Breaking Loose

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Suzi had never dreamed in all her years that she would die in Paraguay, but the writing was on the wall. She’d made a tactical error, and she was going to die for it. She hadn’t been watching her back, and she’d been caught, attacked from behind by an exceptionally strong, crazed woman with far too many knives who had all but knocked her out and dragged her down and out of the house and thrown her in the bottom of the gunboat.

This was not going to go well, and she knew it, and once again, she was trapped in far too small a space with a dead body, two this time, Erich Warner’s being one of them, she presumed. The man’s clothes were exceedingly expensive, even by her standards, and he’d been shot in the dead center of his face by an expert marksman, and that would have been Conroy Farrel, whose sole purpose had been to kill the German crime lord. And the other dead guy was a Paraguayan homeboy, she would guess. In a new twist for the day, he hadn’t been shot. No, Suzi could see the crazed woman’s handiwork from one side of his throat to the other.

If she hadn’t been so scared, she would have been sick. There was blood everywhere, the bottom of the boat awash in it-the wasteful bitch.

The Asian woman was motoring them up the river, watching the shoreline, and Suzi knew exactly what she was looking for-an open space, a break in the trees where the moonlight could shine down on them. The ceremony for immortality was not that complicated-physical contact with the statue, glinting eyes, moonlight falling on the whole show-immortality. In Warner’s case, considering his state, which was dead, a few pints of fresh blood needed to be poured over the granite Sphinx, and that magic combination would bring him back to life-resurrection.

The Asian Queen here obviously knew all of this, and Suzi didn’t have to work too hard to see what part she played in the drama-blood donor. It was ridiculous. There was a perfectly fresh extra corpse lying in the bottom of the boat, and considering the time frame they were working with, if Knife Girl hadn’t let it all run out of him, the captain’s blood would have been more than fresh enough to suffice.

But no. The bitch had miscalculated, and in Suzi’s opinion, was getting ready to miscalculate again.

Much to her surprise, and her chagrin, Suzi had lost one of the rock-crystal eyes out of the statue. Somewhere on her run, from when she’d grabbed the Sphinx off the kitchen table until Psycho Girl had coldcocked her, she’d lost the left eye, the one she’d taken out earlier but had seen Conroy Farrel put back in. It must have fallen out while she’d been running around the house with the statue, before she’d had the sense to put it back in the gray pack.

And now she was paying for her lapse in logic.

She had a good-sized bruise forming on the side of her face. She could feel it, and it hurt like hell, but she had always supposed it would hurt to be pistol-whipped. It had knocked her out cold for a while-again, dammit-and she’d come around handcuffed to the boat, with the woman frisking her with a knife, cutting her pockets, ripping seams, obviously looking for the damn eye. She’d been cut a dozen times, small nicks and a couple of deeper cuts that all stung like hell and scared her spitless.

So, great, another crappy day of being terrified and run ragged.

This job had been unlike any job General Grant had ever sent her on-and if she wanted another, so help her God, she needed to step up. Buck Grant wanted the Memphis Sphinx, and come hell, high water, and one crazed psycho bitch, she’d gotten it. She’d won. Hands down. The Memphis Sphinx was lying right there in front of her, cushioned on the backpack and a greasy rag laid inside a box of tools.

Most of it anyway.

But not enough of it. Not in her opinion. To lose her life over a ceremony whose odds of succeeding had just dropped from “highly unlikely, babe” to “no way in hell, bitch” was untenable.

She did have a plan. It was covered in blood, but it was there in the bottom of the boat, the dead Paraguayan’s pistol. All she needed to do was free herself from the handcuffs, move like a lightning bolt, wrestle the pistol out of the bloody holster belted onto the dead guy’s waist, and shoot the black-haired beauty as many times as she possibly could.

Piece of cake.

But she’d had that plan for the last half an hour or so and was still handcuffed to the boat, and then suddenly she ran out of time. Just like that. The river widened, the sky opened up on a grassy inlet, and the bitch slowed the gunboat down.

“This party is over,” Creed said into his radio. The woman in the gunboat had disappeared up the river, taking her.50-caliber gun with her before he’d gotten within range.

He’d lost sight of Dax in the fighting but had to consider that Suzi might still be here somewhere, and the quicker he and Zach found her, the better, and if he found Conroy Farrel, even better.

There’d been some casualties. He didn’t know whose fight this had actually been, or what everybody had been fighting over, except the Sphinx thing, but a lot of boys had died for it-the man in the boat, the captain, four guys here in the compound, and he was betting a few more over on the other side of the house, down by the dock. The house looked like it had been severely damaged-just about every window was shattered, and part of the deck had been blown off.

The sun was falling fast now, the light was low, but the fight was over. He and Zach ran across the compound without meeting any resistance.

“You take the main floor,” he said to Zach. “I’ll check the boathouse.” Or cave, such as it was. They’d all seen the big iron gate covering the opening onto the river.

It was dark going down the stairs, with only the faintest light coming up from below. He could hear the river running and smell the water.

He had his carbine safety off, his finger on the trigger, and step by silent step, he went down the stairs. He had a tac light on his weapon, but he would save it until he thought he had a target. He was good in the dark, the best, so there was no reason to give his position away.

He stopped on the last step, his hackles rising, a warning shooting straight up his spine. He wasn’t alone down here.

The man came from out of nowhere, from out of the darkness with a speed Creed couldn’t counter. The first hit had them both grappling on the dock, and Creed quickly realized that he wasn’t in a fight. He was in a death match, and it was his death. The guy on top of him who had him in his grip was unbelievably strong, and he meant unfuckingbelievably strong. Creed could bench three hundred pounds all day long, and he couldn’t budge this guy. Geezus. Dying in fucking Paraguay.

The guy had knocked his carbine off to the side, and it was tangling him up in its sling, making it hard to get to a knife, and then the guy just stopped, went completely mannequin on top of him, and the longer the guy held him down, pressing him into the dock, making it impossible for him to move, the better look he got at the guy’s face-and he knew the guy was looking at him, too. He could feel it in the slightest lightening of his hold, he heard it in the catch of the guy’s breath, and everything he felt, and saw, and heard, fueled an anger so deep, it gave him strength he hadn’t known he possessed.

In one mighty lunge, he upset the balance of the guy’s hold, and they were grappling again. He’d seen it, the sonuvabitch. He knew. A flash of the truth had been in the man’s eyes, and Creed was going to kill him. The betrayal was an abomination.

J.T.

My God, he’d died a thousand deaths in his heart, endured a thousand nights of shame for not being able to save his partner, his friend, and J.T. was here.

Creed was going to kill him.

His rage was boundless, like the opening of a floodgate.

And in an instant it didn’t matter. The guy landed one blow, and Creed’s lights went out in a burst of agony.