Breaking Loose

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Suzi stood just inside the door to the balcony and watched as Dax crossed the street below. Once he disappeared into the crowd, she took the phone General Grant had given her out of her fanny pack and headed across the room, toward the door to the hall.

Within a minute, she had her assistant on the phone.

“Jane?” she said. “It’s Suzi.”

Jane Linden had been with her, on and off, for almost five years, working at different galleries Suzi had either owned or managed.

“Hey, Suz,” Jane answered. “What’s up? Where are you?”

“In a room with a view,” she said, being deliberately obscure, and with an answer like that, Jane knew not to pry. “I need a cell phone number for Levi Asher. Can you look in the dealer files on your computer?”

It wasn’t really a question. Between Suzi and Katya Hawkins, they’d nearly created the girl, taking her from being a half-wild street urchin with a few years of reform school on her résumé, to a sophisticated art aficionada with superlative job skills and exquisite taste. Between the two of them, she and Katya had given quite a few girls a second chance, including a couple of the Eastern European women.

“Sure. I’m at my desk, so just give me a… minute or so…and I’ll… Got it.” Jane gave her the number, then repeated it for good measure.

“Thanks.” When she reached the door, she stopped for a second and took a breath. God, that kiss. It had almost been her undoing. She had to stop kissing Dax Killian, but good Lord, it had felt like heaven. No man had affected her like that since-since too long to remember.

“So what’s up, Suz?” Jane said. “It’s not like you to call Asher. What’s he working on that you can’t resist?”

Levi Asher’s reputation for art was impeccable. He was one of the world’s master dealers. But his reputation with women was nothing but bad. Suzi wasn’t one to deny anyone their fantasy world, but to date, she’d declined becoming part of Levi Asher’s entourage. To date, she’d declined him about an even twenty times.

Tonight, Levi’s ship was coming in, or at least Suzi was going to do her best to convince him of the fact. If he knew anything at all about where the Memphis Sphinx was, she was going to get it out of him. Something had happened in the Galeria Viejo, while she and Dax had been bailing out the second-floor window, and she wanted to know what. If someone, anyone, had gotten their hands on the statue, she wanted to know who. If Levi had actually seen it-and Levi would know if he had-she wanted to know that, too.

“He’s got a piece he’s working on that I’m interested in, yes,” she admitted, opening the door and checking the hall in both directions. It was empty, but she knew where to find what she needed. “At the least I’m hoping he’s got some information I can use.”

“Do you want me to do some research on this end?”

“No, but thanks, Jane,” she said, heading down the hall to the elevator. “I’ve got plenty of research.” Half a ream of it, compliments of Buck Grant. “When I get back, we’ll put the finishing touches on next week’s Solano opening. See you in a couple of days.”

She ended the call and dialed in Levi Asher’s number. He let it go to message, just as she figured he would for an unknown number.

“Levi,” she said. “It’s Suzi Toussi. I’m in Ciudad del Este tonight, I think for the same reason you are, and I was hoping we could get together over drinks and see what we can come up with on this deal.”

She didn’t even get the phone back in her fanny pack before it was ringing.

“Hello?” she said, and she kept walking. “Oh, hello, Levi. Thanks for returning my call… Yes, how thoughtful, dinner would be wonderful… At the El Caribe, of course… Of course… Yes…and, Levi? Send a car, please. I’m at the Posada Plaza, and I’ll be out front in twenty minutes. Don’t be late.”

She hung up the phone and kept walking, all the way down to the elevator before she came to a stop. Then she let out a long breath and pushed the call button. The old elevator kicked in and started to grind its way up to the fifth floor, and Suzi stood there and waited-waited for what she needed, Marcella and Marceline, the Latino transvestite elevator tag team, the girls with the goods.

Thirty minutes, Dax thought, his jaw tight. He hadn’t left her alone for more than half an hour, and she was gone.

He walked through his room at the Posada one more time, checking the bathroom and the balcony again, and the girl was gone, just like the Memphis Sphinx.

Sonuvabitch.

He dropped the small wooden crate on the closest table, where it rolled and fell open. The lock on the crate had been broken long before he’d pried the damn thing out of the cistern in Beranger’s basement-all for nothing. It was empty, with only an indentation in the foam packing container to show where the statue had been, and the indentation was perfect, like a fricking lost wax cast of the Maned Sphinx of Sesostris III, the damn Memphis Sphinx.

Dammit! It had been here, in Ciudad del Este, in Beranger’s, and somebody had beaten him to it. How in the hell had that happened?

And where in the hell had Suzi gone? He couldn’t think of a single safe place for her to be, other than with him. If she’d gone after the Sphinx, she’d had fresh intel since he’d left, because when they’d been in that basement together, she’d been tearing through that garbage hoping to find it.

He set the bag of food he’d bought on the table next to the crate and ran down the options. It didn’t take much running. Beranger was dead. Ruiz was dead. She wouldn’t have contacted Esteban Ponce, not after the mess he’d made of Jimmy. That only left Levi Asher.

It was time to pay the big-name art dealer a call, and maybe, probably, Suzi had come up with the same idea.

He pulled his phone out to make some calls, to find Asher. If he wasn’t at the Gran Chaco or the El Caribe, he could be at one of the resorts near Iguazú Falls. Or he could be in Asunción.

Or he could have gotten the Sphinx and be hell-and-gone out of Ciudad del Este.

Dax still had the number for the Gran Chaco in his call list and was about to hit it, when something on the table caught his eye-a padded red bra with rhinestones on the straps, a very padded bra.

It wasn’t Suzi’s. He’d been pressed up against all girl when he’d kissed her. He knew that much, and from the size of it, he was going to say Marcella instead of Marceline, and how in the hell had Marcella’s bra gotten into his room?

He walked back to the bathroom and turned on the light. All of Suzi’s toiletries had been left at the Gran Chaco. When she’d run out of her room at the hotel, she’d left with what she’d had on her.

But there were toiletries in his bathroom, girl stuff-two barrettes, a twist-up tube of bronzer, and half a dozen bobby pins.

He turned on his heel and dropped his phone in his pocket. He didn’t need to make phone calls to find Suzi. He just needed to go hit the call button on the elevator and shake down whoever came out first.

Night on the river was a beautiful thing, the wind in his face, the stars above, the cool dark water below, and the roar of the twin Mercs off the back of the boat.

Up ahead, Con could see the lights of the city just starting to break the darkness at the edge of the world. He didn’t have a doubt in his mind that he would find Suzanna Toussi in Ciudad del Este. Something about the woman had sunk into him, triggered something, and now she was there, deep inside him, elusive but there, like a scent on the wind.

Reaching down to the controls, he throttled up the engines, doubling his speed, and the shoreline stretched out on his port side, slipping away mile after mile into shadows and darkness.