Breaking Loose

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

All Suzi wanted was to get the hell out of Ciudad del Este, but from what she was looking at, she wasn’t going to be getting what she wanted anytime soon.

Jimmy Ruiz must think she was a total idiot.

“Twelfth Dynasty, you say?” She looked up from the “Memphis Sphinx” he’d set on the coffee table in her suite, the one he’d taken out of a padded leather bag and carefully arranged next to a thick stack of papers he’d also taken out of the bag. For the record, he looked like hell, even more frazzled than when she’d last seen him at the gallery.

For the record, she knew she didn’t look much better. She’d torn her skirt, lost a button off her jacket, and scratched her face, up high on her cheek, all while getting out of the gallery window. She’d also broken a nail and had barely had time to wash God knew what off her feet before Ruiz had come knocking on her door.

“That must make it…how old?” she asked.

Her beautiful peep-toe pumps, needless to say, had been ruined by their immersion in Paraguayan garbage. She’d lost her hat, and her hair had all but completely fallen out of her French twist.

She felt absolutely straggly. Cripes.

“Hundreds and hundreds of years old,” the young man said with amazingly misplaced confidence.

Try four thousand years old, she thought, refraining from a weary sigh. She’d had a long day, coming off a long night and a long flight, and for a few brief moments, before Ruiz had unveiled his fake statue, she’d hoped her job here was done, and not only done, but done exceptionally well. She wouldn’t have simply located the darn Sphinx, she would have had it in hand, saving Dylan, and Hawkins, and any other wild boy down here running around Paraguay the trouble of stealing it, and from what Dylan had told her when he’d contacted her this morning, she knew there were a couple extra SDF boys in country and headed her way, maybe already in the city, and it was a good chance the two of them would be tagged for the snatch-if she could verify the Sphinx’s location.

Which she had not done.

Dammit.

So much for her moment of mission glory. Ruiz’s fake had sealed her fate. She was doomed to at least one night in Ciudad del Este, and from what she’d seen so far, that was about as sketchy a situation as she’d ever encountered. She was damn glad to have a 9mm. Ruiz at least hadn’t let her down in that department.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, looking at the statue, and that was the truth. The artful amalgamation of plaster, composite something-or-another, paint, and plastic was very sleek, very well executed-except for the flat-out dead giveaway of the bottom of the statue. Anyone who turned it upside down was bound to notice the letters and numbers written in black marker on an unpainted patch of white plaster on the base. This one said GV 3/5, which she was sure meant that Galeria Viejo had ordered five of these babies made. She had to admit that the blue stamp of the Great Sphinx of Giza next to the numbers made the whole thing look very official-if four thousand years ago Sesostris III had commissioned a plaster sphinx.

He had not.

The legend of the Memphis Sphinx, and Howard Carter’s notes, distinctly described a granite statue.

Granite. Not plaster.

“You have the money?” Ruiz asked.

God, he really did think she was an idiot.

“Half a million American? Right?”

“Así es. This is correct.”

“It can be arranged.” Not that she was going to bother. “I’ll need a couple of days to authenticate the statue, and also a bank account for the deposit.”

“No,” he said adamantly, shaking his head and leaning over to pick up the papers he’d laid on the table next to the Sphinx. “No. There is no time for waiting. The documents for the statue are all in order, and the money, it can be transferred through my cambista. Everything inmediatamente.“

He handed the papers over with a small lift of his head, as if to say, Read them, read them now. This is all very perfect.

She accepted the documents with a brief smile and quickly glanced through them, duly noting that they appeared very authentic, very official, complete with tea-stained edges and lots of rubber stampings in various colors of ink. He and Beranger must have been busy as a couple of beavers getting their scam together.

And Ruiz’s plan with the cambista, well, that would definitely speed things up, to use the underworld freeway of cash transactions. Bags of cash given to a cambista entered the cambio pipeline in one country and, with a few phone calls, would be matched by the same amount of cash in another country, minus a sizable commission.

“I don’t believe the congressman will be willing to deal with…” Hmmm, with a moment’s reflection, she revised her original thought of a bottom-feeding, scum-sucking, money-laundering lowlife to something with a bit more cachet. “With anyone who might be running afoul of the law. He wants the Sphinx, not a scandal.”

She also didn’t know where in the world Ruiz thought a United States congressman would come up with half a million dollars in cash inmediatamente. That kind of money was always dirty.

He looked at her with a dubious expression on his face, as if he couldn’t believe whom he’d been stuck with on this deal.

She knew the feeling.

“You do know that this statue is worthless after Sunday night?” he asked.

Actually, the statue on the coffee table was worthless now, despite the little batch of provenance papers he’d given her, but she went ahead and nodded. “Yes, I understand that some people believe a certain alignment of cosmic forces on Sunday night can be channeled through the Sphinx.”

