw two rough-looking women, very rough looking. Then she realized Marcella and Marceline weren’t women.

One of the “girls,” the shorter, younger one with a Joan Jett hairstyle, smiled shyly and waggled her fingers in a hello.

It was sweet, unexpected, and Suzi automatically lifted her hand in return, giving the girl a wave.

“Don’t get too attached,” he said next to her, and she gave him a droll glance.

“It’s just girls being girls, sisters under the skin and all that.”

“Sisters.” He let out a short laugh. “Right.”

Her gaze slid over the two “women” again. Transvestite tag team, Latin style-oh, yes, she was staying the hell out of the elevators. As a matter of fact, professional or not, job to do or not, she wished she’d stayed the hell out of the Posada Plaza. It reeked.

Fortunately, after the first landing, the air did seem to clear a bit.

“So you know Superman,” he said.

“Christian Hawkins, yes.” And, good Lord, Dax Killian-she still could hardly believe it, and what in the hell had happened back there with the police? God, her job had just gotten so much harder.

They made the second floor, headed up toward the third, and she started breathing a little easier.

“And Creed? You dated him, too, right?”

Dated?

Too?

She shot him a quick glance. What in the world?

“Everybody dates somebody sometime. My social life is hardly the issue here.”

“Did you ever go out with Dylan?”

She wasn’t going to answer that.

“I’ll take that as a yes, and frankly, I’m surprised. He doesn’t seem like your type.”

As if he would know her type. They’d hardly exchanged a hundred words the night they’d met at the gallery.

“How about Quinn?” he asked.

Twice.

And Dylan once-the boss really hadn’t been her type.

“My point,” she began, thoroughly annoyed and trying not to let it show, “was that I know quite a bit about you, Mr. Killian, and in case you missed it, the issue we’re currently dealing with is what you’re doing here. This thing with Remy Beranger isn’t your kind of gig.”

“No?”

“No. Besides the normal course of your investigations, what you and Esmee specialize in is recovering fine art, paintings in particular, not the kind of catchall crap Beranger shills.”

“I didn’t notice you specializing in catchall crap, either.”

He had a point.

“I’m here for a client.”

“The congressman from Illinois?”

She nearly stumbled on the stairs, but he caught her, his hand almost instantly wrapping around her upper arm, steadying her.

“Uh, thank you.” Good God. He couldn’t possibly know about the congressman from Illinois, because there was no congressman from Illinois. She and Grant had concocted the story between them just last night. No one else even knew about their plan.

Except the guy they were squeezing with it, Jimmy Ruiz, and, obviously, Daniel Axel Killian, which led her straight to the question of How in the hell?

“Are you okay?” Killian asked, very solicitous.

“Yes, quite, thank you.” Dammit. Jimmy must have told him what was going on, which meant they were partners.

Cripes. She hadn’t seen that coming.

“My room is just down the hall,” he said, when they reached the fifth floor. “I’ve got a balcony with a pretty good view of the gallery.”

“How…uh, convenient.” Of course a tactical genius with Killian’s reputation would have picked an operating base where he could keep a watch on things.

“Hopefully, we’ll be able to see if the cops are still at Beranger’s, and what they’re doing.”

“Good.” Great. Wonderful. Crap. Ruiz and Killian, now there was a match to ruin her day and put her back up against a wall.

Dammit. The Memphis Sphinx was hers. She was finding it tonight, calling in Dylan and whoever was with him to steal it, and she was personally going to be there when the damn thing landed on Buck Grant’s desk.

They stopped at the door to room 519, and Suzi’s phone rang from inside her purse.

She pulled it out and answered, “Yes.”

“Do you know who this is?” a man’s voice said.

Well, well, well, she thought. As a matter of fact she did know who it was.

“Yes.”

“I have what you want.”

And that would certainly work for her. That would work very well, indeed. She glanced at Killian, and he was busy getting the key in the lock, but she didn’t doubt for a second that he was hanging on her every word.

“Are you sure you know what that is?”

The caller let out a short laugh. “Everybody in Ciudad del Este wants what you want, starting with Esteban Ponce and Levi Asher, the men at Remy Beranger’s this afternoon.”

Okay, they were definitely on the same page.

“Meet me at your hotel in an hour,” he said.

“Certainly.”

“I want cash, U.S. dollars, five hundred thousand, and guarantees.”

“Yes.” Fat chance. She wasn’t authorized to grant guarantees, and Grant hadn’t sent her down here with half a million in cash, but she knew how to work an antiquities deal long enough to get what she needed out of it-money or no money.

“One hour.” The call ended, and when she looked up, Killian was looking at her.

“Anybody I know?” he asked, opening the door.

