Dax had calculated the odds long before he’d gotten to Paraguay, and Esteban Ponce, Levi Asher, Beranger, and anyone else who wanted the Sphinx, including any U.S. congressman or any long-legged redhead, were hell-and-gone out of luck.
He stopped at the window and looked out, holding her to one side, checking in both directions, his one arm still tight around her, his other hand still over her mouth. The coast was clear, but he was going to need her working with him to get to the alley. From there, it would be easy to disappear into the chaos and crowds of the market. Caveman tactics were a last resort, if only because they increased the risk of being noticed. Still, there was something about gagging her, tying her up, and just throwing her over his shoulder that appealed to him, probably the part about taking charge and getting the job done.
Yeah, that was probably it.
It probably didn’t have anything to do with getting his hands halfway up her skirt.
Nah, he wasn’t that kind of a guy.
He turned to tell her cooperation was really in her best interest, and maybe do a little placating of his own if the sheer common sense of his plan hadn’t yet sunk in-but the look on her face told him anything he had to say was completely beside the point.
Shock. Disbelief. Confusion. And recognition with a capital “R.” She had it all, and it was all in the stunned gaze locked onto his face.
Sure, he got it. He was feeling a little stunned himself-okay, a lot stunned.
Damn, he’d forgotten how beautiful she was. He truly had, but with the light coming in from the window, and him being real up close and personal with her, the cosmic freight train that had run over his heart the first time he’d seen her had instantly powered up and was taking him for another ride, at light speed. She was fucking luminous, her skin like satin, the curve of her nose so exquisitely elegant, her cheeks flushed with the heat, her mascara melting a bit, giving her a sultry, woman-coming-undone look. She’d lost her hat in the struggle at the door, and taken her sunglasses off somewhere between the entrance and the second floor, which left him face-to-face with the world’s most gee-fucking-gorgeous, whiskey-colored eyes-exotic, dark-lashed, a deep warm brown shot through with lighter streaks of amber, like sunlight streaming through a glass of single malt.
He was taken.
He was smitten.
Yeah, she knew who he was. It was written all over her face. And he sure as hell knew who she was-it was carved in his goddamn heart.
This was crazy. He was a man on a mission, not some callow nineteen-year-old boy-and she was the woman who had haunted his dreams for six long months.
He lifted his hand away from her mouth and loosened his hold, easing up on her a bit.
“You” she breathed.
Yeah, him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Great question, the obvious question, but the answer was totally unacceptable, something he’d be damned if he admitted to anyone, because suddenly, for just a brief moment in time, with her in his arms and his brain out to lunch, the answer sounded a lot more like “falling in love” than “stealing a sphinx.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Dax Killian. Oh… my…God.
The shock sent Suzi’s thoughts reeling. Suddenly, she was unmoored.
Daniel Axel Killian. Good God. Scruffier than when she’d met him in Denver, his hair short and tousled. Beard stubble darkened his jaw, and he was dressed on the sloppy side of casual, but it was him. She would recognize him anywhere, the angles of his face damn near perfect, the little bit of slope on a nose that bordered on cute, a firm, sensuous mouth with the imperfect scar marking his chin-and those eyes, pale gray under dark lashes, absolutely clear, absolutely unwavering… absolutely locked onto hers.
Soulful, that’s what she’d thought of his eyes six months ago, when he’d been pouring on the charm and hitting on her at the Toussi Gallery, but the description didn’t fit here, not now, not in the Galeria Viejo. Far from soulful, his gaze was piercing, fierce, and unnerving the hell out of her.
Geezus. Her heart thudded in her chest. Killian. What in the ever-loving world was he doing here?
And, oh, God-there was an answer to that question, only one, and it had to be the Memphis Sphinx, but why? She knew who he was and what he’d been, and she knew the U.S. government hadn’t sent him. The U.S. government had sent her, which only left the nongovernmental routes open for him, and all of those routes were illegal as hell, absolutely gridlocked with black-market players like Esteban Ponce, Levi Asher, Jimmy Ruiz, and Remy Beranger.
Ruiz sure as hell hadn’t mentioned an American buyer, a norteamericano, let alone dropped a name like Dax Killian.
Cripes, she was in so much trouble here, and geezus, was it hard to breathe in this dusty, cramped, sweltering dungeon of a room. Her head should have been reeling just from that-but no, it had taken Dax Killian to throw her off her stride.
And, oh, God, he’d thrown her.
She needed to get her bearings back, take a breath, get a frickin’ grip, think things through. Dax Killian, good God, no way in hell should he be here, not for any good reason, which only left the bad reasons, and the bad reasons were very bad.
Impossibly bad. She couldn’t have been that wrong about him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked again, confused as hell. She’d spent the last six months checking the guy out from one end to the other. With a little help from the chop-shop boys at Steele Street, she’d compiled a big fat file on his escapades, and Daniel Axel Killian was a private investigator, an ex-Special Forces operator of damn near legendary proportions, and a former juvenile delinquent of damn near equal infamy-one of Lieutenant Loretta’s wild boys. He was not a black-market criminal.
Or was he?
He wouldn’t be the first highly trained military operative to skirt the edges of the underworld in order to stay in the game.
Cripes.
“Getting out of here,” he said, sounding damned sure of himself. “And so are you.”
“No, I’m not,” she said, shaking her head. “Oh, no… no, no. I’m not leaving, not yet.”
“Oh, yes, yes, yes, you are,” he growled. “Come on.” He started moving her toward the window, but she dug in her heels, the only part of her he didn’t have in lockdown.
Dammit. She had a plan, a mission to execute, and it didn’t include “cut and run,” not until she’d had a chance to verify the location of the Sphinx. Two malfunctioning blinks and a beep didn’t quite do the trick. Wait it out-that’s what she was going to do. Wait for the police to leave, and then take another shot at the gallery with the scanner in her hand.
Another loud crash shook the walls, bigger than the others, as if the cops had turned over a whole bank of shelves, a real rumbling that made the floor tremble and sent a veil of dust drifting out of the woodwork. Dax tightened his hold on her-good Lord, as if they weren’t already close enough. Now they were practically laminated, with her trying to get her feet under her and regain her balance and him holding her in a way that made damn sure she couldn’t.
“You… you…”
“Bastard?” he offered.
“Bastard” worked for her, and she was just about to tell him so, when the pop-pop-pop of gunfire downstairs changed her whole attitude.
From one instant to the next, they transformed from adversaries with completely opposite agendas into a single, well-oiled machine with two moving parts and one goal-get the hell out of the Galeria Viejo. They reached the window, and he was boosting her up and through even as she was pushing it open. The drop on the other side was about five feet, just enough to give her a second’s pause.
“Uh…” Geez, it looked like a long way down, the distance made exponentially more difficult by high heels, a tight dress, and a large purse.
“Do it,” came his gruff command.
He was right.