“And you don’t believe?” For the first time since they’d met at lunch, he sounded impressed.

“I believe in acquiring for my clients whatever they hire me to find, Señor Ruiz, and I let them believe whatever they want, as long as I get my cut of the deal.”

He held her gaze for a long moment, and she could practically see the gears turning in his mind.

“I have the same beliefs, Señora Royal,” he finally said. “And I have a lot of connections for finding these sorts of mystical objects.”

She just bet he did-starting with Remy Beranger and whoever had manufactured the knock-off Sphinx sitting on her table.

“What I no longer have is a partner with connections to buyers in the United States.”

Well, that was damned interesting. General Grant hadn’t mentioned that the U.S. Treasury agent currently in custody for tax evasion and treason had also been hustling antiquities-talk about a mixed bag of felonies.

“Perhaps if we can negotiate an…arrangement,” he concluded.

An arrangement. Sure. She could do that, if it enabled her current mission to go forward to a satisfactory conclusion-which it just might. She sure as hell didn’t have the Memphis Sphinx yet, and all signs pointed to the real thing being in this damn town somewhere, despite the fake Ruiz had delivered.

“An arrangement could be negotiated,” she said.

“Then you should call your congressman. I can give you the name of someone he can deal with in Illinois, someone who can accept the cash. Chicago or Springfield, his choice.”

She shouldn’t have been surprised. Given the size of the world’s black-market economy, which was huge, every state in the Union was probably knee-deep in cambistas shoveling drug money in and out of the country, and her getting the name of one of them from Jimmy Ruiz was not such a bad idea. Half of what she always got for General Grant was somebody’s name, but Jimmy Ruiz getting any money simply wasn’t going to happen. She could make a phone call, though. She could always make a phone call.

She walked over to the suite’s bar to get her cell phone out of her purse, when the room phone rang, its soft beep and discreet blinking giving her a moment’s pause.

Present company excluded, to her knowledge, only four people knew where she was: whoever was manning the front desk at the Gran Chaco, General Grant and Dylan Hart, neither of whom would be calling her on the hotel phone, and the man who had put her in the cab in front of the Posada Plaza.

Dammit.

“Excuse me,” she said to Ruiz.

Taking her purse with her, she walked past him and the Sphinx to take the call more privately in the suite’s bedroom. She closed the heavy doors behind her and threw the bolt before going over to the bedside table to answer the phone.

“Yes?”

“Señora Royal,” a softly spoken, very officious man said. “This is Rodrigo at the front desk. A reporter from The Daily Inquirer is here to interview you. Should I have the guards pass him through?”

A discomfiting mix of curiosity and alarm held her firmly in place-a reporter? Here in Ciudad del Este? She couldn’t possibly have screwed up that badly.

For one, she hadn’t had time to screw up that badly. She’d only left Washington late last night. She hadn’t even been gone twenty-four hours yet.

“Oh…ah, yes, the interview, I’d almost forgotten,” she said, stalling for a moment, thinking. “Tell me, Rodrigo, what is the reporter’s name again?”

“Danny Kane, señora. He said to remind you that the interview was arranged through a Señor Duffy in Denver, Colorado, the United States. The guards have him detained at the main gate. Should I have them pass him through?”

Danny Kane, Dax Killian-the names were fairly obvious, and if they weren’t enough to clue her in, Duffy in Denver sealed the deal. Duffy’s had been the bar where she and Dax had almost had a date six months ago. So what in the world was he up to, and what did she want to do here? He’d been on his way to see Beranger, hoping to score the Memphis Sphinx, at the same time that she’d been zipping back to the Gran Chaco, hoping to score the same damn thing.

Was it possible that he’d gotten lucky, while she’d tanked? If so, why come to see her?

No, she decided. If he’d gotten the Sphinx, he wouldn’t be here-that’s what the smart money said.

And if she’d gotten it, she’d be on her way out, too, one way or the other. So the question became-

“Señora?”

No question at all, she decided. If Killian had dragged his butt all the way out to the Gran Chaco to see her after seeing Beranger, she wanted to know why.

She checked her watch. She had at least ten minutes before he would get through the mandatory vehicle search. Explosives-that’s what the armed guards were looking for, which said plenty about Ciudad del Este.

“Yes, Rodrigo,” she said. “Have the guards pass him through, and call me when he arrives at the lobby.”

“Sí, señora.”

She ended the call and dialed another number. When the phone was answered, she keyed in a code and waited until General Grant’s machine picked up.