“No.” She shook her head, allowing herself a small measure of relief, very small. No deal was done until Grant said “Good,” but this one at least wasn’t dead in the water, not yet.

He finished jimmying his key out of the lock, and then, without missing a beat, took the phone out of her hand.

She started to bluster, but even one look was enough for him to see Jimmy’s number, and with one press of a key, he was dialing it.

She could shoot him, but somehow she thought, in the long run at least, that wasn’t to her advantage.

Short run was up for grabs.

Dammit. She hoped Jimmy was smart enough not to answer with a full introduction, or to have left his name on his voice mail. She’d be back to square one in a damn hurry either way.

After a moment, with the phone to his ear, Dax said, “Quién es este?”

And not so surprisingly, it looked like Jimmy hung up on him.

“Happy now?”

He didn’t answer her question, and she gave up with an annoyed sigh when she realized he was putting a number into the phone’s memory.

“Ciudad del Este is a rough town,” he said, punching the last few keys. “If you get into any more trouble while you’re here, call me. Okay?” He handed the phone back to her, and after a moment, she took it and dropped it back in her purse.

“Okay.” Fat chance. She was back in play with a fairly strong hand, and apparently Killian wasn’t in cahoots with half the black-market miscreants she was up against, not with Jimmy Ruiz calling and offering to sell the Sphinx to her. She’d be out of this hellhole long before she got into any more trouble.

She discreetly checked her watch. She had one hour to get her butt back over to the Gran Chaco.

“After you,” he gestured for her to precede him inside, and with just the slightest hesitation, she led the way. A couple of questions wouldn’t be amiss, especially if she got a couple of answers, maybe add a little chitchat, sort of an “imagine running into you in Paraguay” thing, and she was out of here. She wasn’t looking for help on this deal, or, God forbid, a partner, no matter how many people she and Dax Killian both knew. She worked better alone.

Story of my life, she thought, looking around his room. It was huge, the ceilings at least twelve feet high, the wood floor wide-planked and much used and abused. There were two windows, one on each side of the shutter-type wooden doors leading to the balcony, and one of them was open, just like he’d promised. The other looked painted shut. The room was a dump, but it was kind of an exotic dump, with a big bed covered in muted gold, rose, and sage green bedding-sheets and blankets.

O-kay, she thought, so much for the bed. She checked to the right, and sure enough, there was the promised hot plate sitting on a dresser. She bet he was having a lot of fun with that. She also noted an ice bucket, a couple of fruity-looking bottled soft drinks, a computer up and running on a table with a pair of binoculars close by, a medium-sized duffel bag and a telephone on a console next to the bed, and an olive drab backpack with extra pouches on the outside sitting next to the duffel.

“How do you keep the elevator girls and the desk clerk from coming in here and stealing your stuff?” she asked.

In answer, he lifted his left hand and rubbed his thumb back and forth over the tips of his finger. Money, she got it.

“Go ahead and have a seat,” he said, walking over and tapping a few keys on his laptop. She looked around one more time. She could sit on the bed-not likely. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat on a man’s bed, or had one sitting on hers, or doing anything else on hers-and now was not the time to be trying to remember. Or she could squeeze by him and sit at the table where he had his computer set up. Or she could do what she darn well liked, which was stand.

“I’m fine. This won’t take long,” she said, taking charge and setting the tone.

He glanced back at her from where he’d been watching the computer screen and smiled as if he knew exactly what she was trying to do.

Actually, there was no “try” about it. She was doing it, and she told him so with a return smile-a small smile, a smile that said he needn’t bother to get too friendly. This little association they’d had for the last fifteen to twenty minutes or so was just about ready to come to an end.

“So how did you know about the congressman?” she asked. Now that she knew it hadn’t been Jimmy Ruiz telling him, she was damned curious. She was also damned impressed with Ruiz. While Remy Beranger had been pleading with the police, and she’d been getting the hell out of Dodge, Jimmy had snatched the prize.

“I heard you tell Beranger, when you were inside the gallery,” he said. The computer beeped, and he turned his attention back to the screen and tapped a couple more keys before picking up the binoculars and heading toward the balcony. “I bugged the place yesterday morning.”

Okay, now she was impressed.

He opened the wooden doors but didn’t step outside. Instead, he checked the streets from the shadowy safety of the room.

While he looked over the City of the East, she looked him over, letting her gaze drop down the length of him, then wishing she hadn’t. He was trouble of the worst kind, even dressed in a pair of baggy khaki pants and a nondescript shirt. His clothes were sloppy, but he was built like a slab of granite underneath them. Geezo cripes. He was standing on the edge of the light, doing nothing more than holding the set of optics up to his eyes, and his flexed arms were literally roped with muscle. It was enough to make a girl’s throat go dry, if a girl were exceedingly foolish, which, luckily, she wasn’t. He was in good shape, that was all, incredibly good shape, just like all the operators she knew, the ones whose lives depended on them always being smarter, faster, stronger every time, all the time. His face was boyish, despite the hardened edges of his features, but no one would ever mistake him for a boy, not in any sense. She’d memorized his résumé, and every hard-won year showed in the way he held himself, in the way he moved.

