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.”