“Hi, Buck. This is Suzi. The party was a disaster. We got raided by the police. No confirmation on the item. Others in attendance were Levi Asher and Esteban Ponce, both of whom were on the guest list you gave me, so the intel is good. The guy who wasn’t on the list used to be one of yours, in a manner of speaking, Daniel Axel Killian. Check that out for me, will you? What’s Dax Killian doing here? I’ll call when I have more.”

She hung up the phone and headed into the bathroom, her mission clear-get rid of Jimmy Ruiz and his fake Sphinx, but keep him dangling, in case it turned out she needed him for something, like to help her set up a meeting with Esteban Ponce. She could find Levi Asher on her own. He was never more than a couple of phone calls away. Ponce, on the other hand, could easily be holed up at some local hacienda or estancia, or at someone’s big house near the country club.

In the bathroom, she quickly stripped out of her ruined suit and slipped into a pair of olive green cargo pants and a white T-shirt with her shoulder holster fitted snugly over the top. She finished the outfit with a black camp shirt printed with white and yellow orchids to conceal and camouflage the pistol and holster rig. The RFID scanner went into a pocket on her pants, along with her phone, some cash, and her identification. A few other necessities came out of her purse and went into a canvas fanny pack she buckled around her waist. Then she pulled a pair of low-heeled, brown leather boots out of the satchel.

With her boots tied, she was ready to face whatever the night brought on, including Dax Killian, she hoped.

Dinner in Denver?

And in the middle of a top secret mission she’d said yes? Good Lord, she didn’t know what in the world either of them had been thinking, or at least she wasn’t about to admit to anything, not even the obvious, not here.

A couple minutes later, when she opened the doors from the bedroom to the living room, ready to shoo Jimmy Ruiz out of her suite, she realized she’d been wrong about the night ahead, dead wrong-and Jimmy had not been fast enough.

He’d been shot, over and over again.

There was blood everywhere.

She clenched the doorknob, her knuckles white, her pulse suddenly pounding, her gaze riveted to the body on the floor for a long, endless, gut-wrenching moment before her brain and her training kicked in.

Geezus. Sweet geezus. She took a breath and drew her pistol, and began clearing the suite, just like Superman had taught her, starting with the bar area and moving to the patio. Coming back through the living room, she avoided looking at Jimmy and walked to the main door. It had been left open, and she quickly checked the veranda overlooking the lobby. It was empty. Whoever had killed Ruiz was gone.

They’d also stolen the Sphinx.

Geezus. She looked back toward the body and felt her breath catch in her throat, felt her chest tighten. Jimmy Ruiz had been killed for a hunk of plaster, shot multiple times in the torso-and the whole game had changed.

She started to close the door, then stopped with it still partway open. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t close herself in a room with a massacred body lying in a pool of blood. Not even Christian Hawkins, Superman, could teach her how to do that.

Good God. A wave of heat rose in her face, and she felt an edge of panic skitter across the base of her brain. Sweat broke out on her upper lip.

She took a breath, then another.

Jimmy Ruiz.

Dead. He was so still, so torn up, lying there with his blood and his insides spilling out of him, his blank eyes staring off into nothing.

He had a gun, and he’d drawn it, but he hadn’t used it. The.45 lying next to him on the floor didn’t have a silencer, and if he’d gotten a shot off, she would have heard it, even in the bathroom behind two sets of closed doors. The deed had been fast and effective, and she hadn’t heard a damn thing, no struggle, no cry for help, no shots, which meant that whoever had killed him had been using a suppressed weapon, and to her that meant one thing-professional killer, somebody who killed as part of their job or for hire, a gangster or somebody’s thug, which was just about everyone in the whole goddamn country.

She honest to God didn’t think it had been Dax Killian, and yet… and yet she knew he was more than capable of killing as brutally as necessary. He’d been trained for violence of a very high order. He was one of the world’s warriors, the one in a hundred who ruled in combat, the one in a hundred who did what had to be done-dispassionately, professionally.

But this wasn’t combat.

At least it hadn’t been until now.

So help me…so help me, God. Her gun hand started to shake, and her breath grew shorter, and she stood there, second after second, frozen in place, looking at Jimmy, at what was left of him.

It had been a long time since she’d seen a dead body, but not long enough. It would never be long enough.

Oh, Christ, please. She couldn’t do this.

A sob left her, and she clamped her mouth shut, holding everything inside. She couldn’t afford to fall apart, not here, not now.

A fake Memphis Sphinx.

Somebody was going to be very unhappy when they looked at the bottom of the statue and figured out they’d gotten exactly nothing for their trouble, and that very unhappy person might just decide to come back.

With the realization came a fresh wash of fear, born in panic and running like a streak of wildfire down her spine, all of it leading to one undeniable conclusion: She needed to get the hell out of the Gran Chaco.