“I also heard you tell Beranger that the congressman was interested in acquiring a rare and powerful artifact,” he continued, scanning the market through his binoculars. “Something not necessarily Incan in origin, you said, which this week, in this city, means a piece of ancient Near East statuary from the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom known as the Memphis Sphinx.”

Well. She took a breath and let it out.

Walking over to the open balcony door, she pulled a small pair of binoculars out of her purse. When she stopped just off his left side, she set them to her eyes.

Well, she thought again. She hadn’t expected that, to have everything just thrown out on the table. She certainly wasn’t planning on spilling her guts; she never did.

Not ever.

Not to anyone.

Looked like a bit of a commotion over at the gallery, she decided, like maybe the police had scared everybody off and now even they were leaving. No problema for her. The gallery was old news. This thing was going down at the Gran Chaco.

“And what I want to know is the name of your congressman,” he said, lowering the binoculars, then doing a small double take when he realized how close she was. “Got your own glass.”

“Everywhere I go,” she said, lowering her binoculars and meeting his gaze.

He cleared his throat and headed back to the computer. “What I want to know is how you got involved in this situation, and how long it’s going to take you to pack up your things and get back on a plane, because this deal, Ms. Toussi”-he finished a series of keystrokes and turned back around with an “I’m telling you this for your own good” expression on his face, a very guy-type expression-”this deal has very damn little to do with art, and a whole lot to do with the kind of people you shouldn’t let get within a hundred miles of wherever you’re at. This isn’t a sortie to San Francisco, or a Sotheby’s auction. This is nothing but bad news full of the kind of cutthroats who actually cut throats.”

Great soliloquy, she thought, really great, but not precisely correct. Levi Asher was a Grade-A cutthroat, true, but only in the financial sense. The pompous little pervert squirreled his way through the art world, wheeling and dealing and throwing his weight around to get what he wanted, and he usually succeeded. He had his failings and foibles, mostly sexual, but he’d never cut a throat. Suzi would bet her favorite Nikki McKinney angel on it-and she wasn’t parting with her Christian Hawkins dark angel painting for love or money.

Esteban Ponce hadn’t cut any throats either, not that were on the record. His father, Arturo, was a different story, but Arturo Ponce had far better things to do with his time than chase around after the ancient artifacts of a four-thousand-year-old religion, unlike his son, who didn’t have anything better to do than juggle his numerous girlfriends and distract himself with occult objects.

As for Remy Beranger, he didn’t look strong enough to cut the strings on a kite, let alone a throat, and Jimmy Ruiz, arguably the most criminal guy in the group, was sitting in the palm of her hand, held in place by a shot at five hundred thousand dollars and a threat the U.S. government wouldn’t hesitate to deliver on if he didn’t hold up his end of the bargain.

No, she wasn’t down here dealing with cutthroats.

But maybe Dax Killian was.

She ran her gaze over him and the room again.

There was definitely evidence of a holster under his right arm, a band of leather she caught a glimpse of running over the shoulder of his T-shirt and under his other shirt, and the large duffel bag on the console appeared to have gear in it rather than clothing. The sides of the bag were poked out in places, and upon closer inspection, the curved edge of metal she saw in one of the outside pouches on his backpack could be a thirty-round magazine, like one used for an AR-15.

Wonderful.

The man was well armed, after the Memphis Sphinx, and wanted her out of his way. Fine. She could accommodate that request.

“Cutthroats?” she said, letting the first thread of doubt slip into her voice, readying him for the boatload of disinformation heading his way. She didn’t need him thinking about her or what she was up to from here on out. She wanted him to think she was out of the picture. “I was sent down here to complete the transaction on an antiquities deal. Skip didn’t mention anything about cutthroats.”

“Skip?” he repeated. “You mean Lester “Skip” Leonard? He’s your client?”

“Yes.” She nodded, and my oh my, he certainly hadn’t disappointed her with picking up on the Illinois politician’s name. There were two “Skips” in Congress. The other was a representative from New Hampshire. “He made all the arrangements, set up the deal. My job was to meet with Remy Beranger and verify the authenticity of the statue. If Beranger is selling the real thing, then I call Skip, and funds are released into Beranger’s account.”

“And you take the statue with you back to Illinois?”

“Well…yes,” she said, standing up a little straighter, looking like a woman who was back on firm ground, like she knew exactly what she was doing-and knew what she was doing wasn’t exactly right.

“Skip Leonard should have known better than to send a woman down here.” He voiced the opinion as cold fact. “Especially after contraband.”

Suzi had a talent, a small one, for blushing on cue. She did it now. Looking him straight in the eye, she braved her way through his icy accusation, while letting a soft wash of color bloom on her cheeks as a clear admission of guilt.

Yes, she was silently telling him, I know I’m skirting the edge of the law here.

Aloud, she brazenly played the party line. “We’re doing the world a favor.” Screw contraband. “I only wish I’d gotten here earlier. You saw what happened back there. Nothing is sacred to these people. A piece as important as the Maned Sphinx of Sesostris III should be in more capable hands-hands capable of keeping it safe. I’m on a rescue mission here, Mr. Killian.”

Both of his eyebrows lifted, letting her know he’d heard that line before-probably dozens of times in dozens of places. It wasn’t an original defense, far from it.

“I’m sure you are,” he said, but in a way that called her a liar.

She couldn’t fault him for that. She was lying through her teeth.

“If you know anything about me, you know my reputation. It’s impeccable.” At least in the art world. Among a certain contingent of her ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends, the words “high maintenance” and “coldhearted” were bandied about with damning regularity. She couldn’t fault them, not really. If she could have frozen her heart solid, she would have done it in a nanosecond and never, ever looked back. Hearts broke. Sometimes in ways that couldn’t ever be put back together.

“On all counts,” he agreed.

“So who are you working for?” That’s what General Grant and the DIA would want to know-who the hell else was in on this game?

“Myself.”

“Interesting.” And as much a lie as half of what she’d been feeding him. She glanced around the room again and let out a brief sigh before bringing her gaze back to him. She didn’t have to look at her watch to know it was time to go. “You’re right. I didn’t sign on to this deal to get shot at or to get involved with the police. It was supposed to be a straightforward authentication and pickup job. I get to keep my retainer whether I deliver the Sphinx or not. I’ll miss out on the commission, of course, but quite honestly, I didn’t expect this place, Ciudad del Este. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Except for the dozen or more times she’d been to Eastern Europe these last five years, since Christian Hawkins had taken her under his wing and told her he had a use for her.

That’s what Christian did, find a use for people, and if they were broken, he put them back together. She’d seen it work. Personally, she didn’t think she would live long enough for Superman’s magic to take hold on her. But she was still here, still on the planet, and she had a job to do. It kept her going.

“I have,” he said, “and these kinds of cities don’t improve over time. You’re not safe here, especially down in the market, trying to do business with the likes of Remy Beranger.”

She conceded the fact with a short nod of her head.

“Do you mind if I call myself a cab?” she said, walking over to the phone on the console, not waiting for him to answer.

“That won’t be necessary. I’ll take you.”

“No,” she said, picking up the receiver and dialing the front desk. “I appreciate your help at the gallery, but I can handle the rest of this. I can get myself back to the hotel.”

“Not just your hotel,” he said. “All the way home.”

She glanced over at him, the receiver to her ear, and he was giving her “the look,” the look men gave women who they thought needed a little help in their decision-making process.

It took an effort of will not to roll her eyes, but she managed.

“All those guys I dated from Steele Street?” she said. “They made sure I could take care of myself. Don’t worry, Mr. Killian, I can get myself home.”

For once, he looked satisfied with her answer.

“Senator Leonard, right?” he asked.

She nodded, and he smiled-like a wolf. And she noted, with all due respect, that there was nothing in that look that made her want to roll her eyes. Quite the contrary. No doubt, Skip Leonard was in for a very interesting conversation somewhere down the line.

“Yes,” she said into the phone when the clerk answered. “I need a…oh… un momento, por favor.” She handed him the phone, having used up her whole supply of Spanish. “This isn’t the Gran Chaco.”

At the Gran Chaco, the desk clerks spoke English, or at least a version of English that included limo service.

It took Killian about ten seconds to arrange her cab, before he hung up. “I’ll walk you down.”

“Thank you.” It didn’t hurt to be polite, and it didn’t matter if he put her in the cab, as long as he wasn’t going with her. “Curious, wasn’t it? The police showing up like that? I hope to God they didn’t actually shoot anybody.”

“Probably just a shakedown,” he said, opening the door for her, and when she was through, he locked it back up behind them. “They’ve got to make their lunch money somehow. I may just mosey over there, see what the damages are.”

“You mean see if there’s still a deal.” That’s what she would have done, if the deal weren’t already headed her way.

He just smiled, that slow wolfish smile, and she smiled back, a sweet and easy curve of her lips.